Pembrokeshire

June 8th - 10th 2007

Trip organised by: Matt Watson Report by: Ro Crawford

Video montage: John Kendall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlN4hzopW90

Diving, accommodation, and air all from Celtic Diving http://www.celticdiving.co.uk/
This is all a pretty good set up. You can stay in the dive centre lodge, get driven to and from the boat, and Tesco is just across the road for cheap food. The staff (we met Mark (our skipper), Mike, Cathy and Jimbo (the dog) are all really friendly and accommodating. It’s all very easy and relaxed! (though arrange in advance if you want nitrox)

Sample costs:

Accommodation: £18 pppn in the 4 person bunk rooms
Hard boat charter (Wandrin’ Star): £300 weekday, £348 weekend
Amazing ice cream in the carpark: £1.70 1 scoop in a waffle cone

The Line Up

Ian Gregory
Matt Watson
John Kendall
Rachael MacDonald
Louisa Whitlock
Karin Muller
Jon Knight
Rowena Crawford
Jen Sambrook
David Martin

The Dives:

Dinas Head/Newport Bay
Gramsbergen (wreck)
Reef off Strumble Head
Dan Beard (wreck)
Bola Bleiddyn
Leysian (wreck)

Day 0: Thursday 7th June

Various people left Cambridge at various times in the evening. For future reference: Fishguard is a LONG way from Cambridge (about 6hrs). Karin and I were the last to arrive (having gone via Mike’s to collect oxygen), and pulled into the car park to find Jon high on energy drinks and sweeties running around with a plastic flower!? After bleary eyed greetings with the others we all just climbed into bunks and went to sleep.

Day 1: Friday 8th June

We woke up to the start of a marvellous day and after hauling each other out of bed headed across the road. The greasy spoon Matt had promised didn’t seem to be open and he desperately questioned every local he could find as to why not. We trooped into the Tesco Express next door instead and bought ourselves lunch and by the time we emerged it was open so the demands for hearty cooked breakfasts were satisfied. (Although apparently the lack of HP branded brown sauce was a significant omission). After heading back to the lodge we had a quick briefing from the skipper Mark about the possible dive sites, and then set about the kitfaff. This was remarkably uneventful. We built our sets in the car park, analysed our gas, loaded everything we could possibly need into the minibus and trailer and then set off on the few minutes drive around the harbour to the boat.
Our hard boat Wandrin’ Star was the size of a small aircraft carrier and although in true CUUEG style we tried our best to fill the space provided we still didn’t entirely manage it. After everything was loaded we set off in glorious sunshine on a perfectly calm sea.

Dive 1 –Dinas Head (Newport Bay)

Our first dive was a nice easy pick your depth reef which dropped down to 25m. Conditions were brilliant, and we could see the 12m bottom from about 6m. Or rather as Matt put it " we would have been able to see the bottom if it wasn’t covered in spiny spider crabs. I saw more of them in 10 seconds on this dive that I have seen in all my other dives put together..." Turns out it was spider crab mating season, and Matt's camera memory card ended up full of crab porn! We also saw many other types of crabs, large wrasse, and some lucky divers even saw an octopus!

Just a few spider crabs! An Octopus!!

Once everyone had emerged happy from a great first dive we steamed off to our second location, the wreck of the Gramsbergen. The Wandrin' Star is a seriously relaxed dive boat, and we all sat about the boat off-gassing, sunbathing and eating a leisurely lunch. Eventually people decided it might be an idea to go diving so gradually we kitted up and jumped off the side…

