Saturday 8th May 2004
Portland, UK
Balaclave Bay (drift) and Chequered Fort (drift)
11 degrees, vis 3, and 2m respctively
36% nitrox

Saturday started windy so we had to shuffle both dives to new sites which meant both became drifts. Not exactly what we wanted (Paul and I - Hugh had left) as we would have rather had still water to practice skills. Ah well. Dive 1 left at 10:00 with just the two of us on Top Gun - luxury. We were dropped in 12m, Paul had the SMB and I had my HID light to show us the way. The drift was kinda gentle but you would not want to swim against it - we tried when we noticed that we'd drifted down into 20m and were getting deeper. That marked our ascent, after about 35mins.

The dive itself was very, very nice. The water was cold, green and mucky but full of fixed life on the scattered boulders. Lots of feather worms, sponges, some nudibranch, the odd fish or two, including a dogfish and some pollock. We hit a small wall at one point and it was completey encrusted - lovely. Clear the water up and you could get some lovely macro.

Fast forward to the afternoon. This time from Saracen, a rib. A daunting prospect in my still unfamilaur twins, but one which was not at all dramatic - Saracen has ladder, so getting back in was fine, and getting in was as easy as falling off a boat. We had 'Teach' with is this time as a third buddy - a fully DIR kitted, perfect trim, perfect bouyancy yes-you-can-tow-the-SMB-in-that-case diver. The dive itself. Hmm. Dark at the 16mish depth with very little to see. The few highlights were two dogfish and a cuttlefish. Apart from them it was a lot of shell grit and not a lot else. It was made worse by my being 'tippy'. Each time I relaxed I found myself tipping head down. Obviouly more work to do on trim. A very ordinary dive, but more inwater time and stil earning. The tippiness was maybe due to overweighting and inadequate wing inflation, so some things to try in the morning.