Wendy Northway
I’ve been looking forward to this weekend since we stepped off the Mananan last year. I reckon Manx waters have to be the best in the world so nothing was going to stop me from going this year. The ferry out of Liverpool was bang on time and we loaded up Paul’s in flight catering trolley. Paul volunteered to supply half board for the party and as he loaded up Ariel’s car, I worried if we had room for the dive kit. How much can 8 divers eat?
Saturday was an early start – The Burroo. This is one of my favourite dives and I wasn’t disappointed. We landed on a rocky reef covered with oaten pipe hydroids which provided perfect food for the many nudibranchs – flabellina pedata, polycera quadrilinata – a truly wonderful array of colour! I dived with Ariel and both of us had cameras in macro mode – the smaller the species, the more interesting! Suddenly I looked up and realised we were surrounded by fish of all description – cuckoo wrasse characterised by their splendid blue and orange colouring, ballan wrasse with their distinctive white marking along their body and cat shark doing that swervy curvy swimming thing that only cat shark do! Getting back on the boat we heard tales of a friendly seal going from buddy pair to buddy pair. He probably visited us along with that passing basking shark but we had our noses pressed to the smallest of critters!
Back to the harbour for lunch on the beach. Paul quickly went to the galley and provided an incredible spread as the rest of us reclined in the warmth of the July sun. Ernie had delegated the task of ordering the weather to DaveG who did his job well. Lunch was a leisurely affair as we didn’t need to be out again until later as slack on the Lighthouse was late afternoon.
After lunch we reboarded and headed off for Chicken Rock. This is the lighthouse at the southern most tip on the Calf of Man consequently a very tidal spot rich in nutrient and profuse in life. The rock is also deep. Depth is quite a feature of the diving around here. Such is the clarity of the waters, the sunlight penetrates further than North Wales thus kelp is seen at up to 20m and we had to go below this to get out of the great forests. The terrain dropped away deceptively easily. Fantastic sea bed, very similar to this morning’s dive with fields of hydroids, walls of jewel anemones and large lobsters strutting their stuff out in the open. Once again a fine site to dive and Ernie racked up another Lighthouse to add to his collection.
The lateness of slack resulted in an even later finish and we still had to empty the boat. We were told that this was owing to the requests we had made and the timings of slack water meant that we weren’t diving until the following afternoon. We believe however, that the skipper was cashing in an extra fishing trip to add to his takings. Still this meant that we could enjoy a late night. The party split, the main group went to the Indian, well tried to. As they were a tad late, their table hadn’t been held and went off to the Cookery School instead. They enjoyed a truly scrumptious meal, all washed down with fine wine. Me and Ariel went to visit my Uncle where my cousin ‘Russelled’ up a fine bolognaise!
Sunday morning was a rare lie in for a dive weekend followed by brunch at the dive lodge courtesy of head chef Paul then a leisurely stroll to the boat for 2pm. First dive of the day was the Clan MacMaster, the ‘sewing machine’ wreck. This went down in 1923 with no loss of life. It was carrying a cargo of, amongst other items, sewing machines. Many a household on the island managed to acquire such a machine! For those that stayed on the wreck, they were treated to magnificent beams covered in deadmen’s fingers. The light infiltration was at it’s best as looking up provided optimum photographic opportunities. The rest of us were treated to a drift through the sound of Calf over the usual suspects –kelp, hydroids and lobster.
The final dive was planned to be North Stack but conditions were not ideal so we went round the corner from the Burroo, and dived The Puddle. This was again a stunning dive. Dropping down onto kelp covered rock which gave way to cluster anemones, then field upon field of plumose anemones. Once again I had my macro lens on the video but there was little opportunity to pull up and park as a gentle drift took us out in the Burroo itself. I wasn’t complaining as delicate sargatia troglodytes, actinothoe sphyrodeta and jewel anemones came into sight. No stop time limited out dive and thus we were up. It was very late now so we quickly packed up our kit, showered and headed off to Port Erin for a relaxing meal. Again we’ve experienced a magnificent weekend’s diving with great company, spectacular weather and enough food to fuel the 5000!
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