City of Ghent courtesy of Mark Milburn http://mark.thedeepstop.com

The BBQ on Friday night was excellent, part of the overall vibe of these trips is our customary BBQ. Whilst we had good weather we took advantage of it and decided to have on the Friday night as well. The scallops were delicious, meticously prepared and cooked by Joe, they went down extremely well.

We awoke Saturday morning to clear skies and very little wind again. On excellent neap tides this was going to be a good day. The early birds went out on the first run of dives, whilst the afternoon group kicked back and enjoyed the morning. Lisa and I were going to go diving together on this one as my parents were going to join us this morning to look after the kids back on the shore.

At 1pm we headed out, Celtic cat was loaded up and off we went, the scheduled dive site being the City of Ghent.

http://www.digigreen.net/

Lisa and I at the bottom of the shot on the city of ghent,

photo credit- Tim Ingmire,

Tim’s picture above shows the fantastic visibility we experienced on this dive. As we descended we were on perfect slack, the shot line just hung in the water. We made our way to the upturned hull of the City of Ghent, Lisa’s mask was flooding again and so she stopped to sort it out, Tim took the picture above just as she had cleared it. After she cleared her mask we headed for the bow. Mark Milburn’s picture at the beginning of this post and the one below show the state of the bow section.

PICTURE TO FOLLOW

From the bow we headed back along the starboard side until midships where we crossed over the collapsed hull through a exposed section to the port side. Around the stern section where the prop had been removed and then caught on camera rounding the stern.

PICTURE TO FOLLOW
We peered in and made our way through a nice large and clear swimthrough of the stern section appearing again at the midships point where we had crossed over the to the port side. As we were now nearing our planned bottom time of 30mins, I unclipped my SMB, made ready to deploy and then noticed the shot line. I was tempted to make our way back up the shot line but guessing that slack would be ending and not sure on how Lisa would feel having to hang on for our stops I decided to drift past it and then deploy our bag. A slow ascent saw us both surfacing on 45 minutes. A truly fantastic dive, UK diving is at it’s best when the visibility is that good.

Link to the Digigreen thread on this trip

And to the Yorkshire Diver thread also.

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