The Easter Trip was to a return to Weymouth this year and very pleasant it was to. After expecting poor weather in the run up, it beat all expectations, especially on Easter Sunday and Monday.
We started out on the Friday with the Countess of Erne followed by the Dredger. The water was cold meaning that 30min dives were plenty long enough. The next day at Peter Harvey’s request (and a good request it was) we ventured further afield some 9.5 miles to the wreck of the Black Hawk just off Worborrow Bay. This was covered in divers doing the same thing as us, but it made finding it easy! Some nice bits of wreck to swim through and around and a friendly conger hid from our torches.
On Sunday we went for the Landing craft and Bombardon unit inside the harbour then off to visit an old site that I first dived 10 years ago called the domed reef in the Dive Dorset book. It is the other side of Weymouth bay and is a pile of rocks in a sandy area. Saw a few crabs and a bit of life but I guess my memory of this site has had the rose tinted specs on since I did it on my first ever trip to Weymouth with UELSAC.
It did prove that our new GPS works well as the track plotting feature meant we could see where we had surveyed the area trying to pick up the reef once we had got to the Dive Dorset marks, and after 5-10mins of searching we found our target rising up to 5m from the deep (10m!).
Monday turned out to be a shore dive off of Chesil Beach where Marie and I saw a few pipefish and a handsome Red Gurnard on the seafloor, something new for me! We spent a great time afterwards in the pub before washing down the boat at its new home in Portland.
A great start to the season and much chocolate was eaten by all.
See some pictures from trip here
Stuart
