Our skipper Graham asked the inevitable question - Countess or Landing Craft? With a vote we chose the Countess; my thinking was that by midday the diver traffic that would have been through already would have rendered both silted out and insvisible, so what the heck, they would be as good as each other? We toka leisurely cruise across the harbour to find two RIBS already on the Countess. We couldn't see any boats on the Landing Craft so decided to go and take a look over there, but there were RIBS there too. However they were leaving, so we geared up and made ready to jump in.

From a fortnight ago I remembered a lovely patch of purple anenomes on the underside of the Landing Craft and wanted to go and take a good look in my torch beam, so I lead us down to just above the sand. We were taking a look when another buddy pair decided to descend right on top of us. She looked like she wanted to sit on my head while he seemed hell bent to get under the door of the wreck, presumably looking for that overhead environemnt hard-man feeling. So while she plummeted towards me he did his best to kick up as much silt as possible and obscure the anenome patch. Ah well. So we headed of along the side of the wreck, nice and slow in the neat zero vis, looking for little critters and clingy life. Vis was a little better about 3m off of the sand than on it, so we headed along the side wal of the wreck.

Of course doing this meant that Mr and Mrs considerate where able to pass right underneath us, so we were englufed in their bubbles as they tried to attack us from below having failed to get a decent attack from above. Rather pissed off I signalled to Sean that we should head back the way we came so we were swimming in the oposite direction to my latest favourite dive duo.

The rest of the dive was a slow bimble, enlived by the Tom Pots (I only saw 2 while Sean found 4) and the other blennies that I still need to find the name of - blunt headed deep bluey-purple critters. There were also a couple of black headed yellow bodied fellas and loads of crabs, some either breeding or fighting - touch to tell. We did a couple of lapts, dropped inside the tray and went back under the door, this time alone, to find a second patch of anenomes, these ones bright yellow.

It was a very nice dive, despite the swirling clouds of crap that kept vis to near zero. My suit no longer leaked, the torch stayed on the whole way and I managed to reach my knobe quite easily on a few occasions. But was it good enough to justify another dive at 3?

As it turned out the 3 o clock dive on Saracen we were booked on could be brought forward to 2 and be from Top Gun. In other words we could get an airfill, have a pee and go straight back out. Why not?

This time we had fewer divers and we did get to do a new site, we headed for the Spaniard. Luckily for me Sean did not notice my amateur hour descent. As the suit started to sqeeze I hit the inflator and...nothing. Shit! Is my air on? Still breathing, must be. Inflator hose not attached. Some fumbling and all was well. The Spaniard is another harbour wreck, fairly broken up but still identifiable as a ship. We dropped down the shot, and I would like to be able to say how I navigated around it but I can't. We swam off in one direction and then another, over and around bits of it looking for critters. There is a reasonable amount of life on it, both fish and fixed. Some nice feather stars, another tom pot, and alledegly plenty of flatfish and lobsters - but we didn't find any of them. Vis was not much better than on the first dive, but that did not really matter. Skills and drills, both of us getting familair with our relatively new kit, pottering around. And then it was over.

Back to the boat, a hot-choc on the way back across the harbour, then a wash and scrub up for the gear and on the road again.