The Scilly Isles 2003
(or The Scilly Season)

In July, at the beginning of the school summer holiday a group of divers and their families headed of for a holiday in the Isles of Scilly. We all made our own way to Penzance where most of the group caught the ferry (3 hour crossing), except that is for the impatient ones in the group who opted to use the helicopter (20 minute crossing). On arrival we all somehow managed to make contact with each other (despite only about a third of our mobiles working due to poor network coverage) and arranged to meet up to plan the weeks diving, which of course meant food and more importantly beer. Our first morning in the Scillies saw us eagerly waiting at the quay for our charter boat "Moonshadow" to arrive, when it did arrive it came as a bit of a shock to discover our skipper was a very young lady, the shock was quickly dispelled by Jo's professional handling of the boat, her knowledge off the local waters and her accurate locating / shotting of the wrecks, and depositing of the divers on site. It soon became clear her lack of years disguised her true experience and we soon discovered her dad ran the other diving charter in the islands so she'd pretty much grown up in and around the waters in the Scillies

Some of the wreck dives we did were on old wooden ships and all that was left of them were anchors, anchor chains and decayed timbers whilst others were on modern ships like the "Cita" a 3000 ton container ship that had sank as recently as the 1997 which was still fairly intact.

Another dive was on the wrecks of the "Plympton" and "Hathor" where one wreck literally lies on top of the other, so you get two wrecks at the same time. The "Plympton" ran onto rocks where the islanders found her, however at low water she suddenly slipped off the rock ledge drowning two islanders that were down below intent on salvage.

I must also mention the dive we had with seals, where provided you're patient eventually what was a lumbering sack of blubber on the rocks will come gracefully glide towards you from out of the kelp and nibble your fins and stare at you with their great big sad eyes then suddenly disappear with a flick of their tails only to return minutes later to peek at you from amongst the kelp. I must admit that diving with seals was more enjoyable for me than when I dived with a dolphin in the Red Sea, and whilst mentioning the Red Sea even though the water temperature was somewhat cooler in the Scillies the visibility was easily as good.

There was however more to our week in the Scillies than diving. One evening we had a BBQ outside the B&B that some of the group were staying in that over looked the harbour and whilst the adults stood around eating and drinking we encouraged the kids with promises of money too strip off and swim out to the boats moored just of the beach in the harbour. It was at this BBQ we caught our first and only sight of the "Scilly Man".

On one of the days us divers made the supreme sacrifice for our families and took half a day off diving to meet them on the island of Tresco. It wasn't until we reached the island and Gerry (a.k.a the Scilly Man) phoned Linda to locate the families that we discovered they were at the other end of the island so we were forced to undertake a 40 minute route march to then discover that if we wanted to visit the famous gardens we had to turn around and march halfway back again! So the weeks holiday was over and our thoughts turned to the journey home, 

I'm just glad I was on the helicopter because we reached Penzance by midday and hit the road for home. The ferry users however had to wait until 3pm for their 3 hour crossing, at about 6pm I phoned Neville to check on his progress to discover they were just getting off the ferry and it was with a bit of a smug feeling I told him I'd reached the M25 so was only 1½ hours from home.

All in all it was a great holiday good diving, good company and a good time had by all, an experience I'm sure will be repeated some time in the future.

Martin Patterson

Red Sea 2004 - North, Maldives,

The Scilly Isles - 2003, Red Sea 2003 - North, Red Sea 2003 - South
Scapa Flow 2002, Red Sea 2002, Weymouth 2002,
Australia, Red Sea 2001, Red Sea 2000,     
Brixham, Weymouth, Key Largo,
Red Sea 1999, Diving Down Under.