Last Wednesday evening we drove up to the a place called Seahouses and checked into our bed and breakfast. We then grabbed a quick bite to eat and a few beers before getting to bed for some rest before our first taste of diving in the UK sea. We dove in several locations in and around the Farne Islands with Sovereign Diving. Thursday morning we had an early start out on the boat.
We started off with a wreck at about 20 m just off the side of one of the small islands called Knivestone, and then got a little lunch and after a good surface interval we were at our next dive. This was much shallower at about 6 m on a sandy bank just off a beach. It was called Corrington and there was quite a spread out wreck and loads of life. The highlight of which were the lobsters for me.
We all had a really nice meal together in the evening at the dive operations restaurant after washing our gear down and leaving it to dry. Shared a few tales and took in all the photos of the seals hoping we would be lucky on our second day of diving and meet some seals!
We saw a few seals from a distance on the first dive, but the currents were really strong. Louise didn’t feel very good after that dive so she gave the last dive a miss. I buddied up with Mark and Grant on the last dive and that had to be the best of the lot for me. We went through quite a narrow gulley, caught sight of some seals playing around near us. Had a quick look at the wreck at about 12 m and then came up and did our longest safety stop ever whilst playing with the seals. I have put all the decent pictures I got
here along with my favourites in the sub album.
All in all a great introduction to UK diving. Shame Louise missed the best dive, I suppose it means we will just have to go back some time. When we got home I had to complete the knowledge reviews for my rescue diver course and had a really long day at
TigerDive doing the classroom stuff and pool work. Next Saturday is my first visit to
Capernwray to do the open water part of the course.