Gascony – Divernet Wrecktour 26
Report by Jacqui Mudie
On the RIB were Julian, Jenny, Tim, Simon, Jac, Dave, Roy and Stuart. We agreed to meet at 7.30am as slack was 10.10am so we needed ropes off at 8.30.The boat park opens at 8am so the idea was to get ourselves sorted out then the boat made ready.
All went to plan and we left the marina at 8.30am. We had a flat calm sea and reached the Gascony dive site by 9.30am. We shotted the wreck and sat back to wait for slack. The first pair of divers, Stuart and Roy, went in around 10.30am, they said it was still running but was probably okay on the bottom so went down. Simon and I were the second pair in around 10.54 and when we got to the shot we felt it was running like a train, we made the decision to carry on and descended. The current was quite strong on our descent but when we reached the wreck we dropped below the bulk of it and were quite comfortable. The viz was about 3m. We had decided to return to the shot to ascend and so after a look around and sighting of lobsters, crabs, a large conger eel and various wreck parts including the prop shaft we returned and began our ascent. At the end of our safety stop we were passed by the last buddy pair, Julian and Dave, who had the best of the slack period. From this we gleaned that slack on the Gascony is about 1 hour later than predicted using the tidal diamonds.
Barrel Jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo) © Matt Slater/Cornwall Wildlife Trust
When everyone was back from the dive we had lunch and then headed to Julians Rocks for a drift dive. Roy, Dave and Julian went in for this. As we were going to the dive site we saw what looked like a large plastic bag in the water. A closer look revealed it to be a big barrel jellyfish. Masks were quickly donned and faces put into the water to see 3 or 4 which drifted under the boat. We knew that these had been seen in Devon and Cornwall but had not seen them before on any dives. Unfortunately, no one saw any on their drift dive.
We then returned to the marina, refuelled and had the boat recovered.
