Having done six practice dives at Stoney over the May Day Bank Holiday, and
managing to sort out most of my diving gremlins, I was allowed the privilege to
tag along the dive trip to Falmouth over the Spring Bank Holiday. I would like to
take this opportunity to thank Alex Marshall and Nathan Piper who worked
tirelessly and patiently with me to get my diving skills up to scratch.
The trip was originally planned with our beloved Persy, but since she is a little
bit unwell with engine problems, Nathan booked us to dive with a chartered boat
called “Moonshadow” and no, the skipper’s name is not Cat Stevens (or Yusuf
Islam as he is now known). The skipper’s name is Mark and what a nice chap he
turned up to be being very knowledgeable of all the local dive sites. Together
with his lovely better half that tirelessly served us with cups of tea, hot chocolate,
cakes and scones, every single dive day was as pleasant as it could ever be. The
Moonshadow is licensed to carry up to 12 divers and we had to share the boat
with some local Cornish divers who were all quite friendly if a little bit eccentric.
That’s Cornish folks for you!!
We were taken to some of the prettiest and most interesting dive sites around
the locality. We dove the wrecks of the Hera, the Mohegan and if I am not
mistaken, also the Volnay. We also dove the Pinnacles which is so full of marine
life that it’s quite disappointing when I check that my air is running low and we
had to surface.
One of the highlights of the dive for me personally was the Hera due to fact that
the wreck is still very clearly well defined with most of it’s whale bone structures
very much intact after all these years of being down there.
The sea was very calm with the water temperature at around 13 degrees Celsius,
made the dives very comfortable coupled with very good underwater visibility. I
could not think of a better way to spend a long bank holiday weekend. I could not
help feeling disappointed on the last day knowing that it was all over!!
Hey ho, still never mind, onward to the next dive trip!!