LSSAU visit Portland 28 & 29 April
The first trip to the coast of the year and the weather was not kind to us – but didn’t stop us from having some fun - diving and boat handling.
The Team: Kyle, Sam, Nathan, Simon (aka Pils) and Marg.
Has ever we received a warm welcome at the Chickerell Scout hut. The hut is having central heating installed so it will be even better in the future. Slight down side - the local Fish & Chip shops seem to have taken to closing about 10pm on Friday nights, so we had to resort to the Chinese take away for our after journey supper on Friday evening.
Vixen was made welcome at Clarks Boat Yard in Castletown, where she spent 2 nights, getting her on to the grass by the Scout Hut is no longer a practical option.
After getting a permit to dive in the Harbour from the Sailing Academy we launched from Casteltown slip – which is free. Portland Harbour was reasonably calm and close into the inside of the Harbour wall the sea was completely flat. We dived the Countess of Erne. The visibility as expected was about 1 – 2M there was a lot of sand in suspension, there had been storm force winds during the week. The buddy pairs were Sam & Pils, Marg & Nathan. All followed the outside of the wreck; there were plenty of sea squirts, some spider crabs, pink sea fan, sea slugs, and various sponges. Kyle was boat handler (as well as towing Vixen down – thank you Kyle). We were the only divers in and around Portland Harbour!
After the dive the wind (North Easterly) was picking up so we decided that after lunch boat handling was the best thing to do. Saturday afternoon was spent going through the skills of the BSAC Boat handling course with Nathan & Sam; we got wet and laughed a lot. For the confined area skills we went into the Sailing Academy Marina, and after admiring many of the boats moored there skills were achieved in difficult conditions as the wind was increasing the whole time. Two boat handling lectures were completed Saturday evening
Over lunch chatting to Scimitar Divers we were told about their efforts to raise a yacht that had sunk on her moorings in the Harbour during a storm the previous Wednesday night – several other boats were damaged. By the end of the Saturday the yacht was off the bottom and had been towed to the Harbour wall by Clarks Boat yard, ready to be craned up and pumped out on Monday. However there was a North East gale on Saturday night and much of Sunday, and we suspect the partially submerged yacht will have been damaged further.
Gales were forecast for Sunday so when we took Vixen off the water Saturday evening we got her ready for the journey home. Scimitar Diving generously allowed us to use their kit washing facilities to wash Vixen and ourselves down, and Smudge filled our cylinders – with no charge – thank you Smudge & Sarah this was greatly appreciated.
Sunday was a gale with lashing down rain so as planned we went to Vobster for a dive on the way home. We dived in the same pairs as Saturday. Sam & Pils explored down to 22M, Nathan & Marg visited the 12M area and found the aircraft which was full of tiny perch. The vis was at least 5M and the water temperature about 9C about a degree colder than the sea. The diving was good and we all said we would dive Vobster again.
The ‘washing’ of Vixen continued on the journey back to Fox Box as we drove through torrential rain all the way home.
A good start to the season but let’s hope the future trips have better weather.
Marg
