Skomer August Trip Report

Written by Phil Dobson, Kaden Elsey, and Alex Elwood. Photos by Kaden Elsey.

Wednesday

After loading kit into cars and the club boats into the van the group departed from stores in the early afternoon to arrive at the campsite and pitch up. With plenty of time to kill we headed to Martin’s Haven to commence the trip’s diving on a high with a night dive. Keeping to the reef and kelp beds on the right of the cove we found rocks full of lobsters, squat lobsters, crabs and prawns which had come out after sunset. After two waves of eventful diving, it was back to the campsite.

Thursday

After an early start and a brief stop in Milford Haven to get cylinders filled, we again found ourselves at Martin’s Haven to get the boats built and on the water. Once the boats were ready I got my first open water boat handling experience as we sped off to the north side of Skomer Island to our dive sites. Rye Rocks (A lovely reef and wall sitting at 15-25m) and The Lucy (An impressive well-preserved wreck lying at a max depth of 40m). Whilst the divers at Rye Rocks were lucky enough to spend time underwater swimming with seals those in the deep used their torches to light up the eerie sites of the Lucy.

Friday

Diving started today on Rye Rocks. A brief encounter with a grey seal and a significant amount with foot cramp later, the divers emerged to a flat calm sea to enjoy the ride across the jacksound to the second site of the day. High Point saw the first human trials of a depth measurement technique dubbed ‘just follow the anchor it should be fine’. After shooting up a DSMB-Slate combo messaging the rather anticlimactic depth of 22m, the divers descended on the anchor and continued south across a sandy stretch littered with scallops until they reached a beautiful wall full of lobsters, crayfish, dogfish and more! A walk to the local pub and some gourmet scampi, chips and beer concluded another day of diving. – Kaden

Saturday

On Saturday, we had another morning of getting up bright and early ready to go straight out on the water. After a quick breakfast at the campsite, we headed down to Martain’s Haven to jump back on the boats. However, Will took Christina back to St Brides Bay again to spend the day completing her second Ocean Diver Lesson. 

Once out on the water after some moderate engine faff, the plan was for Xavi, Kaden, Tanya and Phil to first dive North Cliffs while we left the other boat moored up on the Lucy’s shot line. North Cliffs is a wall dive which had a gentle current running along it allowing divers to slowly move along the site. As we were dropping in divers we met another dive boat full of friendly divers, one of whom happened to do his PIE with Lewis! After the dive, both groups had mixed reviews of the site, Phil and Tanya seemed to really love it, however, Kaden and Xavi found it somewhat mediocre. We think this was because Phil and Tanya managed to stay more to the left of the site and not allow themselves to drift too far along.

Once we reconvened with the other boat. Lewis and I kited up to dive the Lucy. We’d planned this as a single dive day in order to do a long decompression stop giving us time for a proper wreck penetration through the ship. We planned to attempt to enter through the galley ceiling and exit through the port side of the main corridor running the width of the ship. Once down on the ship and having surveyed the entry and exit points we decided to go for it. While buddy lined together, Lewis entered first before giving me the signal to follow. Given how tight of a space it was and the angle we had to enter, it proved almost impossible not to silt it up leaving me with rather limited visibility while swimming through. Nevertheless, we both safely made it through only to be left with a boring 15min deco stop – time to get a stage!

After pootling back over to Martin’s Haven, we picked up Will and Christina who were just finishing a lesson in the bay before heading over to High Point for the final boat dive of the trip. Everyone (aside from Lewis and I) dived by dropping down the anchor and swimming into the cliffs. After this dive, Christina passed her Ocean Diver being the first to do so this year off a boat! We then had the arduous task of bringing ashore the boats and packing them down into the van.

After a long day, we decided to grab curry and Chinese from Milford Haven and take it back to the campsite. There was a campsite busy party in full swing with live music. Given how tired everyone was, we weren’t in the mood to join in so quietly had our dinner. We then tried to get a somewhat early night which was a challenge with the noise around.

Sunday

On Sunday, Xavi, Kaden and Phil planned to do an easy single dive day before we headed back home. We went over to St Brides where they had their dive while Will and I schemed on how to run Phil’s Practical Rescue Management (PRM). Once out of the water, Will taught Phil’s O2 admin course before going straight into the PRM. Afterwards, we made the long drive home before getting into stores around 5:30pm. With everyone wanting to get home quickly, we managed to clean and pack up kit (including the boats) in record time and were out within an hour.

Overall it was a really fun and successful trip and it’s great to see the boats (mostly) in good working order again!