An unplanned bit of diving, sort of courtesy of my wife. A trip to Devon to visit my mother-in-law in hospital but my wife decided it would be better if she took the train from her mother’s house to the hospital and I would go off diving. Yippee!
So I contacted JC Diving in Exmouth and tagged along with one of their training dives. I met up with Nick who I have dived with before on trips with JC diving. Drove down to Babbacombe Bay and then met up with Tony who bypassed the whole meeting up at the dive centre thing. Babbacombe is a great place for a shore dive with the one exception of the limited parking, so the advice is to get there early!!
There is a very nice café that can supply all those hot post diving food and drinks also the table & chair to do the shore cover while you eat and drink. Entry and exit is fine, there are just a few slippery stones around to take care of or I should say avoid.
I am what you would call a slow diver, which is great as my air consumption that shoots through the roof if I do any serious finning. Nick and Tony really taught me how slow one can really dive we sort of had a drift dive in the bay with just the eddies moving us around. Sadly the effect was that Nick got very cold with his lack of movement. I was all toasty in my dry suit compared to Nick and Tony in their wet suits (brave souls with a water temperature of 10 °C).
Just after Nick gave me the universal divers sign that he was totally frozen and should make our way back we saw a cuttlefish about 18 inches to 2ft long. It appeared to enjoy the attention of being photographed. Always a good sign that water is getting warmer.
After that we finned back to shore. I was rather chuffed that my navigation back to the shore was impressively good this time, as we routed straight back to the mushroom rock and then right back to the slipway. Actually I think that it was more fluke than skill, but it was impressive.
After we de-kitted we had some hot drinks and food from the café while we carried out the shore cover for JC Diving. It was a bit wet by now with the rain. I don’t know about you but I do go off diving in the rain, cold wind fine, it is just something about the rain.
Nick had lost his core body temperature and called off the second dive. I also called off the second dive as I appear to have a slight dry suit leak and had got rather cold by now so packed up to meet up with my wife.
A great days diving and great company and the cuttlefish was a real plus!
Here is the link to the video Babbacombe Bay shore dive
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