Farne Islands July 25th / 26th

 

We had intended going to Plymouth for the weekend but the weather for the South West wasn’t inspiring with strong winds forecast, so for the second time this month we made the trip up the A1 to Seahouses to dive the Farne Islands.

 

Despite the break-up of most schools and the start of the traditional holiday week we all had a pretty easy journey on the Friday night to our various accommodations. Saturday morning 08:30 sharp found us at Seahouses slip waiting to put the boat in, We took Belper Eagle with the newly installed chart plotter and navigation software, one boat being sufficient for the number of divers.

 

The weather was fine and just got better all day with most of us managing three dives despite it being one of the biggest Spring tides. First we dived the Pinnacles and the wreck of   St Andres and then managed to dive the Crumpstone at slack water with some of the group finding the wreck of the Britannia. All of us had continuous encounters with the local grey seal population on this dive with fins being tugged and surface marker buoys being yanked.  The final dive of the day was in the shelter of Beadnall point away from the strengthening current on the wreck of the Yewglen, this wreck is really just a collection of plates but always has plenty of marine life surrounding it.

A Sea Lemon on the Yewglen


Sunday morning arrived and despite dire warnings from the weather forecasters about strong winds which didn’t really arrive, we motored out to the islands in a fine rain we all love so much as UK divers. We dived in the tidal lee of Brownsman Island, the vis was excellent, I could see the seabed spread out below at 15m whilst decompressing at 6m after an hours dive. Unfortunately the current got better of us and we moved to another site in order to find slack water. It was at this stage that we noticed the leaking hydraulic fluid from the steering system and we thought it prudent to return to Seahouses rather then risk steering failure whilst having divers in the water.

 

It was a struggle getting the boat out of the water as the tide had gone out father then normal but we managed with the help of all hands. We loaded up and set off home earlier then planned but were all very happy with the quality of the diving we had just done and the amount of underwater life we had encountered.

 

By Andy McKay – Belper Diver