Josephine's Favourite Dives of 2007

The Thoroughly lovely Fiend gives us her 5.....

Best dives of the year..

1) Eddystone on the last dive weekend of the year - great visibility, fantastic jewel anenome and big fish.

2) Dive on the Thistlegorm going out to see the trains followed by the Robinson family attack on the forward gun - great dive and lovely opportunity to do it as a family.

3) Chrisoula K (aka tile wreck) - loved the site and amazing opportunity (if a little scary) to go through the engine room with Adam even if we were a little unprepared!

4) Rosehill - loved the wreck even if the water was as green as pea soup. Great life on the wreck and great gun (we're suckers for big guns!)

5) Kingston - good wreck with great life, but drift dive afterwards was the best ever. Like being on a conveyor belt and watching the reef fly by - luckily the current slowed by the time the turtle made an appearance!

Neill's Comment - Thanks to Josephine for contributing. Top Hardcore Wrecker UK diver - picks ace UK dives ahead of shandy soft Red Sea prettyness.

1st Draft Diving 2008

10th/11th May 2008 - Plymouth (Neaps /HW 1018)

Goals - Offshore reefs/Maine/ Local favourites


7th /8th June - Plymouth ( Coming off springs HW 0923)

As Above.

5th/ 6th July - Salcombe/Teignmouth ( Small Springs HW 0823)

Goals - Maine / Bretagne / Orestone

6th / 7th September - Plymouth ( coming to neap HW 1003)

Stone, Deeps or Hatt Rock, Drop Off, Thornbacks.


Please get in touch gang to tell me if these are a working set to approach skippers.

Neill's Top 5 dives of 2007 (UK).

Eddystone Reef (E). 9th June
This 37.8m – 35mins dive saw me buddied with Rob. Whilst this dive was excellent it was preceded by the second best wildlife encounter of my 177 dive career. Basking Shark. Great viz and a new depth record for me at the time.

Eddystone Mammaries 22nd September.
39.4m for 30 mins runtime. Buddied with Rob and Brian this was a great dive to blow away the soft diving of July. Saw a massive 1.2m Nurse Hound {Sharky} and my heart was banging away. Beautiful Jewel Anenomies.

Drop Off 10th April.
20.9m for 39mins. This is a new site and a spectacular one – Rob and I were blown away by the viz, the wall and the sea life. One for Amoco regulars only. I have discovered that this may be part of a system of drop-offs independently dived by several groups out of Plymouth.

Thornback Patch 6th August.
Have dived this twice once with Brian and once with Rob (@ 22m – 45mins). In those dives we counted 28 Thornbacks and 15 Dogfish. This is another Amoco mark.

Hand Deeps 20th May.
When thinking about this it was easy to forget that this was a five year ambition realised. Having not been back to HD since 2002 on my first weekend charter. Great viz, great buddies and a Great year of UK diving.

Boxing Day

It's Boxing Day morning and I have a day of playing games ahead of me. Have already played downfall twice before breakfast. However the reason for this post is to ask (remind) the plymouth posse to send me a list of their top five dives of 2007. Also I wanted to say we have passed the solstice and the days will become longer and the sun will return. The count down to the diving season starts here.

New dive ideas for the summer.

Brief web search of some summer alternatives.

From Plymouth.

Alternative Rutts http://www.totnes-bsac.co.uk/sites/plans/alt_rutts.jpg

Oregon http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=1728&sc=&ac=d&an=

Hatt Rock http://www.looedivers.com/dive_hatt_rock.asp and http://www.divemagazine.co.uk/news/article/mps/UAN/1281/V/2/SP/332935698186344349212

Teignmouth. {Overnight or 1 hour from Plymouth}

http://www.teigndivingcentre.co.uk//component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Bretagne -http://www.ssbretagne.co.uk/

Others - http://www.wrecksandreefs.co.uk/ds_uk_devon.htm

Salcombe { Overnight or 47 mins to Plymouth)

Overview http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=3685&sc=&ac=d&an=

Maine http://www.chippenhamdivers.co.uk/wrecks/maine.htm

Dartmouth {Plymouth 54 mins}

http://www.dartboat.com/diving.htm

Videos on You Tube

Some of the diving vids will get posted at my You Tube site....

http://www.youtube.com/elricoii

Look at me being a media whore.

N

Incident Report

Please follow the enclosed link to the annual BSAC incident report. It makes useful, if sombre, reading.

http://www.bsac.org/page/1062/incident-report-2007.htm

Safe diving.