Saturday morning's early sunshine promised another fine day of diving with light winds forecast. Everyone enjoyed a great breakfast with home-baked breads and a leisurely timescale to get the gear set up for diving the Kowloon Bridge on the noon slack. The viz was great at 12 to 15 mtrs, plenty of life but the most surprising element of the dive was the water temperature - a balmy 16 degrees (really!). Not so for the Sunday morning dive on the Submarine.
Again a good forecast and very pleasant boat journey out with a 7 mtr basking shark near the Sherkin breakwater. We didn't have time to jump in however as we had to hit the slack for the U260. The temperature going down the shotline dropped quickly from 16 at the surface to 12 at the bottom (around 40 mtrs) but with good viz and a relatively short bottom time of 15 minutes this didn't seem to bother anyone, including those in semi-drysuits. Every one enjoyed the dive, which is so special when you can see the whole wreck (66 mtr long and 5 mtr wide) in one go including the conning tower, open hatch, periscope, df aerial, propellers, gun mounting, ballast tubes etc etc. Also note-worthy was the fact that all 12 divers came back onto the boat with 100 mtr plus bar in their tanks so a safe dive profile for all.
The other 2 dives were a drift along the south Kedges on Saturday afternoon with beautiful gullies and walls covered in sponges and anemones with the occasional conger and crayfish watching us, and the Sunday afternoon on the Arches where a seal finished off another great weekend in Baltimore with Aquaventures.
No comments:
Post a Comment