Thibault-culosis /ti.bo.kjʊˈ.ləʊ.sɪs/ n. An infectious diving malady. Symptoms include a relaxed attitude towards diving, approximately 15 minutes of lateness for ropes off, and confusion about who is responsible for said lateness.

It must be said that the trip got off to an inauspicious start. We had multiple dropouts for some unlucky reasons, including a last minute bout of shingles, of all things.

Fortunately, even before the trip started, our luck had already started to turn. The person who got shingles was Dan, the Expert, who could use his expertise to quickly get the gear in his car to us so that less shingled divers could breathe and do other fun stuff underwater.

And as Dan presumably stared longingly out of his window – sorry Dan – we set off for an excellent trip.

Day 1 – Knot Throwing Away My Shot

West Bay is a place that is not Portland, so some jiggery pokery was necessary to get the boat, cars, gear and people all there. Nathan had hatched a cunning plan which required only one taxi and one early start from Thibault, so by the time Linas had finished driving his happy, full, cheeseburger-fuelled car down from London, the beloved club RIB Percy was already safely moored up and only mildly deflated.

This trip was organised by Louise, henceforth Lucky Louise – for reasons which will soon become apparent – to complete her well-deserved Dive Leader qualification. She had originally planned a trip that was very Ocean Diver-friendly, with two days and two dives each, but succumbed to peer pressure from Nathan to add a Sports Diver dive to the end of the first day. As such, there was a little time pressure to get going, so we’d all allowed a bit of extra faffing time.

After an early arrival and a promising start, the faff started to grow with some swapping of dive computer batteries (definitely not me) and slightly pointless boat orientations given to individual dive buddies before the actual boat orientation (also most certainly not me). While pumping up Percy’s tubes, the Thibault-culosis (see definition at the start of the trip report) started to spread within the group, and we left approximately 15 minutes after ropes off.

Luckily, this had no impact as the first two dives weren’t tidal anyway. We arrived at the aptly-named Golden Cap reef and admired the amber morning sun reflecting off the mirror-like water. Or Thibault did, as he was the only one who wasn’t diving this one, kindly offering to boat handle instead of clocking hours on his CCR.

(Side note: I’ve been on a dive boat with Thibault no fewer than 11 times, and I’ve still never dived with him. I’m not convinced he knows how.)

Charlie, who had recently qualified as an Ocean Diver and was on his first trip, entered the water first with Nathan. I followed with Harry, who was returning to UK waters after a brief fling with the Red Sea, and Louise and Linas followed suit. It was a perfect shakedown dive – very calm conditions, and bad enough visibility that nobody could get too complacent. Harry had had a day to comprehend that we don’t always enjoy the 10m visibility he described on his last UK dive around the Farne islands, so the 2m visibility on this one wasn’t a total shock.

Now that we were all convinced that diving was an activity worth pursuing, it was time to proceed to our first hunk of metal: the Baygitano wreck. Sitting in around 20m of non-tidal water, it’s ideal for Ocean Divers to get their first taste of iron.

What’s even more ideal is when there’s a nice chap called Dave, with his own group of divers, who has shot the wreck for you. We stopped to chat to confirm our intentions, took a GPS coordinate of his masterpiece so that we could shot it later, and dived in.

The visibility was better – actually, the visibility was more limited by huge walls of fish than it was by the actual conditions. There are a few very prominent boilers on the wreck that are fun to explore around, forming artificial bommies with more to see when you spiral out away from them.

On my dive, I returned to the shot line almost by accident and was about to ascend up it, when Jedi Master Nathan appeared to me in a hyperbaric vision. “Don’t go up the shot, in case Dave raises it while you’re down there!” I looked at Dave’s spiky anchor-like shot wedged in the sand, imagined it coming straight at us at some speed during a not-so-safety stop, and decided to shoot my DSMB instead. As we reached the surface, Dave was just finishing putting his spiky shot away.

Shot line crisis averted. Luckily.

Of course, if Dave’s shot was now up, ours had to go down for the next group. They had prepared it by attaching plenty of line, and I dropped it right on cue. I noticed that there was a whole length of rope to spare – surely I can do something clever here? I clipped one side of it to the end of a length that was already in the water and… wait. That was kind of stupid. Why was I messing with a perfectly good shot line as it was halfway into the water?

I threw the rest in and explained the situation to the next group – that the shot line was likely to be a bit confusing. Luckily there was at least one person in the next wave who could navigate down a shot line and past a tangle of rope (I believe it was on Thibault’s Full Cave course). Still, you could imagine my relief when the lift bag came up exactly as planned, with all the rope still there, and no divers entangled in the mess I’d made.

Shot line crisis averted. Luckily.

By this point, poor Charlie had discovered that the pirate life was probably not for him, as it would likely involve even rougher seas than the 30cm waves we’d been experiencing. He had genuinely accomplished a lot – his first two ocean dives ever! – but was delighted to reach terra firma as we stopped for a lunch break before the Sports Diver dive.

Thibault, meanwhile, was plotting his revenge for my tangled shot line.

Linas and Charlie went back to take a shower as the Sports Divers set off for the St Dunstan. The dive site was marked by a fishing boat, and as we patrolled around looking serious as we searched for the wreck on the sounder, the fisherman were scared off. We dropped the shot which Thibault had prepared… and a tangle of rope went in.

