Last weekend was GLUG’s first trip to Portsmouth, and was a success, despite problems with suit failure and seasickness.

The three of us arrived on Friday evening, and after sampling the local chinese restaurant, and Portsmouth’s gay nightlife (which seemed predominatanly lesbian!), we arrived at the dive shop bright and early the next morning.

After a brief introduction, we were off to the jetty - right on the eastern tip of Portsea island, where we found “Buccaneer” waiting for us. We “outed” ourselves almost at once, since after introducing ourselves as GLUG to the skipper, the other divers naturally wanted to know what it stood for. I’m pleased to report that it didn’t seem to make the slightest difference to anyone - everyone was very friendly, and we had no problems at all on that front. David Jones, who runs Triton Scuba explained that his dive shop club “doesn’t do politics, bigotry, or prejudice” - and one of the benefits of running it as a dictatorship is that anyone who does has their membership instantly revoked.

Dictatorship….hmmmmm…..must remember to investigate that one….

Anyway, back to the diving: The boat is a Lochin 33, recently refitted. With 12 people on board, it was cosy, but not cramped. Unfortunately, although the weather was sunny, the storms of the previous days had left the seas rather rough, and poor Lian soon started to feel the effects of seasickness.

After just over an hour, we arrived at the first wreck, the Camswam. This was a British steamship, lying in a depth of 18m, in Sandown Bay. It collided with another vessel, and the wreckage is now spread over quite a large area.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see any of it, since I managed to tear the neck seal on my drysuit while putting it on! Peter and Lian reckoned that it was a nice enough dive, though, with about 4-5m visibility - not spectacular, but considering the storms of the previous week, not too bad.

The dive did little to calm Lian’s seasickness, and the poor guy spent most of the rest of the day huddled in the corner of the foredeck with a towel wrapped around him, looking miserable.

The second dive was the Luis, which is a Merchant Steamship, close in to the cliffs, near Shanklin Pier. With both myself and Lian out of action, Peter managed to buddy up with one of the best-looking guys on the boat, Dan, and they managed to snare a lobster, and put it in Peter’s goody bag… which Dan then dropped during their ascent!

Lian had arranged to go to see The Full Monty at the theatre in Southampton that evening (where were our tickets?!), so Peter and I were left to our own devices. After a pleasant curry, we decided that, given the limited eye-candy on offer in Portsmouth, we’d head over to Southampton ourselves, and investigate some of the bars there. Armed with a copy of Gay Times, we set out to discover the Southampton gay scene. First stop was Bar Fusion…closed, with a notice in the window about an application for a license. Undeterred, we went to “The Edge” - this was a building on a corner with all the windows blacked out, neon signs, and music so loud that we could hear it from inside the car. I ventured as far as the door, and handed over some GLUG leaflets for them to display, before beating a hasty retreat.

Ah well, never mind, still two more bars to try…and so we ventured into the Hampshire Ram. Far more of a traditional pub…in fact, rather too much like a traditional pub. Although there were a couple of queens in there, there were also a group of decidedly straight guys, and a small group of elderly men and women. Were we in the right place?

There was loud music coming from upstairs, and so we ventured a look, hoping that perhaps this would turn out to be the “gay section”…but no, it turned out to be a Black club. We concluded that this was no longer gay, and sallied forth again (by now with Lian, who had returned from The Fully Monty), to try the final bar: “The London Hotel”.

Finally! We’d discovered a decent gay bar, with at least some eye candy. Quite a traditional pub feel, but with a small stage, music that was loud without being deafening, decent beer, friendly bar staff…I wish there was somewhere like it near Battersea! Unfortunately, by now it was ten to 11, so we just had time for one drink before it was time to go. We did manage to hand over another stack of GLUG leaflets, though.

Sunday dawned grey and damp. David at the dive shop had found me an XL 7mm wetsuit & shorty to wear, and refused to take payment for either that or for our air fills! As we arrived at the boat jetty, the heavens opened, and we loaded the boat in the pouring rain.

The sea, however, had subsided since the previous day, and the rain soon stopped. Lian had found seasickness tablets, and looked considerably happier!

First dive of the day was on the Cuba, a 476′ long passenger liner, which was torpedoed by a U-boat in 1945. I had no idea how much weight I would need, never having dived in a 7mm wetsuit before, and consequently when I jumped in the water, I discovered I was rather underweighted, managed to let go of the shot line, and then had to leave Peter & Lian hanging onto it while the boat dropped off the other divers, then came and retrieved me, and dropped me back (with extra weight) at the shot. At this point, I discovered that Lian’s weight belt had slipped, and half his weight had dropped to the bottom, so he had to abandon the dive before it had started.

Peter and I descended through the gloom, to the wreck, which was lying at about 30m. It was pretty well broken up, but there were lobsters a-plenty. If only we’d had a goody bag! We stuffed a couple in our BC pockets anyway, and Peter spent half the dive clutching a third - which led to some interesting underwater acrobatics on the ascent! Visibility wasn’t great, at around 3m, but we had a good dive anyway.

The second dive was back on the Luis - one of the problems with the Solent is that if you want to dive wrecks, there are very few that can be dived more than an hour either side of slack water. The Luis is one of these, being tucked around a headland, and therefore subject to unusual tides. There are drift dives that we could have done, but the others on the boat (who were different to the previous day) wanted to do another wreck, so the Luis it was.

Lian had managed to find some spare weight, and so we jumped into the water, and started our descent…only for me to find that I couldn’t equalise! I abandoned the dive, and the other two carried on. They didn’t manage to find Peter’s goody bag, and the visibility was only about 2-3m, but they both seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Despite only getting one dive in, I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. The Dive Shop was great - very helpful, and seemed to be there through a genuine love of the sport, rather than just looking to make a fast buck. The skipper, Pete, was excellent - he’s actually a very experienced diver too, and has dived some of the deeper wrecks (we’re talking 70m!) in the Solent, and obviously knows most of them like the back of his hand. Everyone was very gay-friendly, and I would definitely recommend the weekend to anyone.