We have a GLUG trip to Plymouth at least once a year. These trips would suit divers of all levels and make an excellent introduction to UK/cold water diving as drysuits are not a necessity during late summer.

Please choose a report from the following:
Plymouth on UK National - August 2008
Plymouth on Storm - August 2007
Plymouth on Storm - August 2005

Plymouth on UK National - August 2008

by Dany

Plymouth was my second dive trip with GLUG after Jersey. After the not so wonderful summer we had since the end of July, I was bracing myself up for a very wet week-end indeed…I thought that it couldn’t go on like this: there can’t possibly be any more rain left in the sky to fall!
 

I drove up to the Mayflower after work on Friday evening and met the landlady who gave me the keys to my room. I was hoping to meet up with the other GLUG members but some had already hit the town, or more likely the pubs, and other hadn’t arrived yet. So, I was left roaming the streets of Plymouth on my own (sob!)
 
We all gathered on Saturday at 8.30am for breakfast and headed up for Mountbatten for 9am. Corinne and Steph were already there waiting for us. Our boat, UK National arrived soon after and we were helped to get our kits on board by Richard and Jackie.

The weather was a bit greyish but soon lifted to bright sunshine and blue sky for our first dive at the Persier (32m).
The 5382-ton Belgian steamer was launched at Newcastle in 1918 with the name War Buffalo. On 8th February 1945 she left the south of Wales to take food to liberated Belgians with 63 people onboard. As part of Convoy BTC65 the Persier was passing between the Eddystone and the shore when one of her escorts raised an alarm - a periscope had been spotted. Shortly after this a premature torpedo explosion shot a column of water into the air, another torpedo whizzing past the port side. At precisely 17:25 hours a torpedo struck, opposite hold No 2 on the port side, just forward of the bridge.

The Persiers cargo of food supplies (powdered egg, baby food, meat and blankets) began to swell with the flooding water weighing the ship over onto her side. The call to abandon ship was given but sadly this went dramatically wrong. Lifeboat No 1 with 11 crew members launched successfully, but the heavy Force 7 seas unhooked the boat at the bow and left it hanging by the stern, spilling everyone into the sea. Lifeboat No 3 was pulled into the Persiers propeller and shredded. A nearby smaller cargo ship, the Birker Force, came alongside and managed to rescue 44 members of the crew; after which the Persier was last seen drifting into the night with her stern high and her bow low in the water. Silent and unseen she sank in the dark. It was not until 1969 that the Plymouth Sound BSAC found her after being told by a local fisherman that he would always snag his lines in the area - 20km northeast of the Persiers last known position.
After a spot of lunch on board and a kip for some (no names here!), we made our way to Renny Rocks (7.8m). This is a lovely dive site with lots of marine life and the visibility was over 6m.

On Saturday night, we all went for a meal at Platters, a fish restaurant. The portions are very generous and it was good value for money.

On Sunday morning, after an early-ish night for me, the skipper and Corinne decided to head for Pier Cove (17.5m). I saw the biggest edible crab ever and tried to get as close as possible but far enough from the fierce claws! Still fairly new to diving (only 60 dives over 2 years), I am not that familiar with the marine life and therefore, I’d rather let them be…but I know this much: a crab pinches, and hard !!!!
Again, we had about 2hours rest for lunch and other call-of-nature breaks…
After a relaxing lunch, and since the sea was a bit choppy, the boat headed for the breakwater fort, a 13m dive site.
The bottom was very silty and any movement too close to the sea bed stirred the silt up and reduced the visibility from 2m to nil! I personally had difficulty diving this site, which I found quite technically challenging. My buoyancy was all over the place and my friend John later said that, somehow, there was a source of fresh water around the fort, which explains why I was up and down all the time. Where sea and fresh water met, the mixture became blurry. I kept losing my buddy and was by myself for sometime before John found me again. I was also struggling against an invisible current since there was hardly any plant down there that could have given me a hint as to which direction the current was going. Well, this dive was very “educational” if not pleasurable!

