Welcome to our first trip report of the season.

A small group of hardened divers and hopeful newbies arrived in the car park of Homebase Barnstaple.

The date feb21st 2010, the time 07.00hrs, the destination Brixham.

After a few minutes cramming as many divers and as much kit into as few cars as possible we set out on what would be for some of us our first open water sea dive. 

(cue the theme tune to convoy)

After a journey of about 1 1/2 hours we all arrived at our chosen dive site "Brixham breakwater" This is ones of the clubs favourite first dive sites as with its gently sloping bottom and shallow depths its an ideal place to learn buoyancy control and test all that ne kit. The dive marshal for the day was our training officer Ricki. After he had sorted out the buddy pairs we started the time honoured ritual of kitting up. As you all know this can often be a time of panic and confusion as we all wonder what went there last year and why has the dry suit shrunk over winter. A short while and a bit of faffing later we were all ready to go with buddy checks done & dive plans discussed we were off. Or were we?  After a few false starts and calls for extra weight I am happy to report all the divers had succesful 1st dives with the unusual occurance of every ones dry suits staying dry! The vis was about 4m in places and everyone reported variouse flora and fawna sighting there did seen to be a lot of Hermit Crabs in residence down there. On our first dives the deepest pair went to 8.4m and the longest dive was 30 mins not bad for newbies in water that was reading 6 degrees c.

It seems even those new to the sport have outrageouse stories to tell even after only 1 dive. Our surface interval was spent telling jokes, swapping tall tales and fighting with each other on who needed the most rocks to stay down there was quite a bit of weight added to some peoples  kit and it turned out some of us needed more still! I now have 3 very nice rocks if any one is interested slighty used cond.

Even thou the cold was a bit of a turn off all the divers went in for a second dive with one buddy pair manageing 9.4M and a dive time of 36mins.

The highlight of the day was watching the heroic rescue of poor Joe's escapeing ball from the rocks as it was washed out by the sea. Fins on mask at the ready Eyvone rushed to the rescue.

All in all a great day for all involved and a good start to what will hopefully be some great diving