First trip to Stoney Cove for quite a few months. We were originally planning to go to Pembs but the weather hadn’t been too good and didn’t want to get blown out again.

Darren Lou and Myself arrived at 6am to join the already long queue, but I suppose it is worth it to get a place in the bottom car park.

This was to be my first Nitrox diving, having been blown out the previous week. I was using EAN40, which was not idea as it limited the depth that I could go to, and specifically ruled out the hydrobox.

For the first dive we dropped down the line to the Stanegarth, and was surprised at how dark it was, although the viz was still quite good, however my torch decided not to work so I could not poke around as much as I wanted. We saw one very large pike while on the deck area.

After this we went on to the Wessex and then up the rock face to the Nautilus, which as usual was quite silty. From here to the Viscount cockpit. We did not spend as much time as planned in the deeper area because my newly cleaner cylinder only had 150 bar??

The second dive saw us entering at the bus stop then going down the roadway past the Viscount. At the bottom we saw the small blockhouse and then planned on a visit to the bus, all to no avail as I could not find it. We did find the anchor chain of the Stanegarth and followed this on our way to the far side of the quarry. This plan also came unstuck as the viz was awful and we had to turn back. We the came up the rock face to offgas for a while on the ledge.

For the final dive I got my 12 litre cylinder topped off and had EAN 27 analysed. We had a long surface swim to the far side, where the Galleon is located. This was quite disappointing however, as there is really not much to see. We then came around the Eastern rock face at 7 to 8 metres and called in at the blockhouse, then onto the shelf and over to the Xmas tree. It was at this point that I lost my buddies and surfaced close to the bus stop.

So off to the pub to complete our log books, followed by a tedious two and a quarter hour drive home.