On Friday the 3rd a bunch of us headed down to Plymouth with a flotilla of 3 boats. Two separate trips were planned, but lots of people dropped out – the amalgamated trip was a great idea though. We had fantastic diving conditions and ended up helping recover some abandoned fishing gear with Fathoms Free.

Camp was set up at Brixton Caravan & Camping Park who allow BBQs….

On Saturday the conditions were fantastic, so we headed out to the Eddystone lighthouse. This was about a 40 minute drive out to sea with 2 or three people on each of the club boats and 6 on the RIB. When we got there we spotted some net wrapped around the lighthouse. We sent Greg to go and get it.

You will note the very clear sign which reads “danger keep off!”…  – perhaps they need a bigger one?

After a bit of net recovering Fathoms Free arrived as they had heard a report of the net. They put a great deal of effort into making sure they got every last scrap of the net out the water. We had quite a bit of fun helping them with this, as well as removing crabs and fish from the net they’d pulled out. See their Facebook post for more pics…

Some more information on the diving at the Eddystone has been attached to the map here.

After the Eddystone we stopped off at Bovisand to get cylinder fills and to do some Sports Diver rescues in the harbour.

Sunday saw us dive the JEL and Scylla, two wrecks well known by UBUC located in Whitland Bay. We headed out on just the RIB and UBUC Walsh due to limited numbers. A quick drive across (stopping on the way to pick up a paddle board and call the coastguard about it, who didn’t seem very interested, and we arrived at the first wreck, the JEL. We shotted it nicely, and proceeded to do 3 waves of divers on the wreck. It’s full of conger eels, blennies and had perfectly decent vis (7m), as well as being pretty warm! It was great to get some of the newly qualified Sports Divers out on their first proper wreck, and we were able to swim pretty much the entire length.

The second dive was split between the Scylla (which has a permanent shot) and another round of JEL. We did some nice penetration on the Scylla, and also got all the way to the bottom, where the prop should be (it is on stands so you can get under it).

Having tried to anchor one of the club boats too close to the JEL, we had to send divers to get the anchor out (doh!). We then made our way back in the sun listening to tunes all the way!

Organisational information

These are just the bits for the RIB divers

Dive Sites

On this trip we dived the following sites – the information on each one has been added to the specific posts about them.

• The Eddystone Lighthouse
• The JEL
• The Scilla

Gas fills

We got fills from Bovisand to save a bit of cash – the cylinders were dropped off on the way back from diving Sat and picked up on the way out on Sunday

Accomodation

We stayed at Brixton Caravan & Camping Park. This is a good site with free showers and a very good local pub. They were also happy with us having a BBQ!

Launching

The RIB was launched from the west of the two slips at the mount batten centre, while the club boats were launched from the east slip.

Parking

There is free parking across the road from the mount batten centre!

Cars

We took two cars, one small one and a 4×4 to tow the RIB. this worked very well.

Costs

(these are the totals for the 4 divers on the RIB)

Boat fuel/oil: £115.32
Accomodation: £50.00
Car fuel: £84.65
Food: £54.00
Cylinder fills: £40.00
Boat donation: £30.00
This came out at about £115 a head for 2 days diving!

Divers on Club Boats was about £50 a head.