Basking in the Sunshine

by Janine Gartshore

A trip to the Isle of Man
27/07/2007

Waking up on the Friday morning to sunshine (a real rarity this summer!) things were looking up for our adventure over to the Isle of Man. We took the ferry from Liverpool and all met up at our home for the next 4 days in Port Erin on the south of the island. If the house was setting the standard for the rest of the weekend we weren’t going to be disappointed. And guess what, we weren’t!!!

Saturday morning arrived with more sunshine and we made our way down to Port St Mary to meet up with our skipper Mike, as a diver himself he knew what he was talking about and a top bloke to boot. After sorting out our gear we loaded up the boat, named Seyrsnys, which means Freedom in Manx (unless Mike was winding me up!!). During the long weekend we were treated to some fantastic dives, all of which you could write pages on (I must have been spending too much time with Mr Gilbert!!).

The famous Burroo dive site didn’t disappoint with lots of life in the form of crabs, lobsters, dogfish, Tompots and masses of soft corals. The Garden Rocks had amazing topography though at times had some very strange currents (known locally as Strange Eddy) which even confused the fish which way they should have been going! On all our dives we were accompanied by curious Wrasse who didn’t mind taking a pop at you if you were getting a bit too close. One took a particular dislike to Brian or perhaps his BCD was the problem ;-).

I can’t and wouldn’t dare to forget to mention the seals! They appeared on most of our dives and for a lucky few stayed with them for an entire dive playing hide and seek in the kelp until it was time to come up, the divers not the seals that is!

For one of our wreck dives we were treated to a trip out to The Afton (this one is not in any of the dive books). Although the wreck is very broken up the boilers are still intact and the whole wreck is covered by masses of life with shoals of poor cod and bib, wrasse, congers, Tompots, anemones and much, much more. And the Basking sharks? After one dive most of the boat had a tantalising glimpse of a Basking shark fin in the distance – but there’s always next year, isn’t there Steve?