Saturday

Frances and I missed the morning dive and went to get a new tyre for my little car instead. They dived the Eddystone rock - they seemed to enjoy it although they only saw dull fish and weed.

Glenn kindly came back and collected Frances and me and we went off to dive the James Egan Layne. I dived with Frances and we had a great time - the viz wasn't great on the wreck; due to the huge quantity of divers that had already been on it no doubt. However we spent our time around the edges where the viz was reasonable (5m or so) and had a really good time. Did a bit of penetration up around the prop shaft which was good, and photographed a Ray which was bad. I only took a picture of it to tease Nette with, but I gather she had her own Marine Life Experience at the weekend and so is unlikely to be bothered by this.

Surfaced after an hour. Curiously, everyone else was already on the boat waiting for us.

Went to Pizzaghetto in the Barbican for tea. Very nice. The party on the street outside kept Shandy amused (well, the two chicks in pants kept him amused at least).

Sunday

We arrived prompt on the jetty at 0830, kit ready to go. Glenn turned up bang on time and the kit was loaded like the well-oiled machine that we are. We then sat waiting at pontoon for a further 15 minutes waiting for Shandy to turn up.

I dived with Luke on the Elk, a tiny wreck at 32m. It takes about ten minutes to do an entire lap of this wreck, if you went slowly. Viz was 5m or so, but it was silty and so viz could deteriorate rapidly at times. Luke and I did two laps of the wreck and faffed around a bit before ascending to do 7 minutes of stops.

My wrist seal ripped badly on hearing that we were diving rocks in the afternoon so I had to give diving "the Crack" a miss. Oh well :o)

The trip back to Plymouth was fun - the wind was getting up quite nicely and Maid Maggie was rolling like a pig. Everyone apart from Martin enjoyed the roller-coaster of a ride back.

Summary

An excellent weekend, not without adventure. Glenn is a superb skipper and an all-round good chap. Maid Maggie is a bit small for twelve twin-setted divers, but we managed. Glenn is hoping to have a bigger boat for next year, however I failed to persuade him to have a lift installed in it.

Well done Dez (or was it Floss?) for a top weekend.

Keith.