Location: Brixham, Devon, on Sun Fish

21st of April 2007 to 22nd of April 2007

Brixham, that christening and de-ja-vous of dive beaches with it’s beautiful sloping shoreline and free deckchairs. None of this was for us though as we were hopping onto the Sunfish skipper Mike (07968 262 421) for an open rib boat trip.
Ropes off at 7am and in the water for 8am to land in 28 metres of water on the Bretagne, a French WW1 ship which was rammed by a larger boat on a foggy night. The rammer didn’t notice and a V shaped groove, still visible, is what sunk her! A spare propeller clearly visible on deck was no use in this situation. Under the decks a lot of rather large striped fish were hiding. Meanwhile juvenile dogfish slept on the sun deck in the silt. Soft white coral coated all the openings indicating the swift current that we had been warned about should we miss our narrow window of tidal slack. Went into 7mins of decompression, good dive.
Early lunch back on shore in the fabby sunshine at the sweetest little café you could ever want just there on the beach..Great! Then back to it diving at 12.15pm a Scenic drifty sort of a dive in 15metres. Kelpy at 6metres so headed East young man! More interesting with good lighting on this sunny day with spider crabs, starfish and 10 dogfish….lovely to see them swimming away from their day beds, so dynamic and graceful! The boat swell made Simon Cook and Chris Dixon sick (not graceful at all) after this second 45min. dive of the day we went back to town and ambled through the town. Dropping off the bottles to be filled up by a lady who was into Portishead’s music and had it playing full blast in this otherwise rather boring dive shop. We ambled through town thinking summery thoughts and back to a very good camp site Century Touring (01803 881115) for a sleep in the hot sun ….bliss .
Dinner at great pub near to other rules-driven camp site ….
Up early for porridge AND muesli with tea, I’m camping with Kevin Lea it’s all very organic. This time to dive the Awe stone after fog curtailed the trip to Pirrone and Berry Head. So,10metres deep 3metres visibility we all swam north then east then south with a crazy current tugging at our delayed surface marker buoy . However, many starfish were found and played with in a very cross dresserly way . In the fun I let go of my SMB we deployed Simon Cook’s crappily so that went a burton too! We ascended then found both OK……….. life is good!
Cod Rock and the Bas****s , is a rock 30metres projecting out with others submerged South west of this. Drifting with the current over a sandy silty bottom in very poor visibility of 3meters spider crabs and starfish everywhere. In the final 5minutes of the dive as we ascended Simon Cook felt anxious so we looked after him for the trip back to shore and stayed with him whilst we watched him eat a Big Burger from the café . I get anxiety attacks sometimes and steady breathing and a few meditation or Yoga calming exercises help even when under water.
In fact we all had something to eat or drink at that café outside in the warm sunshine. Earlier we had eaten cake to celebrate Elizabeth Norton’s 1000th dive WOW we all said and it wasn’t until later that I realized , slightly auspiciously, that taking the first letter of each dive of the weekend spelled (Bretagne-Scenic-Awestone-Cod) B S A C !

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