Not The Lady Windsor - The Return
We managed to get two extra people out to play on the Sunday so first job was to pull the additional boat from the club house. It was then off to Anglesey in convoy, collecting fuel and provision on the way.
As is often the case at the small bays with slips in Anglesey, we arrived amid utter chaos. A sailing race was going on and the place was absolutely chocca block with people, cars, and trailers. Some very inventive car parking was going on with cars double and triple parking.
Launching was pretty simple despite the traffic and we were on our way to the site in plenty of time for slack. Chris and Martin spent a while shotting the wreck, but struggled to get a decent sonar hit above it afterwards. Deciding to move it they tried to haul it up but found it was snagged, with the only thing down there being the wreck, we knew we were on it. This was confirmed on our way down to the wreck as we found Elfyn’s line and pot buoy at about 6 metres. It also meant we were a bit early going in and it was still running a bit. It wasn’t too bad once we hit the sea bed on the stern section though. I settled down on the bottom and got my video camera setup so I could get some footage of the wreck for Chris. We drifted quickly round the stern section trying to shoo the fish from the wreck so I could get some video of it. If anything there were more fish than the previous month we’d dived her. We had a quick look at the prop and rudder before my buddy, Andy, tied off and we went searching for the bow section and boiler. Swimming due South, and looking right, the boiler and bow of the wreck slowly came out of the gloom, just as it had done a month previous. With a proper camera I was now able to get some decent video footage. The boiler was still inhabited by its huge conger (that we still have to find a name for!) and interestingly, on an old piece of rope on the bow there were cuttlefish/squid eggs! We came away from the bow and looked at the winch lying on the sea bed, before moving back along the main part of the wreck. More lobsters, conger, and fish fish fish everywhere! I had a mooch on the top of the bow while Andy took pictures, but couldn’t find anything noticeable.
Having completed a full circuit we picked up our line and headed back to the stern section. We allowed another 5 minutes on the stern, and at 0 minutes no-deco time remaining it was up to the surface. Andy clocked about 7 minutes of deco on air, so I sat it out with him before we came up into the light rain on the surface.
We put our other two sets of divers in and then sat around for half an hour chatting and eating our sandwiches. The others finally came up with smiling faces, Chris having got a photo of a john dory (john dory is Anglesey!?) and Martin having got some footage of a lobster running around on the wreck!
Rather than having another late day, we secured the kit and headed back to port happy with the one big dive.
We got back to find most of the people had left the beach and car park, so an easy recovery onto the beach, and a quick de-kit in the car park and we were all heading home. Final drama was a tyre puncture on one of the trailers, but we had the boats put to bed and were home around 7.30pm.
All in all another good day, good weather despite the forecasts, excellent viz, fish everywhere… Only thing we were missing was a basking shark and a couple of whales or dolphins… Still, this in only Anglesey after all…!?
