It was Wednesday 21 March and I was in the Greyhound.

Weathers looking good for weekend, how about a snap trip to Plymouth I cried? And yes I got 5 other takers. So off we went Friday night B&B booked with an arrangement to meet in the Thistle Park Tavern for last orders.

We all got there OK and managed to park the boat amid the chaos that is Queen Anne’s Battery in the off season.

Saturday morning found us bathed in sunlight (see the picture) with not a cloud in sight and a gentle off shore breeze while we launched the boat. Fantastic we thought until Martin’s drysuit zip gave up the ghost while I was zipping him into it – oops. Fortunately the dive shop had one that fitted so well that Martin bought it at real bargain price at the end of the weekend (no more orange suited Martin).

Off we finally went to dive one of my favourite wrecks ‘The Persier’, the vis was reasonable and the water a balmy 9 degrees, we completed the day by diving the ‘Mew Stone’ on the way back and finished our tanks on a rummage dive in the ‘Barn Pool’.

Sunday morning and the weather was a bit overcast but never the less still good for diving. We managed to locate a new site we had often seen other divers using but never dived ourselves. We called the site ‘Coffin Rock Reef’ after the shape of one of rocks on the shore, but I later found out it’s real title was ‘Hilsea Point Rocks’. This was a series of pinnacles starting at 30 metres and coming to within 6m of the surface. The dive was so good we left our anchor down and after lunch dived the area again. This will be site I’m sure we will visit again.

Back to Queen Anne’s and the sun came out while getting the boat ready for the road and a relatively easy drive home (for the M5).

So to summarise Me, Sue, John, Martin S, Nigel and Steve managed to snatch an excellent weekend away and started the UK season off well. The boat worked without a problem which must be reflection of all the hard work put in by Stuart and the rest of the team.

By Andy McKay