Cornwall - May 2001

The winter weather of 2000 - 2001 was awful. We'd done little diving. At last by May bank holiday better weather was expected. We'd booked up to dive the Manacles. Down to Cornwall we travelled full of expectations. We arrived, and so did the plankton.

We'd booked into a house at Porthallow courtesy of Porthkerris Divers. Good basic stuff - sufficient for 12 divers. We parked the boat down at the shore by Porthkerris and retired to the Five Pilchards in Porthallow for a meal and drinks while we awaited the rest of our party. Porthallow is a quiet place. In the past it was a favoured diver launch site but diver abuse knocked it back into touch. Local pressure forced a complete cessation of diver activity. So the nearby Porthkerris or Porthoustock beaches are the only places to launch a boat.

We gathered at Porthkerris on Saturday morning. Most of us were going to dive the Volnay - a steamship that was mined in December 1917. The Volnay carried luxury goods and ammunition and there is still a lot left despite diver pickings over the years. The wreck is buoyed and down we went into a thick plankton bloom. OK, a nice dive but wouldn't it be nicer in September? The afternoon dive was on the Lady Dalhousie that was wrecked in 1884. An easy dive and fulfilling if you could find the plates. Some of us did. Probably the best dive was a shore dive around the northern rocks of the bay. Despite the plankton there was much to see - wrasse, goldsinny and wrasse. There was plenty in the water for them to eat.

By Sunday the wind had veered into the East. We gathered at Kennack Sands hoping to dive the Carmarthen which was torpedoed in 1917. Launching the boat over the shallow sandy beach was a challenge and possibly the most exciting part of the day. We never found the Camarthen, but everyone got very excited about the level of plankton concentration in the water. And the man said "They'll be baskers in soon".

A few of us tried a different site towards the Lizard. A reef dive - very exciting - for plankton enthusiasts.

Monday brought even worse wind so off we went to Mullion Cove. This was excellent. The sea had a thick green tinge to it - quite different to the brown colour that we'd been used to over the past two days. We launched the boat down the Mullion steep slipway and off we went to dive the remains of the Denise. This wreck ran aground in 1918 off a headland south of Mullion Cove. We found it just inshore of a large rock that lies about 70ft offshore. Bits of wreckage and a nice reef that went out seawards along gullies.

But even to dive starved divers we had to admit that the scenery above water was just a bit nicer. We left Mullion in brilliant sunshine. At last the warm weather had arrived.

Richard Knights - May 2001