Isles of Scilly Club Trip July 2008.

by

Jayne Szekely

13 IPSAC members, a mixture of divers and non-divers, spent a week on St Martins in the Isle of Scilly in July, diving with Tim Allsop.

We all met up in Marazion, close to Penzance, where we had a lovely meal together & then off to get some shut eye ready for the early start the following day. First job of the day was to load all the dive kit, including tanks and weights, and other luggage into a big container which was hoisted onto the ferry, The Scillonian. This boat has quite a reputation for inducing sea sickness, so we were all well prepared, some of us fully waterproofed. determined to remain on the main deck whatever the weather, getting lots of fresh air & watching the horizon ! Fortunately, it was a lovely calm crossing, and around 3 hours later we arrived in St Marys, transferred all our gear onto a smaller boat which took us to St Martins.

Next day, diving began ! With just eight of us on the boat, we had plenty of room. The dive sites were never very far away and although we didn't have glorious sunshine every day, the seas were pretty calm and Tim always found a sheltered spot to moor up at lunchtime. I really wanted to see plumose anemones as I'd never seen them before ... well, the first thing I saw on the first dive was an huge wall covered in them. They were everywhere! There certainly was a lot of life; huge walls covered in jewel anemones, just thousands of them, all colours. By the end of the week I'd seen many new species; pink & white sea fans with their anemones attached, sunset cup corals, scarlet & gold cup corals, football seasquirts, red fingers ... and don't even mention nudibranchs; I found at least 10 different species, most of which I've never seen diving at home.

Besides stunning walls covered in life, there are lots of wrecks to be dived around the islands as well. We dived the Plympton, covered in sea fans; the King Cadwallon with the swim-through one of its boilers; and the Cita, sunk in 1997 and still pretty intact but already covered in life. The other diving highlight was the seals; quite used to divers here, we sat around in the kelp at 6 metres and waited for them to come and have a look at us. Wonderful experience being so close to them and looking right into the eyes of a wild animal looking right back at you. We completed 12 dives over 6 days, many of the dives were over 25 metres and so some deco time was clocked up ! But all good experience for those on the trip working toward their Dive Leader.

Diving finished each day by around 2 or 3 o'clock, leaving the afternoon free to have a nap, write up log books or to go exploring the island. We went for a walk most days, the views from every part were fantastic, with so many little islands every where you looked out to sea. Non-divers did quite a lot of island hopping, some snorkelled with the seals, others just relaxed ! Eating out could be challenging, simply because supplies are short and almost everything has to be booked in advance, but we sort of got the hang of things! The dining club met up in the pub, had a hot Thai curry in the cafe, fish & chips, and the fantastic bakery kept us all happy with pizza, quiche, cakes, and of course, pasties, which were enormous!

All in all, it was a very successful club trip with a great mix of above and below water activities, hopefully we can visit the islands again some day. Many thanks to Nick for organising the trip.