DOTTY DIVE

A great dive with Smudgemeister yesterday at the one and only Dorothea.

A late start with a leisurely breakfast at Tesco Bangor arriving at Dotty at about 1130am. A check of all kit and an agreement over a dive plan. The plan was to have a deep dive with a maximum depth of 60m with a bottom time of no more than 20 minutes. Having agreed the dive plan with obligatory deco stops we set about discussing a suitable dive to match our plan.

From the platform we descended over the shallow shelf onto the 22m shelf and followed the cable straight over the edge to 50m. Keeping the wall to our left we swam along the wall to the ladder at the bottom of the 40m shelf and the narcosis test. From here we descended to the tunnel at 57m, through the tunnel and out before descending to approx 60m where we followed the nose of the ridge around to the start of Henry's ridge passing the 2 metal pins at 60m and 50m respectively. staying at 50m we traversed the wall before arriving back at the bottom of the ladder and ascending to the 40m shelf to be met by one of the ProScuba gnomes which, unfortunately, is no longer in one piece. Nevertheless, much to our surprise, 2 of the 3 glass flowers left by Edward were still intact. From the 40m shelf we began ascending up the ridge back to the 22m shelf and continued slowly upwards completing our decompression obligations at the various stop depths.

An excellent dive with a total dive time of 54 minutes. H

Another new route for me today so thanks to Mr Smudge for his guidance and a great dive.

Smudge has one or two photos from top side. Due to the planned depths we didn't take cameras in the water.