On a lovely Saturday morning, a group of UBUC’ers rose at dawn to travel to the picturesque seaside town of Lyme Regis. For a lovely bootcamp warmup, we carried the boats and equipment what felt like miles to launch them into the water. We then set off into the beautifully sunny horizon to find the Baygitano wreck. After some excellent GPS work, we dropped a line above the wreck and began to kit up.
As we descended down the buoy line, hundreds of Pouting and Bib emerged from the depths. The excellent visibility treated us to a wide variety of wildlife, including bib, lobsters, conger eels, nudibranchs, pollock and cold wetsuit divers. It was wonderful to be surrounded by hundreds of curious fish. The two metre conger eels (or conger conger for the Latin speakers) were easy to spot poking their faces out of the wreck and the metre long pollock glided around the boat boilers putting on an entertaining show for us all.
After several remarks about how warm those in dry suits were, we returned to shore to swap tanks and fuel up both the boat and our stomachs. Running fashionably late, as divers usually do, we set off for our second dive in the afternoon sunshine. The incredible abundance of wildlife was as breath-taking as before. Everyone surfaced grinning from ear to ear, ready to return to shore and pack up.
Both dives were fantastic and after several engine difficulties, some fish line entanglement and wishing farewell to a weight belt, it was separating Will from his chips that was deemed the days toughest challenge. After a short hour and a half journey of Britney Spears and pasties, the dream team arrived back in Bristol to clean up and go home for a well-deserved rest.
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