Dive 2 – wreck of the Gramsbergen

Matt’s dive log:
“The Gramsbergen was a 498 ton coaster that sank in 1954 after breaking her anchor and drifting onto the rocks before her crew could restart the engines. She now lies well broken up on an 11 m seabed just off the cliffs at Penrhyn. We descended the shot and were rather surprised to meet John and Rachael (who had been one of the first pairs in) at the bottom. Interestingly the buoy was tied to a rather small piece of plating, rather that one of the bigger pieces of the wreck?! It transpired that John had headed off in completely the wrong direction, returned to the shot, lined-off and started a search for the rest of the wreckage. We, on the other hand, headed off on a North-Easterly bearing (as instructed by the skipper) and soon began to find some more significant bits of metal. The wreck was well broken, but not completely flattened, with some sections still standing 3-4m proud. The good visibility once again made navigation fairly easy (well, at least for most of the group), and we slowly picked our way around the wreckage poking our torches into many of the holes to see what was hiding. The wreck was teeming with life, We saw several large crabs, a few small shoals of bib and pollock hiding in the shelter of the wreck, a tompot blenny [yay! though the muppet forgot he had a camera in his pocket] and a dogfish. There were several large openings in the wreck, which I poked my head in, but resisted the temptation to attempt any swim-throughs.”

After 2 fantastic dives we packed our kit away and headed back to the harbour. We took our cylinders ashore to get filled but left pretty much everything else on the boat which made everything very easy.

Back at the lodge we freshened up, watched some of JK’s video footage and had a BBQ around the back of the lodge. Was good. Jen arrived at about 11.30 but exciting tales of diving adventures had to be left until morning. Instead we lay there listening to Karin’s snoring which has an amazing ‘ping’ to it making her sound just like the sonar on a submarine ;-)

Day 2: Saturday 9th June

Another bright sunny morning, another Tesco shopping trip. Everyone passed up on a fry up and opted instead for the Tesco fresh baked goods, which were pretty good - more chocolate than croissant in their pain au chocolat. David also appeared to have arrived some time in the night and after breakfast busied himself kitfaffing in the car park, making holes in his new drysuit so his hands could come out of the sleeves (I’ve heard that can be useful). The rest of us sat about being relaxed while Ian flapped and berated everyone for being slow and unorganised. Eventually we set off, having loaded David’s twinset, 2 boxes and 6 bags of random dive kit into the trailer. About a minute down the road… “I’ve forgotten my undersuit…” Ian!!!!! This resulted in a lot of ridicule and a suitable amount of embarrassment. The offending undersuit was collected while we loaded the boat though, so a major disaster (I was due to be his buddy for the day) was averted.

We steamed for an hour or so around to Strumble Head on another brilliantly calm sea. The first dive of the day was supposed to be on a wall above the wreck of the Calburga. Unfortunately, by the time we were kitted up a current had started to run across the wall so we opted for a change of plan and dived on a close-by reef just off Strumble head. There was a lot of sea mist which kept threatening to close in. Thankfully it cleared enough for us to dive, albeit towing SMBs.

Dive 1 – Reef off Strumble Head

Ian and I went down with Matt and David but deserted them when David seemed fine in his new suit. Moseyed off and dropped down into a deep gully and swam along at 25ish meters to do my depth progression. Ian ‘found’ a creme egg which was very exciting (although I hope it hadn’t been in his drysuit pocket since Porthkerris!) We found quite a lot of life on our way up the reef: a scorpion fish (that I spent ages trying to convince Ian was not a rock!); a couple of common lobsters (that shoot backwards at the speed of light when they see Ian approaching) and loads of dogfish. I’m not entirely sure what it is about dogfish that gives Ian an almost primeval urge to hunt them, but it is quite amusing to watch him in stalking mode. He only managed to catch one though, probably due to the SMB he was towing impeding his progress. We also saw some comb jellies which I think are fantastic because the combs are iridescent and shimmer different colours. (The novelty of this may well wear off for more experienced divers but this was the first time I’d seen them).
Ian and I definitely had the best dive on this site. David and Matt saw “rock and seaweed and the occasional crab”, and Jon and Louisa “had spent the entire dive finning like crazy to try and find 25m but to no avail”.

Our little boat (in the mist) Dogfish

Again we steamed on in the sunshine and dropped anchor near the next dive site. After another leisurely lunch in the sunshine before going diving again just as the mist appears.

