Two New Sports Divers

Congratulations to Andrew and Anna on achieving the Sports Diver qualification.

Training at NDAC last Sunday

Sports diver and Dive Leader training took place at NDAC last Sunday. We did some depth progression to 35m from where we could see the trumpet! New items to explore were a single decker and a double decker bus.

Vobster Night Dive

We had a trip to Vobster for a night dive. It was a little later than planned due to the Dive Manager forgetting his suit and having to go back for it - he decided it was too cold to dive without it! This got another type of dive signed up in various qualification books.

Devon Weekend

Challaborough proved a bit of a challenge on Saturday with surf on the beach but we still managed to launch the boat with Tai's help. Dived the Persier but found we couldn't return to the beach for lunch so went to Mount Batten instead. On Sunday we used Mount Batten slip and dived Scylla, James Eagan Lane and the breakwater where we found the boiler of Yvonne and lots of life in all the nooks and crannies.

New Dive Leader

Congratulations to Jas who is now a Dive Leader!

Party in the Park and Mexican Meal

The Party in the Park was a little wet but we are divers so not put off! We had a successful day with a competition to win a scuba diver (soft toy) and try dives. Afterwards we all went for a well earned Mexican meal.

Cromhall Training

Two more trips to Cromhall for Sports Diver training have taken place despite the rotten weather.

Penzance Trip

Penzance dives included the Bucks, the Helopes, Alice Marie, Low Lee Reef and the Primrose. Alice Marie proved to be flat but an excellent wild life dive with congers, John Dory, lobsters, crabs, bib, wrasse, pollack, etc, etc.

Teignmouth and Dolphins

We had a great day out at Teignmouth diving the Geffion and the Bretagne. The weather was good to us and the seas were flat. The icing on the cake was the pod of dolphins that played around our bow!

Training

More successful training took place at Cromhall.

West Bay

Two days of diving took place at West Bay Dorset for two groups of divers. The St Dunstans wreck plus a scenic dive was completed each day.

Fun at the Docks

A few of us had a fun day practicing boat handling at the docks in Bristol. The sun shone so we went all the way to the far end of the Feeder Canal and had lunch and a drink on the way. We also saw the Pride of Bristol which we have booked to go to Lundy next year.

Photographic Award for SBD Member

Congratulations to South Bristol Divers member John Miller for taking 5th Place in the Bristol Underwater Photography Group's "Image of the Year 2010".

John's entry received high praise from the competition's judge, acclaimed underwater photographer Dr Alex Mustard, who commented:

"The main rule with abstracts is that there are no rules. All that matters is that the end product works visually. Which it does here. I like the fact that the processing has pushed the colours in interesting directions... which I think helps the image. Super diagonal, super colours, super saturated. Super!"

To see other images from the competition click here.

Further SBD Qualifications

Congratulations to Jas for completing the final exercises of his Dive Leader qualification at Cromhall over the weekend.  Hopefully this will be the first of many new and existing South Bristol members obtaining further qualifications during the 2011 season.

Cromhall

Further progress was made for Sports Divers and Dive Leaders at Cromhall. It was generally agreed that the water was surprisingly warm even for dry suit divers.

Torquay Trip

At last the weather was on our side (see photos on Facebook). London Bridge with its tunnels was a new and interesting site. The Brantwood Hotel did us proud as usual with a barbecue on the Saturday night and homemade cakes to keep us going during the day.

Vobster and NDAC

Bad weather at sea in June meant two more inland training trips for the Sports Divers, one to Vobster and one to the NDAC.

Pembrokeshire Trip

The late May Bank Holiday trip was windy but a successful and enjoyable club trip. Some new dive sites, excellent cliff walks, a choice of pubs within walking distance. We will be back!

Forthcoming Diving

After some fantastic diving in Torquay last weekend this is the plan for the next couple of weekends...
Saturday 9th July 2011
For those interested there will be diving at Cromhall Quarry.  Please contact Ian or Jas for more information.

Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th July 2011.
We currently plan on diving Portland on Saturday followed by Kimmeridge on Sunday.  Please speak to Ian or Alan if you would like to dive.

Diving Kimmeridge

We finally made Kimmeridge. Some excellent dives plus an interesting afternoon at sea!

