I had a call from Louise the previous evening to say that Darren was doing his final OW dive and that she needed a buddy. So it was off to the South coast to have my first dive with my new 15 litre cylinder.

We arrived at Babbacombe bay at 8:30 to find the sea was not exactly flat calm and it was absolutely freezing. Needless to say it took quite some time before we decided to go for the first dive, it was 9:45.

Although the surface was a bit choppy, once underwater it was no problem and we had a 28 minute dive in poor vis (about 1.5 metres) and saw nothing more than crabs and starfish.

Once out of the water we learned that Darren and his instructor had gone to Meadfoot Bay as the water was calmer. So as we had to get our cylinders filled we decided to go there also. When we got to the dive shop we ran into Andy Horwood who was booked onto a boat to do his Nitrox dive. This was now 11am and the boat should have left at 10am.

At Meadfoot Bay we were joined by Darren who had now completed his final OW dive. We headed out towards the big rock not knowing how far we would get before Louise called the turnaround. Although the viz was again poor, and only the usual crabs and starfish to see, it was quite a good dive with lots of rocks and kelp to negotiate.

We decided to call it a day after this dive and drove back to Babbacombe to fill in our log books, at a pub of course.