Another weekend, another trip to Portland.

7th/8th August
Frogner (Sat) and Landrail (Sun)
Temp around 16 degrees
Weather clear and warm on Saturday after fog, Sunday overcast and strengthening wind
Diving with Joe from Maverick

Saturdays departure from Portland was at the afternoon tea hour of 3 o clock. While Sally and I left early to get down there, pitch a tent and have a look around the (fog shrouded) Bill, Joe had a nightmare 5+ hour trip down from London. But buy the skin of our teeth we made it to Maverick on time and started toe 45min steam out to the Frogner (or Frognor, you pick the correct spelling.) We planned to do 35mins at 38m and follow our DPlan GF20/85 profile back to the surface in a little under an hour. We had 30% back gas and a slung 7ltr of 50%.

Graham shot the wreck and after a bit of faffing on my part we readied ourselves and went in. Uneventful decent ot the wreck, torches on and we started to take a look around with me taking the lead on this dive. The wreck is fairly broken, but sits quite a few metres off of the sand in places and is well covered in fixed life. Not a great amount of fish life, but the standard tompots, crabs and a congor gave us a reasonble amount to look at in our planned time. In places the wreck looks very nice with a green sea backdrop to it's encrusted beams, in other places it was a mish mash of metal in murky water. I guess it depends what mood your in as to how you wish to recall it.

At around 30mins we were in around 32m and I readied to face my demons again and shoot a bag. Which went rather well. Not silky smooth, but I was pleased, more so when we got to the surface to find that it was standing full of air. There is hope for me yet. The ascent itself was uneventful. We travelled too slowly and were not too slick with our bouyancy at the switch - particularly me - but we travelled fairly well and safely back to the boat. Not a spectacular dive, but nice enough.

And the trip back was taken up with a debrief and a chat with an Inspiration diver who was on board. Nice guy, loves his rebreather and really rates it.