Monday morning started with a light wind and some rain, so some of the group decided to go to a garden centre to have a cream tea instead! However, 4 of the most optimistic went ahead and we had the boat to ourselves. Fantastic! I think the picture above shows that we were right to have faith for a brighter day!

Plymouth on Storm - August 2007

by Martin J

I’ll start by saying that I would be failing in my duty to report properly if I don’t mention that no amount of watching 80’s camp TV prepared me for the sexual innuendo of the August UK bank holiday weekend trip with GLUG to Plymouth….

We arrived, after an uneventful drive, at Venn Farm early evening to find Corrine and Steph propping up the bar in the Fox & Hound - nothing new there then… We were hungry and there was much to discuss over dinner, this being my first UK dive trip. I was surprised to find out that I would be part of a diving threesome with Corrine and Steph… We didn’t waste any time getting fed though -the pub food was great.

I went to bed early as I wanted to have a clear head for my first day diving.

Up early for the legendary Venn Farm breakfast. Some of the divers in the group were seriously reconsidering their diving weight after consuming said breakfast. Sadly Chris had ordered too much and Steph had to help him out, commenting on the salty aftertaste of his sausage…

The weather was perfect - a bright, calm, cloudless day, possibly the best weather for the summer so far and perfect for diving.

The water temperature was 17 degrees and I was diving in a 7mm semi-dry suit, which was quite adequate for the conditions. Our first dive was the famous “James Egan Layne”. This was not a demanding dive as the conditions were fine and the bow of the wreck is at 6m - a great place for a safety stop. We saw lots of pollack and dead mans fingers.

Our second dive was the wreck of HMS Scylla, a purpose sunk wreck. It is an ex RN Leander Class frigate. The wreck sits upright in about 30m of water. This was another fine dive with good visibility in near perfect conditions. You can look here for more information about the Scylla.

On completion of the dive we were alongside at about 1530 and good team work ensured that we got all the dive cylinders off the boat and to the dive shop for refilling.

I was absolutely knackered and went to bed early after a hearty meal and some liquid refreshment. Others in the group attempted to check out the local talent in Plymouth. I believe they were back well before midnight, so please draw your own conclusions…

Our second day started with the usual feast for breakfast. Everybody was at breakfast on time - possibly due to the continuing great weather and early night… Steph did not have the same appetite for Chris’s sausage…

Good team work again saw to it that we loaded up the boat and ready for dive three. This was to be another wreck dive - The Persier. This wreck is now starting to fall apart rapidly but lies, fairly upright on a sandy bottom, at about 35 meters. The bow and stern are in fairly good shape, but the midships section is a bit of a shambles. The visibility was about 3-4 meters, but the first thing that we noticed were the many fish. The bow section appears huge, stretching up and away into the murky waters. As we swam over it we saw large expanses of steel decking disappearing into the gloom. Finning along this steel plain we arrived at the two massive boilers. Further aft the steel plate gives way to large areas of twisted and jumbled girders. All in all it was a very good dive.

Our 4th dive of the trip was “west of mewstone”. This was in a forest of kelp. Unfortunately there is nothing about kelp that excites me. This was also my coldest dive and for that I blame the kelp. We did see a rather spectacular female ray which is rather unusual for UK water -even in August.

When we got alongside again around 1530 good team work ensured that the dive bottles were delivered to the dive centre for refilling. One word of warning - beware of Jazz when there are ice packs around!

Corrine had a real treat in store for us for dinner. The whole group went out together, to the Elverston Hotel. The food was great but unfortunately we were sat with some really dodgy company from the Channel Islands. Fortunately they could not dive with us the next day as they were flying to Guernsey so we had the boat to ourselves…

Our final days diving was fairly uneventful. The boat was less crowded and everything seemed to go very quickly. Our last dive was on the James Egan Layne again and just as spectacular as the first time. On completion we had to get back to London while Corrine and Steph sensibly decided to stay another night and return at their leisure, avoiding the end of bank holiday traffic.

