After spending the previous week in the murk of Doshill we were looking forward to some good dives. Louise left her car at my house and we set off to Mathry in my car to meet Dave who had travelled the previous day.

As with the Wreck Speciality Course, the instructors were Bruce and Jen Jones of West Wales Diving School, with Mark as DM.

Each of the dives were from Abercastle.

As it was quite hot I decided to wear my semi dry suit for the first day, a good decision as it turned out.

The first dive was onto the Vendome to 31 metres. It was not planned as a wreck dive, simply somewhere to complete the tasks and then have a short tour. There was quite a strong current towards the end of the dive as we were doing our safety stop, and as a further annoyance my mask was continually flooding.

The second dive was to 22.5 metres onto V Reef. This was a navigation dive for 40 metres or so then returning to the shot. Dave and Lou were the first to do theirs with Bruce and had the benefit of slack water. However when Mark and I got in there was a very strong current running. So much so that on the return leg I was finning hard just to stay in the same place. I was using a lot of air and had to stop for a rest. After this we took off on a drive dive to complete our tour, seeing lots of boring sponges and dead mens fingers along the way.

The second day saw me back in my dry suit. I felt more comfortable with my buoyancy this way.

For the 2 dives this day I was buddied with Bruce. We had problems from the outset when the smaller of the 2 RIBs had problems with its outboard. Eventually we had to tow it to the dive site.

The first dive was to 37 metres and was at Pen Brush to the site of the Carlsburger, a timber ship that went down in the early 1900’s.

Again had excellent vis (7 to 8 metres) throughout the dive, during which we saw some boring sponges which were almost completely into the substrate. There were also lots of big dogfish, up to 3 feet. We finished the dive with an 8 minute safety stop where we had to do some alternate breathing exercises.

The last dive of the course was at Tre Maen Trai. This was a multilevel dive starting at the Vendome and then along the wall and through some gullies. Again there were lots of dogfish to see.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend and made all the more so, by Bruce and Jen. They operate a very efficient school and it is one that I can recommend to anyone diving in this area.