“I hope that comes untied, otherwise this isn’t going to be a very good shot!”

Nathan, who was taking Harry for his 30m depth progression, was unimpressed as he reached the shot line.

“It’s going straight down. I don’t think it reached the seabed.”

Nathan and Harry climbed straight back into the boat after their refreshing dip, and me and Nathan had the fun job of pulling up the 20kg shot attached to a steadily water-filling lift bag. We gave Thibault a raised eyebrow each when the knotted section of the rope came back up, as he grinned sheepishly from the driver’s seat.

I don’t know if there was a debrief, but it was already fair to say that it won’t happen again!

We dropped the shot a second time, and this time it was perfect. Bang on the wreck with only a little extra line along the sea floor, with hardly any current. Harry achieved his 30m depth progression, as Thibault announced he was not diving. This was actually a kind move, as this bought us back the time we’d lost on the shot line, so me and Louise could enjoy a dive at slack.

Since we were tired, we decided we’d keep it simple and do a no-deco dive, just lifting the shot and checking out the wreck. As a recent convert from the church of PADI/SSI, I’d never seen someone use a lift bag – Louise gave an instructor-level demo (or it would have been if she hadn’t nearly fallen into the wreck, much to my amusement). We enjoyed a brilliant little dive around a really interesting wreck, sunk by a mine in WWI. In fact, it was my first dive in a long time where I really wanted to come back for more, and that’s saying something. (Anyone for a day trip?)

We returned back to the harbour, getting some cheeky fills in as I fulfilled my usual role of mentioning food at every opportunity. With help from Linas we packed away in good time and reconvened, largely de-stinkified, for a drink and a bite at the George pub. Nathan’s wife Sara had joined as surface cover as we dove into the beer and cider menu while we waited in high spirits for our generous portions of food.

Louise had done a fantastic job organising her first trip, even going so far as to organise perfect conditions with no need for a Plan B. Would her lucky streak continue the next day? We had no idea what was to come!

Day 2 – We Aquatic Mammals

In a clear display of where his loyalties truly lie, Thibault had offered to skip the first dive so that there would be only one wave and an hour of extra sleep for everyone. I’m not sure I would have taken the same decision, but I was very grateful as I woke up, achey but refreshed.

We overcompensated slightly for yesterday’s Thibault-culosis as we were all ready 15 minutes early, except the man himself, who achieved maximum sleep efficiency and arrived right on time. As he strolled in, some landlubbers were excitedly discussing what they’d seen on their peasant boat that day – even claiming to have seen dolphins.

On our part, we had shuffled the buddy pairs a little, giving Linas the opportunity to complete his Sports Diver qualification and Charlie the “opportunity” to dive with me and pick up the meaning of the shaka sign (cool dude! 🤙 radical!).

High Ground was a nice easy dive site, with a nice system of walls and drops with plenty of wildlife. Charlie was a great dive buddy, clearly beaten into good form by Nathan and others over a period of months, so I could focus my attention on getting confused by some very easy navigation. We surfaced very happy with how the dive had gone – so happy, in fact, that Charlie decided to skip the next dive so he could end on a high before his seasickness pills wore off.

We dropped him off, which was to be a very fortunate thing for the rest of the group. Plus or minus one minute, Linas might not have yelled out midway through the boat journey:

“Look! Dolphins!”

Nathan looked up from his Cornish pasty and confirmed. Thibault drove the boat Thibaultishly to the sighting – as a smooth black nose pierced our wake.

Then another. Then another.

We were in awe, frantically scrambling for anything resembling a camera. Was this really happening?

We slowed the boat down and made some turns. The dolphins paired up and jumped playfully through the waves, squeaking audibly. Sometimes they would seem to disappear before coming back to another side of the boat and leaping up, Thibault’s masterful boatwork apparently irresistible. We aquatic mammals know how to make each other dance.

We sped up a little, making one solid wake for the dolphins to enjoy. They followed, true to form. There aren’t many animal sightings that unanimously create such pure joy.

As fast as they came, they disappeared back to their day jobs and we paused, a little stunned by our good fortune, before proceeding onwards to Portland.

(The dolphins couldn’t join us for any dives – they’d consistently shown good trim as they bounced through our wake, but their buoyancy needed a lot of work. Always surfacing and re-dropping. They can join our next trip if they fix that in the pool. :D)

The final dive was on the James Fennel, just off the west coast of Portland. As a well oiled dive boat, we dropped the shot, jumped in, and enjoyed an aquarium of crustacean life, with crabs, lobster and even Harry’s first sighting of a cuttlefish. Linas finished his compass skills with Nathan, becoming a qualified Sports Diver. I avoided diving with Thibault, yet again. We returned to Portland harbour very satisfied by our day of diving.

To finish the fox-chicken-grain puzzle, we had to get the drivers back to West Bay to collect their cars. This took a little longer than expected due to an errant taxi driver, providing an opportunity to remark on how well the trip went, ask how much notice Louise had to give the dolphins to show up when they did, compliment Louise genuinely for a well-organised trip, make fun of Harry’s encyclopaedic Lord of the Rings knowledge (while being secretly impressed), have exactly one beer, and to wash up and dry off our equipment in the hot sun.

Waving our goodbyes, we had only to ask: Lucky Louise, now that you’re a Dive Leader, when’s the next one?