Dive 2 – wreck of the Dan Beard

Again Ian and I had by far the best dive. We found loads of random wreckage to play with: anchor chains, jeep axels, blocks of wire, random metal plates etc. Ian found a metal pole and turned it upright and shimmied up it until it fell over. It was hilarious - imagine a cross between jumping around on a pogo stick and underwater pole dancing! Went through a cool swim through (poor Ian had to go round with the blob) and through a wide channel. I saw a big metal wheel thing at the other end so shot off to investigate but turned to find Ian was still back down the channel trying to get the blob through so went back feeling sheepish and then proceeded when he was free again. We skirted around the bottom of the cliff and found the mast and bow winch leading into a big cave. Ian gave me some very ‘interesting’ hand gestures that apparently meant something about the mast going into the cave. We had a good explore around the cave. It was pretty big and the visibility was so perfect it was as if there was no water there at all. After leaving the cave we found some shallow areas which had crystal clear water, green rocks and a massive shoal of little silver fish just under the surface. It was incredibly beautiful, corny though that sounds. Eventually we had to ascend which was a real shame because it was an absolutely fantastic dive. I did briefly contemplate not ascending but the whole not being able to breath underwater thing scuppered that plan. At least I had some more iridescent jellies to play with on the ascent.

When we were all back on the boat we headed back to the harbour and then back to the lodge. After freshening up we all settle down in the classroom area and JK gave us a talk on decompression and some better ways to plan deco stops and ascent rates. This was great until we realised we were so engrossed that it was now late and we hadn’t even got the BBQ started yet… Not to worry, out came the oxygen cylinders! (This didn’t actually do that much to help but it sounds exciting. Writing that we just sat around and waited for it to get going is somewhat less inspiring).

Day 3: Sunday 10th June

Another morning, another breakfast, another boat ride on a sea practically made of glass…

Dive 1: Bola Bleiddyn

Stolen from Matt's dive log: "The plan was to drop us in deeper water just up-current of the reef, so people could get another 25 m box ticked. Jon and Matt were the first off the boat and made a fairly hasty descent before the current had a chance to push us into shallower waters. We stopped a couple of meters clear of the bottom at 25 m for Jon to have a mini celebration, having finally logged a 25 m dive on the trip... The current was not quite running in the direction of the reef, and after a couple of minutes trying to fin against the current, we binned the idea of a dive on the reef and we settled for a deep drift dive. The bottom was gravel and ranged between 19-27 m and there was tons of life, we saw several large edible crabs, three common octopuses, a huge crayfish and a couple of dogfish. Just to top it all off, approaching the end of the dive we drifted over a huge bed of white brittle stars. They covered everything as far as the eye could see and were packed together with their tentacles raised (presumably feeding?). It transpired that none of the other pairs managed to make it onto the reef, but sadly no-one seemed to have been blessed with the same luck as us having had rather uneventful dives. Although we had a fantastic dive, I probably wouldn’t recommend deliberately doing a drift at this site, as I think our dive was the exception rather than the rule.”

Another lunch, a bit more sunbathing…

Dive 2: wreck of the Leysian

This is a nice broken up wreck in 10-15m. The prop shaft is cool, about 25-30m long, and raised about 2m above the seabed. We had good vis which made the navigation pretty simple. Following the prop shaft aft brings you to a fairly intact section of the stern, about 4m proud. There was loads of life too, including blennies, rock cook, bib, the usual spider crabs, and a couple of massive blue jellyfish. The one David and I bumped into had tentacles several metres long - you really don't want to get close to that unless you can backfin!

After the last dive the boat set off back to Fishguard and we tried to enjoy a last spot of sunbathing although it was already late afternoon and the drivers were starting to think about the rather daunting drive back to Cambridge/London. One thing the Wandrin' Star unforunately doesn't do is speed! Thankfully we managed to avoid the hassels of kit wash after much pleading and begging (quite of whom I’m not actually sure) and promises that we would clean it all promptly on our return to Cambridge. We still found time for a shower and ice cream in the car park though.

All in all this was a fantastic trip. The weather was amazing, the dive centre was organised and above all relaxed, and the diving was easy but interesting and fun. Despite the long drive from Cambridge I think this is certainly somewhere CUUEG will return to.

The lucky B***ard award?
This will have to go to Jon Knight (again!) who dropped part of the gas analyser 10m off the harbour wall, only to have it bounce off the steps half way down and into the boat where it was hastily snatched up by JK.
Runner up is David, whose fast reflexes rescued his big and very expensive camera from its short flying lesson.