On the weekend of the 20th/ 21st of October. 14 UBUCers (including a few new faces) headed down to Lyme Regis to dive the SS Baygitano! Despite the sub-par visibility, we still managed to get some good diving in, and all around had a great time!
We all had an early start on the Saturday, with most leaving Bristol by 6:30am and arriving in Lyme Regis between 8 and 8:30, being greeted by an amazing sunrise.
Shortly after Chris arrived, we got the boats in the water, got our kit assembled, and after some initial engine faff the first wave was off at around 10:20. The site itself was as good as usual, with plenty of life including dead men’s fingers, pink sea fans, jewel anemone and crabs. Some lobsters and conger ells were living amongst the wreckage, including a conger who was a bit annoyed we’d almost dropped the shot on his home. The wreck is a hotspot for fish, with reports of shoals of pollock, some bib and blennies. It wasn’t even that cold, with it being a balmy 14 degrees centigrade, however the visibility wasn’t ideal with it being as low as 1 metre around the shot and opening up to at most 3 meters further away.
We ended up doing 4 waves of dives, so everyone could get two dives in. Regardless, the last wave was somewhat sparse with only one boat, two divers, and a boat handler dashing off to do the last dive of the day. By the time they got back, lots of the kit was packed away in cars and nearly ready to go, so all that had to be done was recovering the boats which was done in record time.
With the boats packed away, we all headed off in the general direction of the campsite, with some grabbing booze and firewood on the way. After navigating a particularly annoying closed road we arrived at the field and set to work on putting up tents for the night (not that everyone decided to use them). We went to the cozy pub just 3 minutes down the road to get the dinner and drinks everyone needed after a long day on the boats. Once back at the site, everyone’s favorite father figure got a campfire going, and spent the rest of the evening drinking, chatting, and generally having a great time.
On a side note, there was no cloud cover and the only light pollution being the full moon – A few people stayed outside and waited for the moon to pass so they could see the stars in all their glory. One of those ended up falling asleep, and spent the night out in the middle of the field without a tent…
The following morning, we all went on our way back to Bristol and stores to get the kit cleaned and packed away. With that, the excellent weekend came to a close.
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