The weekend 22/23 January 9 of us braved the elements to go diving on the Skin Deeper with skipper Ian in charge. We all met up at the Guest House, run by Margaret, Friday night before some food and a pint or two were consumed, setting us up for the next day. The morning started leasurely with a full english breakfast before setting off to the quay to load up the dive equipment onboard the boat.
The first dive of the day was the Black Hawk just east off Lulworth Cove looking into the middle of the next bay approx 3/4 mile out. Unfortunately the conditions were not the best, but a few good sized groupers, pink fan corals, spomges etc were to be seen. Some good macro shots were still taken despite the poor visibility. In good condition one can have some swim throughs as a practise for proper wreck penetration.
On the way back to Weymouth we had a drift dive with a fairly fast current and really poor visibility. Some came up early, but others again lasted an amazingly long time and came up with scollops.
On Sunday as we had another late anchors up we decided to just the one dive on the submarine extraordinaire M2, which was one of the reason for diving off Weymouth. The M2 a one off built to carry a two seater plane sitting in a hangar in front of the tower. Luckily we had a yet another lovely day with calm seas for the winter. On arriving on the wreck it was shot by Ian and we got ourself ready and descended to the top of the M2 deck at 29m. Unfortunately the visibility was not great and we could only see parts of the structure at the time not giving us such a great view of the turret and hangar and launch rails. However this wetted our appetite and we will hopefully be back in November. After a successful dive on the M2 with some of us beinf lucky enough to see at the first attempt compared to some that has been trying for the best part of 10 years.
Thanks to Ian Grandfield and Jon Crimes for organising this.