NDAC Diving

Although we were blown out at Kimmeridge, we had a great time training at the NDAC this week end. J

Britain's Secret Seas - Tomorrow on BBC2

Just a reminder to everyone that Britain's Secret Seas starts tomorrow at 8pm on BBC2.  There is a great article on BBC News here about the team diving the Torrey Canyon wreck - thought to the first group ever to film doing so.  Below are a couple of trailers - needless to say from these it looks like the series is going to be essential viewing!



If you watch the show and want to experience diving the exciting British waters then please contact us.

Weymouth / Lyme bay wreck map

For anybody with any interest in our local diving spots this is a must visit page. Fantastic information, pictures and an interactive map of the J.E.Layne, also famous wrecks acoross the world, The Thislegorm etc.

A must visit site for those who haven't been there yet!

Don't forget to add this site to your RSS feeds for automatic notifications and updates without the need to visit us and login!  Please click here for the RSS feed.

A big thank you to Andrew for his hard work in re-vamping our Club Website (looking good init!) to make it more accessible to club members and the public, look out for more ongoing developments!

Kimmeridge and Environs for Weekend Divers

Some Information for Sunday's Divers

Kimmeridge Bay

For those lazy summer days when you want a long, leisurely, shallow dive with tons of life in the shelter of a beautiful Dorset bay, Kimmeridge is difficult to beat. There's an entry fee payable at the warden's hut as you drive into the area, and a launching fee if you want to boat-dive. Entry to the dive is, from our experience, best NOT over the rocks at the end of the car parking areas, but down the old slipway. This leaves you a short swim to the rocky areas to the southeast, but clambering over the rocks with diving kit on won't save you much time and is very uncomfortable. On a high tide we had depths to 5m, on the low tide we were often quite literally on the surface through the dive, drifting over the rocks and seaweed. Viz was excellent on our dives - a good 6-8m and on a sunny summer day the light was almost too bright. A profusion of seaweed, blennies, gobies, wrasse, crabs, and little shellfish gave more than enough interest to keep us busy for over an hour and a half, not to mention a fantastic large cuttlefish well out into the bay.

As well as the diving there's excellent clifftop walking around the area, good rockpooling, and an interesting marine centre down by the slipway where non-divers can find out what there is to see underwater and divers can find out what the wardens are particularly interested in getting reports of. For non-divers, the shallow depths make snorkelling a real pleasure and a snorkeller could easily help out with filling in seasearch forms.
A highly recommended dive site!

Wreck of the Binnendijk

I've had a few mediocre winter dives on the wreck of the 'Benny', and one absolutely top class spring dive in superb visibility. On the latter I had a 45-minute bottom time in mid-twenties bottom depths, starting towards the stern of the wreck and being awed by the scale of the wreck. Hard to get an overall impression on one good dive other than of large scale and many good upstanding sections. One to go back to.

Ringstead Bay

The bay is identifiable from the sea in that it lies just west of the point where sloping coastline on the Weymouth side gives way to the cliffs which characterise the coast along to Lulworth. It is also reasonably well sheltered at the western end from easterlies if you tuck well inshore, and my ~20m drift was tucked well in to the shore for that reason. We had a ~2kt drift, mostly over gravel and sand in long linear ripples broken up by infrequent low rocky outcrops. At first there seemed to be little life, but once you get your eye in the seabed is full of tubeworms, hermit crabs, scallops, whelks, and, to our surprise and delight, many Thornback rays. We saw four on our dive - two larger (~50cm across) adults, one smaller (~30cm across) and one very small (~15cm across) which we suspected might have been a juvenile. Others drifting in the same area saw one or two rays, and also spotted dogfish. The area also proved excellent for collecting scallops.

Acknowlegements to Tim's Homepage!

Plymouth Bank Holiday Sunday

Six club members enjoyed diving the James Egan Layne, and the Mewstone, with very variable viz.  Good weather although quite breezy at times, a good days diving was enjoyed by all.

New Website Live

If you're reading this then the chances are you've found your way to the new South Bristol Divers website!

Please accept our apologies for the site being a little sparse at present - we're adding new content on a daily basis so please check back very soon for more news, photos and general content.

If you spot any glaring errors then please e-mail us at website@southbristoldivers.co.uk so that we can fix the problem.