Plymouth – October 2018

And now attention all divers, here is the Plymouth dive trip report for Saturday and Sunday 6 and 7 October at 1800 hours GMT.

Visibility: good to extremely good.
Skipper, Red Alert: cheerful; pasties and hot drinks, frequent; cream tea later.
Wind: North easterly, moderate to strong; sea calm, (sheltered).
‘Newish’ divers: super to very super;
Cold: moderate to slight.
Diving: wrecks 3; reefs 1; sea life; colourful.
Rusty metal bits and conger lairs: frequent.
General situation: superb.

Continue reading Plymouth – October 2018

Pembrokeshire – August 2018

Pembrokeshire is one of my favourite places in the UK, so to dive there has always been on my wish list. The area hosts some great reefs, thanks to being home to one of Britain’s Marine Conservation Zones, and a load of interesting wrecks thanks to the historic boat traffic associated with Milford Haven being a natural deep harbour. Our group of divers was diverse in its experience – recently qualified Ocean Divers with only a few sea dives, up to Advanced Divers and instructors, but there was something for everyone enjoy.

Continue reading Pembrokeshire – August 2018

Scillies – July 2018

We all set off in high spirits from South West London heading for Penzance on Friday afternoon and met up with Brian & Cameron already getting into the holiday spirit trying out the mead at the Penzance Meadery next to the harbour. After a jolly evening in the Admiral Benbow pub, we got up to breakfast and load all our kit onto the ferry for the (hopefully) smooth crossing to St Mary’s. The weather was kind to us, and most people spent the fairly smooth journey sprawled out asleep in the lounge/cafe area.

Continue reading Scillies – July 2018

Selsey – June 2018

Newhaven Selsey

Plan the dive and dive the plan, that’s how things are meant to work. It’s a bit more difficult when you call up a local dive centre the day before to check the conditions and they tell you the visibility is all of 8 inches… And so it was that we changed plans last minute to abandon Newhaven and head back to our now well-known haunt – Selsey Bill.

Continue reading Selsey – June 2018

Medes Islands – April 2018

Our first trip abroad this year was to the Medes Islands in Spain. A small group of islands just of the coast of Catalonia

Despite being in the Mediterranean dry suits were still required, the water was a brisk 13C. Due to the cold water the wildlife is similar to the UK this time of year except everything is much BIGGER. There are huge groupers, scorpion fish the size of your head and loads of nudibranchs. The islands also have some great cavern dives that gave us the opportunity to work on our cave diving skills.

Continue reading Medes Islands – April 2018

Selsey Bill – April 2018

This weekend kicked off our UK RIB diving season, and what a success it was! 4 of us started the day early to leave for Selsey Bill. After evaluating our chances at the first launch site (East Beach) to be slightly outside of the capabilities of the family van towing our boat we settled for tractor launching from Bracklesham (via a quick fact finding detour to Bognor to find the slip there closed).

Continue reading Selsey Bill – April 2018

AGM 2017

Putney BSAC convened for our Annual General Meeting at the beginning of November, giving us a chance to look back at our achievements of the past year and inject some new energy into the coming year.

Sarah, our Diving Officer, gave a summary of our diving this year; almost 200 dives logged as a club totaling 5.7 days underwater! Continue reading AGM 2017