For this weekend Jason Poynting had booked us aboard the Storm.

The cast for the weekend were Jason Poynting, Alastair Allen, Andy Cox, Digs, Gordon Henderson, Sam Warwick, Hilary Bowman, Louise Thompson and Steve Jones.

Louise and I joined what seemed like thousands of others who were also heading for the M5. Eventually after about a 5 hour trip (it should have taken me about 3 ½ hours) we arrived at the New Inn at Turnchapel, Plymouth. We were the first to arrive and had a meal while we were waiting for the others.

The following morning we assembled on the quayside to load all the gear onto Storm. I think we did a pretty good job of covering just about every square inch of space that existed.

It soon transpired that the crew of the Storm had an unusual way of putting divers into the water. This involved lifting one knee onto the outer rim of the boat and them being pushed overboard as the boat approached the shot line. This was fine if you were fairly long legged and could reach, hard luck then for Digs and Louise.

The first dive of the day was to the Persier a steam ship which was torpedoed in 1945 by UB-1017

As we had an odd number Louise and I were joined by another diver, who waved goodbye at the bottom of the shot, and then there were 2 ! !.No names…..

The dive itself was quite good with lots of sea fans, cotton spinners, and other fish which I couldn’t identify. Good viz and though quite dark it gave me the opportunity to try out my new UKD8 torch which I had bought at the dive show.

When we got to within a couple of minutes of No Stop Time Louise signalled to send up the SMB, however as I started to ascend I quickly figured out that something was wrong as I seemed to be winding very fast with no apparent difference in my depth. Then I realised why, as my DSMB arrived back at 30 metres. As I later found out it had a bloody great leak in it. This left Louise and myself to do an ascent without a line, although Lou’s computer, which is set to “granny mode” did not think much of the safety stop.

As we arrived back at the boat it transpired that there had been several attempts to win the “kit loss” award. These included Sam losing his SMB, Louise losing SMB and reel, Digs also losing SMB and reel.

The second dive of the day was on the wreck of the Glen Strathallen which was sunk to carry out the wishes of her owner who had died. Before we went down Alastair said that the only notable thing about the wreck was the boiler. (More about Alastair later.)

I dived with Digs on this dive as Louise was feeling a bit unwell. The wreck is quite broken up, and indeed the boiler was the main feature. We found a couple of lobsters (they didn’t even know they were lost) and under one section were lots of shrimp.

As I said earlier more about Alastair. He revealed that 15 minutes into the dive while trying to penetrate, or was it extricate himself, from the boiler he realised he had forgotten to put on his weight belt. Oops!!

Day two arrived with everyone all the better from having an extra hour in bed as the clocks went back the previous night.

The first dive of the day was to the Elk a trawler which was adapted to work as a minesweeper, and then promptly hit one and sank.

Digs, Louise and myself were first down the line to secure the shot. Unfortunately when we got to the bottom there was no sign of the Elk. After searching around at 30 metres for about 12 minutes we gave up and went back up the line. Several people suggested that we had pulled the shot off the wreck. I prefer to believe that the skipper missed with the shot. Well that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.

The last dive of the day was to the James Egan Layne, an American Liberty ship which was torpedoed in 1945 by U1195.

There was a fair bit of surge on the wreck itself, and as it was our first visit to this wreck decided on a general tour. However it would be nice to return here and have a closer look around spending more time in individual sections. There was quite a lot of life on the wreck with lots of dead mans fingers, anemones, sea fans, and probably more starfish than I have seen on any other wreck