The weekend
Sep. 2nd, 2009 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaI didn't go to any of the things happening in London over the bank holiday weekend because I was in Plymouth diving, you'll be unastonished to learn. I qualified for my Ocean Diver, the lowliest BSAC level, on last year's equivalent trip, and they were my first ever sea dives. The sea was in quite a brisk state that weekend so we did lots of shallow blow-out dives inside the harbour. We were back there again for the May bank holiday but that time the weather was so good that we kept going to the distant sites that can't normally be made, like the Eddystone. This time the weather was a bit frisky but survivable, and by now I'm a Sports Diver with depth progression to 35m, so many of the sites were ones I'd not been to before. The Elk and the barge off Rame Head, possibly the Leen but no-one's sure, are small but mostly intact vessels in 30ish metres, with schools of large bib swimming unconcernedly in and out of the holes. The Rame Head one had such poor vis on the way down that it was a bit of a leap of faith to keep going to the bottom of the shot line, but it was great once there; there's a sense of being in a properly different place, where the sky is something that someone might have told you about once and the fish have absolutely no idea what you are, looking at you with huge eyes designed for the dark. You get very little time at that depth, what with your air consumption running at four times the surface amount and trying to avoid getting into decompression, and that tends to make the mysterious undersea world effect even more distinct than usual. The Elk wasn't quite as deep, and felt a little more like the normal world, although it did contain the most enormous conger eel I've ever seen.
The other dive I've not done before is Firestone Bay, which is a mud wall created by the dredging of the channel for the ferry port. Seriously, I've never done a night dive before, but now I have, and it was at two in the afternoon. There was so much murk at the top of the dive, combined with hardly any daylight due to low, thick raincloud, that it was thoroughly dark by 25m; my gauges glow in the dark, but I've never had to rely on that to read them before. I was a bit freaked out at first, especially when encountering unexpected folds in the wall that it was impossible to be immediately sure didn't mean you'd got into a cave somehow. But the wall itself was covered in life, a veritable forest of feather stars, with dahlia anenomes looking suitably flower-like between them, and some really big tompot blennies lurking in cracks. There were even jewel anenomes lurking down there, but since this weekend had the neapiest neap tides of the year and they like currents, they were all closed up. There was a large spiny spider crab down there with what looked very like the blob of a green jewel anenome on its back. There were lurking large fish, but the dark made it difficult to work out what they were. I was glad to know there weren't seals or the like down there; having something large coming out of the dark would have properly unnerving.
Man, there's loads of other stuff I should be doing. Booking vans for moving, arranging London things on the weekend of the 12th/13th, acquiring packing boxes, arranging other parts of the New York trip, possibly even writing the presentation I'll be doing there. And also doing the remaining practical work for my PhD in the next two and a bit weeks. And decorating Chris's flat. Right now, though, I'm making courgette chutney. This is, I'm sure you'll agree, vital.
The other dive I've not done before is Firestone Bay, which is a mud wall created by the dredging of the channel for the ferry port. Seriously, I've never done a night dive before, but now I have, and it was at two in the afternoon. There was so much murk at the top of the dive, combined with hardly any daylight due to low, thick raincloud, that it was thoroughly dark by 25m; my gauges glow in the dark, but I've never had to rely on that to read them before. I was a bit freaked out at first, especially when encountering unexpected folds in the wall that it was impossible to be immediately sure didn't mean you'd got into a cave somehow. But the wall itself was covered in life, a veritable forest of feather stars, with dahlia anenomes looking suitably flower-like between them, and some really big tompot blennies lurking in cracks. There were even jewel anenomes lurking down there, but since this weekend had the neapiest neap tides of the year and they like currents, they were all closed up. There was a large spiny spider crab down there with what looked very like the blob of a green jewel anenome on its back. There were lurking large fish, but the dark made it difficult to work out what they were. I was glad to know there weren't seals or the like down there; having something large coming out of the dark would have properly unnerving.
Man, there's loads of other stuff I should be doing. Booking vans for moving, arranging London things on the weekend of the 12th/13th, acquiring packing boxes, arranging other parts of the New York trip, possibly even writing the presentation I'll be doing there. And also doing the remaining practical work for my PhD in the next two and a bit weeks. And decorating Chris's flat. Right now, though, I'm making courgette chutney. This is, I'm sure you'll agree, vital.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 08:50 am (UTC)I had a brainwave I'm quite proud of for the spice bag. Not even someone with as big a fabric stash as me has undyed muslin sitting around to make spice bags out of, so I upicked the string on a Twinings herbal tea bag, put the spices in that and strung it up again. Lasted through three hours of simmering with no problem.
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Date: 2009-09-03 09:01 am (UTC)Glut, my arse, I've had precisely 2 bloody courgettes! *grumble*
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Date: 2009-09-03 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 12:25 pm (UTC)Tompot blennies are so comic aren't they? Their big wooly surprised eyebrows make me laugh.
I've only ever done one night dive and it was a very freaky experience (even before the dive leader told me he saw a huge grey reef swim under us as we were descending).
Oban for me in a week or so. I'm really excited. (This time next week I will probably be four or five hours into the epic car journey).