11 club members recently spent a very enjoyable week diving from our two club RIBs in Pembrokeshire.
We based the boats at Dale and dived in Milford Haven, around Skomer and around Martin’s Haven.
At the start of the week the viz was 3 to 5m in the Haven but by the end of the week we had 8m off Martin’s Haven. The diving was generally good but sometimes challenging in strong currents and low viz – overall, we had a great week diving on both reef and wreck and we dived every day.
The weather was good. We took the opportunity to dive ‘The Smalls’, a reef about 20NM into the Celtic Sea, on Celtic Discovery (Diving Pembrokeshire Pembrokeshire Boat Charters). These reefs are not easy to dive, being exposed to the prevailing weather, but we managed a good dive in marginal conditions and enjoyed the sweep of jewel anemones and other squidgy stuff on the reef. There were some huge edible crabs and crawfish on the reef.
Diving around Skomer was good and the flocks of puffins and other sea birds flying around our boats, and rafting up on the water made diving around the island a fantastic experience.
The gannet colony on Grassholm was also very impressive. There was lots to see underwater: jewel anemones, conger, crawfish, edible crabs, lobsters, lots of wrasse, dogfish and pollock, beautiful nudibranchs, lots of spider crabs and lots of huge scallops.
Some of the rock walls off Martin’s Haven were absolutely stunning.
Oscar and Karl were the mackerel fishing champions and Karl was our master chef.
Our two club RIBs performed flawlessly (thanks to Both Ian B and Simon) for getting them ready for us.
We stayed in Upper Neeston Barns (pembrokeshire bunkhouse), enjoying their comfortable bunkhouse and separate two-person apartment. This accommodation is ideal for a group of divers with plenty of room for drying dive kit, space to park the boats and a separate camping site close by for anyone who wants to camp. The owners were very friendly and helpful throughout our stay.
We filled our cylinders each day at Haven Diving Services (Pembrokeshire Scuba Diving Services) – Ceri and Dave were extremely helpful and generous with their advice and flexibility. Not only did they provide great service filling our bottles but they offered to let us use their mooring at Dale and they gave us lots of diving marks to try. They are keen to see us return next year.
Pembrokeshire is a great location for a club diving trip. The diving is very varied and there is lots of sea life. You can usually find somewhere to dive even if the weather if poor and, in June/July the puffins are everywhere.
