I woke up Thursday morning to be greeted with a flat sea, unfortunately just because it's flat in Lyme doesn't mean it's going to be ok in Westbay. My heart sank a bit as we turned off the roundabout and headed to Westbay only to see Rick Girdler driving back out in his van towards Bridport. Luckily the sea wasn't that bad and the dive was on but Mr G didn't fancy it, he doesn't do bumpy you see....
Kit was transferred to the boat and the car put into the long stay car park (£1 for the day, Lyme Council should take note!) Unfortunately I had neglected to get an appropriate mix for the dive so myself and my buddy were going to be on air for the dive, meaning we were probably going to get narced and would definitely be doing a little bit of deco as the Moidart is anywhere from 32m to 42m depending on which review you read. An hour later the shot was dropped and we all kitted up, the tide was still running a bit so we elected to sit on the boat for another 5-10 minutes or so. My buddy and I had decided not to do the larger, front part of the boat but instead decided to swim the 15m to the separated stern as one of the reports had mentioned packing cases and random brass there, as well as massive spanners hanging in the visible engine room.
With the tide dropping off we hit the water and headed on down the line, visibility on the wreck was a reasonable 5-6m and after checking my buddy was ok we headed south to find the stern, but not before bagging a nice crab we saw walking up the side of the hull. The stern was easy to find by following the trail of debris which was just as well really as a check with the buddy while we were grabbing some scallops at 36m revealed we both narced out of our tiny little minds, extra care would be needed to make sure we actually processed the info our computers were giving us
We found the stern ok but didn't see any of the things we were hoping for, it's entirely possible we just didn't register it fully though! I can remember the actual wreck just fine and can vividly remember the three holes running towards the stern that appeared to have been drainage holes for the deck, as well as some well corroded machinery. Deco time was rapidly starting to build and we were about to hit our agreed bottom time so the SMB was sent up and the ascent started. Once at 5m we settled in for the fourteen minute wait. Now, I know Jon hates them with a passion and has threatened to break them if he ever hears one going but at times like this our underwater MP3 players are worth their weight in gold! Fourteen minutes just flies by when your cracking out the disco moves or trying to moonwalk underwater I decided that the crab could go back so released him and watched him just drift down into the deep. We were soon back on the boat and heading back in for our second dive on the Bagy....
The Bagy has always been my voodoo wreck, I dived it for the first time back in 2004 and it was dive number eight in my logbook! I've been trying to get back to it ever since but have always been either blown out by the weather, or the boat has not gone due to numbers or something else equally annoying. I did once manage to drop down the line but the visibility was so bad I lost my buddy before I hit (literally) the seabed and came straight back up. This is especially annoying as I can see the dive boats on the site from my window and Jon makes a habit of telling me how great his latest dive on it was (you can go off people you know!) so four years later and 170 dives on was I about to break the curse?
The answer seemed to be a resounding no as as soon as the shot was dropped it wrapped itself round one of the props! There was no way I was going to come this far and let this happen so shortly after I was kitted up and under the boat upside down, feet on the hull and pulling with all my worth. The rope and buoy soon came loose and the shot looked like it was still in place on the wreck so a few minutes later we were all in the water and down the shot....
What a wreck it is though. I've been lucky enough to have dived some great sites including some that regularly feature in various top ten lists but for some reason this site just seems to eclipse them all somehow. The amount of life on the wreck is just amazing with huge shoals of various fish, crabs, congers, large bass and pouting, the list just goes on, combine this with the fact it's all within open water depth and that the features of the wreck are easily identifiable make it almost perfect. Visibility was a fantastic 7-9mWe started near the boilers and initially fought the current and headed right up to the rudder looking for the spare propeller that is there. From there we just gradually drifted down over the wreck, past the boilers and engine, past the machinery right down to the bow. Before the dive we had said we would stay on the wreck for around twenty minutes and then think about coming off for some scallops. It took all of ten seconds worth of hand signals to abandon that idea and back up the other side of the wreck we went. I'm usually pretty chilled on wreck dives but I was like a small child on this one with plenty of talking to myself through the reg, wild gesticulations to my buddy and even a spot of conger tickling to upset him. All to soon we were on fourty five minutes and it was time to make our ascent. The shot was quite busy and the current starting to pick up so we didn't hold our stop as well as the first dive but I didn't care! The curse was broken and we had spent one of the best hours underwater in a long time I was still smiling like a idiot when we docked in West Bay about fourty minutes later.
Once back in everyone except us unloaded their kit and went on their way, we left our kit on as we were going to do the evening club dive so we just grabbed one of our cylinders and after filling our stomachs in the cafe we headed to the dive shop to fill up on air.
The evening dive was on Sawtooth ledges and again we had excellent visibility, A nice gentle drift to finish the day off and we surfaced about 40 minutes later with about 40 scallops each. Tony Gates took mine on for one of his barbecues and a few hours later I was in bed, knackered but happy.
My thanks to Jon and Gill for sorting these diving days out. We had a few spaces left which surprised me, I can't believe more people didn't fancy it. We are doing the M2 next month which is another awesome dive so get your names down and come out on the boat with us
It wasn't the lumpy sea it was the revenge of a bridport chicken and aspargus pie that was 3 days out of date that did it - getting better at lumpy (liveaboard helped). Gutted that it was such a good dive but then that be coz I wasn't there with me camera - if I'd gone viz would have been less than a metre!!!
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I decided that the crab could go back so released him and watched him just drift down into the deep. We were soon back on the boat and heading back in for our second dive on the Bagy....
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