Sunday 31st August was a very mixed day of diving, the week leading up to Sunday the weather had been calm with only light winds, the prospects for good vis and a calm sea looked promising, a discussion about which site to dive commenced, it was agreed that our frist dive would be the wreck of the wooden sailing ship Calburga which went down in 1912, the wreck is at 35m, when we arrived at the site we were disappointed to find a large dive boat anchored over the wreck site, there looked to be six divers on the boat plus four more down on the wreck, as the bottom is silt which had probably now been stirred up we decided not to dive the site and moved to plan B.

Plan B was to dive the wreck of the Vendome a 480 ton steamer that floundered on the 4th of December 1888, we plan to drop down the shot line to the prop at 28.5m, the first three divers go in the water followed by Sara Rob and myself, at 15m the vis drops from 7m to around 2m, as we approach 25m all that I can see are the torch beams flying in all directions, the vis had now dropped to less than a meter, my first thought was that the first group had stirred up the bottom and that if we moved away from the shot line a few meters the vis would improve, I was wrong, as we moved some 10 meters off the shot the vis was still as poor I signalled to Sara and Rob that we should ascend, as we passed 15m the vis improved and was back at 7m, so after 16 minutes we were getting back into the boat, a debate about why the vis should be so poor didn’t really come up with a definitive answer, now we moved to plan C.

Well we didn’t really have a plan C, but there was the wreck of the SS Dan Beard a liberty ship what was torpedoed in 1944 7 miles off Strumble head, the wreck is close to the cliff face in 8m of water at low tide, again the first three go in followed again by Sara Rob and myself, the vis was good 7m plus we had a very nice dive, not too much of the wreck remains but there is enough to make for an interesting dive, back on the boat one of the first group is banging away at a cylindrical item, Bruce the boat owner shouted out for the item to be throw back NOW, it tuned out that the diver had been trying remove a copper ring from a live detonator, it was now time to return to Abercastle for some lunch and change cylinders,

Dive number three, a short ride from the harbor is V reef, we start the dive at a pinnacle at 10m some nice soft corals and sponges cling to the rocks around the pinnacle, after around ten minutes the current starts to run as the tide starts to flood, it soon picks up so we send up a DSMB and go with the flow when we end the dive we find ourselves in the mouth of the small harbor at Abercastle, we had traveled almost half a mile, there is nothing like under water flying, all in all a good day’s diving was had, even if it was a shaky start to the day.