Plymouth July 1999

Last update: 24/08/99

Angharad and Kevin went to Plymouth for 4 days diving off the Maid Maggie and checked out the facilities there.

Pictures

On the boat

Going in

and coming out again

These picture were taken by Alasdair Allan, using a digital camera. My thanks to him for permission to use them.

Dives

Angharad and I went down to Plymouth for a long weekend's diving. It was really rather good, except for unseasonally poor visibility.

This was the second expedition of the UKRS divers: a bunch of people who read and/or post to the uk.rec.scuba newsgroup. The mix was approx 50:50 PADI and BSAC with another SAA diver joining us on the Monday.

We were staying at a B&B in the town, much too close to the station for some people's preference (the early morning trains didn't disturb me, though!).

Diving was on the "Maid Maggie" out of the Mount Batten marina: this was an ex-trawler which was pretty much OK for space although it got a bit crowded on the Monday when our remaining divers were joined by 3 others doing a photo-shoot for "Dive" magazine.

The boat was sturdy (it got rough on Monday!) but not very speedy. It was rather basic with hardly any proper seating and no toilet but there was plenty of free tea and coffee and sometimes doughnuts! The skipper was Glen Lindsay who was very competent, and only cynical to about the standard level for dive skippers - very helpful really as was his son Ash who is learning the trade.

There are some photos taken by two of the other divers on the boat: Dave and Alasdair.

This was the report I posted on uk.rec.scuba:

> We really had an excellent weekend: as Keith S. mentioned at one
> time there are three key environmental factors - good weather, calm
> seas and good vis. For 3 of the 4 days we had the first two in
> abundance and on the last day we got an approximation to a white
> knuckle ride instead, so that can't be at all bad!
> The other big factor is of course human, and it was a great bunch
> of people on the boat - both the UKRS mob and Glen and Ash.
> Thanks to all for being such good fun, and especially to Jason for
> making it happen at all.
>
> I was diving with my daughter Angharad as buddy all weekend, and
> we were using Nitrox for our first dives and air for seconds
> ('cos we only have two O2 clean tanks at the moment). We never
> went under about 5 or 10 minutes no-stop time on nitrox
> although we had bent the air computer by Friday lunchtime,
> and did the same thing on Sunday after it had recovered from
> its 24 hour sulk. Time to sell it, I think!
> It really did bring home to us what a difference using Nitrox
> made and we were glad that we'd made the investment in having the
> tanks cleaned and in sitting throught the absolutely-bloody-obvious
> course a few months ago.
>
> The wreck dives were good despite the poor vis - especially the
> Elk which was small enough to get a decent impression of it even in
> the murky water. I must admit that two dives on the J.E.L. were
> enough for one weekend, so we skipped the final dive and didn't
> regret it. The shoaling fish on the Elk were superb!
> As for the scenic dives, the bad vis did rather limit things. I
> did actually enjoy the Friday one (Hilsea Point): had a good
> lurk around in the kelp which was in decent condition.
> At Hands Deep we lost contact with the shotline in the murk and
> missed the wall entirely - at 35m we were still in midwater, couldn't
> see a thing and it was dark... definitely time to go back!
> For the Mew Stone I was a bit low on air going in after having
> an O-ring blow on the boat: this was fine actually because the
> dive was fairly dire - the kelp looked ailing and there wasn't
> much to see. In fact the most enjoyable bit was the safety stop,
> rocking gently on the DSMB line beneath the swell that was beginning
> to build!
>
> The B&B was quite OK really, despite the only en-suite facilities
> being trainspotting. The fills from Sound Diving were generally
> very close on mix (thanks the Keith L for use of his analyser),
> OK on pressure and reasonably priced - they were also helpful
> with regard to opening hours!

The nitrox did make a very big difference: for a wreck on a seabed at say 33m one gets 14 minutes no-stop time on air, but 20 minutes on 32% nitrox (which is usable to 37 metres at least). Take off a couple of minutes for the descent, and the devil gas is allowing about half as much time again actually on the wreck. [These times are from the Buhlmann tables, but PADI RDP times should be similar - the effective nitrogen depth is 27m on this mix for a real depth of 33m].

If we had been diving no-stop on air, we would have been back at the boat with over 100 bar unused in the cylinders.

Interestingly, nobody was using the BSAC deco tables: they allow remarkably aggressive profiles for a first dive and are then hugely conservative for later dives in a day. Well, actually Alasdair consulted them after he'd bent his computer (despite 17 minutes deco) - they said he could have surfaced after only about 4 minutes but would just have allowed him a 15 minute dive in the afternoon (he skipped the dive).

As for diving around Plymouth - definitely worth a trip whenever we can fit one in. Although hopefully with clearer water...
Kevin

If you have any comments or suggestions then please let me know. Thanks.