This was another successful dive weekend organised by Corrine. I can really recommend going along, it certainly changed my view on UK diving.

Plymouth on Storm - August 2005

by Lee Brown

Well this was a nice trip, helped by the Devon weather which was doing a passable imitation of the Mediterranean….blue skies, nothing but blue skies, tum te tum…
We all met up on the friday evening at the pub opposite Venn Farm Guest House where most of us were staying, with myself under canvas at the Venn Farm campsite [which surprised me as being so diver friendly that the GPS info for the wrecks was nailed to the loo!]
The following morning we loaded up Storm with our dive kit and reacquainted ourselves with Anne and Rod who run it. The boat is small but bijou, and they limit themselves to 8 divers. The pier at the Mountbatten centre is fairly easy to load from, despite all the crowds waiting for the other dive boats and the foot ferry over to Plymouth proper. With clear skies and a calm sea we pootled out of the harbour and up the coast to do our first days diving. The James Eagan Layne is a large US liberty ship, partly intact but huge and very impressive. Sadly the viz was a bit iffy and I managed to get separated from Chris about half way through the dive…never mind, both of us followed proper procedure, looked around for a few minutes then worked our individual ways back to the surface.I don’t think we missed much, which was sad as last year I dived it with our Madame President and it was awesome.

Then to a little cove for lunch and thence back to nearly the same location to join the melee of boats above the Scylla. This is the new specially planted battleship and I think is most impressive. Despite the large number of divers there the viz was pretty clear and Chrisand I were able to do the complete circuit including a couple of swimthroughs to the bridge and the helicopter hanger. We came down and returned up the bow shot and this makes it all very easy and pleasant. There is quite a bit more life on it this year than last.
The evening spent in the pub again with dinner…and the next day we were out again with clear blue skies and calm seas. The first of the Sunday dives was to visit a rather nice reef opposite the Fairy Ring on the cliffs east of Plymouth Sound. This is rather nice ridge and canyon u/w landscape with masses of fish…cuckoo and marbled wrasse galore, some quite sizeable. We bimbled hither and thither and eventually found a huge lobster under a wall…this one was of a size to fight back and we left him alone! Chris was doing his DSMB drill as well at the end and got it perfick this time. Still, he needed the practise so did it for the rest of the weekend, heh heh! The second dive was an unnamed boat which was nice enough but not huge. Steph reckoned it must have been a tugboat from the shape of its hull and the wooden high deck. Seems quite plausible. We swam off and immediately found a weightbelt and a snorkel, both had been there a while! I learnt that carrying a second weightbelt is not a good idea but managed to get it to the surface. On the surface we discovered Delia’s fins which she had attempted to send to a watery grave but had floated back up to the surface [long story....]

Bank Holiday Monday again being fine ,it was decided that we were to head 12 miles out to sea to near the Eddystone Lighthouse to dive a wall at the Hands Deep [oo-er!]. This was a very curious dive. As soon as we dropped down the shot it was clear that it was unclear in the water….not good viz. Persevering to the bottom of the shot and then down the wall it was clear but dark. Here there is an awesome stepped wall that gets pretty deep. We went down to 29m and saw the pretty jewel anenomes, sponges and dead mens’ fingers ,mainly
by torchlight. The viz down here was maybe 10m or better but as soon as we got up to 20m it dropped at the top of the wall to 2 or 3m. Here there was kelp. Lots of it! Put up DSMB and returned to the boat. Some of us had been unable to do very much on this dive as we had not actually found the wall from the end of the shot and swam around in the kelp and the murk! Turns out there has been some dredging going on around there lately. The last dive of the trip was closer to shore on the west side of the Mew Stone. This is a delightful 13m bimble around the kelp, sand and rocks annoying the wildlife and being chased around by cuckoo wrasse anxious for a tasty snack. Chris was trying out my full face Aga which he apparently enjoyed and we had a very nice relaxing time in the clear warm sunny water.
Yet again thanks to Corinne for flawless and highly efficient organisation of a trip I will remember for quite a while.