Go West
I seem to be travelling ever further south and west this year and I have recently picked up a spare place on a trip to Salcombe being run by Mark Powell, I wasn’t sure I could find any accommodation so before I confirmed I had to find some. Lou and Caroline had booked a 2 bedroomed apartment and said I could share with them and I just needed to pay the extra so that saved me a few quid, as these trips are getting a bit costly. Mark had booked the same boat we had been on in Weymouth and skippered by Paul Pike, Pauls boat is called X-Dream and is very well run and must have one of the nicest boat heads in the UK.
Leaving home on a very sunny Sunday morning I had high hopes for a lovely few days diving with some decent viz, I made a short stop at Exeter services to meet up with Adrian Kelland, Lou had agreed to buy Adrian’s torch and wanted it for the weekend, I was then on my way down to Salcombe and arrived at Lou and Caroline’s accommodation just before 1.30pm. Ditching my bags we headed off in to Salcombe for a look round, there was a festival and Gig racing so after a brief stop at the band stand to listen to the music we headed off up the road to see if we could watch the gig racing, there was a race just about to start so we found a spot and picked a team, unfortunately Lou happened to pick a mixed team and they came in last. Heading back into town we stopped at the pub, well you have to support local businesses and had a pint of fairly local beer, the guy behind the bar said the Devon brew wasn’t as good so we had a Cornish one instead called Tribute and very nice it was to.
We headed off back up the steep hill with an ice cream in hand stopping off at a convienient place about half way up to finish our ice creams and admire the view, actually I was knackered anyway so the view stop was just an excuse. We had dinner and got ready to meet up with some of the guys on the trip. We went back to the same pub and had another pint of Tribute, we sat in the beer garden and then went down stairs to the pub where we found NickB and Nic (Tootricky), introductions over we sat and chatted until Mark and Howard arrived, after another beer by then the Tribute had run out and we headed off back up the hill (there is a pattern here) for an early night.
Monday morning arrived and was lovely and sunny, there wasn’t anywhere really to park in the town so we took the cars down and offloaded them and took the cars back up the hill. Paul arrived at the pontoon with the boat and we loaded up ready for our day, Fiona (Pink & Fluffy) was last to arrive but then we were on our way. I had arranged to dive with Lou and Caroline again so we decided just to have a nice dive without too much planning. The first dive was the wreck of the Maine and I had recently bought a stainless steel backplate and soon realised as I decended I was far too heavy, I should have taken the extra little weights out of my weightbelt and I was quite uncomfortable during the dive, the wreck was full of life and had a huge conger just as we started the dive.
All too soon the dive was over and I deployed my dsmb and we started our ascent, making stops at 18,15,12,9 & 6. Lou soon realised that my computer doesn’t do different mixes as she asked me how much longer and I told her about 8mins. I said they could leave me but they stayed, which was beyound the call of duty, back on the boat Paul had prepared a little spread for lunch which we didn’t expect as he was away from home. After a couple of hours on the surface we went in for our second dive this was a very shallow wreck called the Herzogin Ceceilie 
she was a 3111 ton four masted steel clipper, built in 1902 and was 336ft x 46ft. She was carring a cargo of 4259 tons of wheat from Port Lincoln in Austrailia to Ipswich via Falmouth, she sunk on 25th April 1936 by stricking the Ham Stone off Sour Mill Cove in fog.
Then raised and towed to Starehole Bay where it was settled upright ready for repairs before its back broke in later storms she lies in just 7m. The instruction was to swim north east from the
boat and we should find the wreck, down to the sandy bottom but as I don’t have a compass I decided to head off in the direction I thought might be correct, I soon lost Lou and Caroline and as we were very shallow I decided to carry on, after a few minutes I changed direction and came across what I thought was a dogfish tail in the sand, I lay on the sandy bottom and wafted some sand away, I soon realised it was a large Thornback ray which I hadn’t seen before and lay for a few minutes while he watched me out of his big eye and once he decided he had been there long enough he flapped his large wings and off he went probably to find another spot without being disturbed. I continued for another few minutes and out of the gloom I saw a shape which was obviously the wreck. The wreck was mostly covered in by shitfing sand and the water was surging back and forth across the wreck. I circled the wreck a couple of times and the ascended. Back on the boat we headed back to the harbour and off loaded cylinders and headed for the dive shop.
We then headed off to the Ferry Inn for a beer where we sat in the sun overlooking the lovely esturary and putting the world to rights, after some very poor fish and chips it was time to head back up the hill for an early night.
Tuesday was the same except Howard had kindly offered to pick all the cylinders up in the landie so we just headed to the pontoon to wait for him, today we were doing the Riversdale and the Soudan. We kitted up and prepared to dive, I took off some weight from the previous day and this was much better, down on the wreck we had a good look round and then prepared for our ascent, this turned out to be my longest UK dive of 72mins. Back on the boat Paul had prepared lunch of baked potatoes and chilli which was most welcome as it had been raining when we left the surface. Aparently Paul thought his wife was mad to suggest chilli as it had been very warm. After a nice interval we did the wreck of the Soudan which lies in about 20m, as we decended the shotline which was lying on the sandy bottom we swam a few metres and found a large boiler, in most of the pipes of the boiler were loads of tompot blennies which I find very comical, in a narrow hole in the boiler were lots of prawns the hole mostly full of sand but right at the back of the hole was an enormous conger eel, I am sure he was far too big to ever get out. Finning around the wreck on various bits of wreakage were lots of nudibranchs. There were two large lobsters around the wreck and many edible crabs, this was a very nice dive which we were able to do going the following day.
Another evening in one of the pubs, this time the Fortescue as there was a football match on which Howard wanted to watch, so some of us stayed in the main pub area to eat and Howard and NickB had theirs in the room with the big screen, another early night all this walking up and down the hill was very knackering. Wednesday was to be the last diving day and we heading for the Newholm. The Newholm was a lovely light wreck because of the sand, some of the holds were open and full of sand, again this wreck was covered in Plumose anenomies and deadmens fingers, nudibranchs, edible and spider crabs. After lunch we did the Soudan wreck again and I took in my camera and used the strobe for the first time, which was a big improvement on just the internal flash.
