We made weekend club dives on the wrecks of HMS Scylla and the James Eagan Layne.    We drove down to Plymouth with a car, a van and a people-carrier.   We had a campsite booked at Brixton (not THE Brixton) and we arrived at 8pm with just enough light remaining to pitch our tents and get everything set up for a sizzle and refreshments.   Then it was earplugs-in to resist the snorers amongst us, and a kip until breakfast - a mixture of bacon and sausage butties and all-day breakfasts.   Tents packed up into twice the size they came in, and then a twenty minute drive to the dive centre in Plymouth.  

We checked in, presenting our PADI cards and signed our lives away to the skipper, who was a bit of a character.   We hired some cylinders there, to save having to lug them all the way down and back again, and set up our kit, ready to wheel it all down the jetty to our waiting diveboat: the "Aquanaut".  We joined forces with Sally of Seawatch SW (who was videoing and cataloguing species on the two wrecks), cast off and pottered out of Plymouth harbour.  
We were lucky with the weather: none of the forecast rain though there was a stiff breeze, which tested some folk's sea legs.   The skipper stopped in a sheltered bay for us to kit up and buddy check, then a briefing for the Scylla, and we chugged off round the headland.  

Though this was a hardboat, licensed for 12 divers, we entered with a backward roll in pairs off the sides of the stern, and descended down a line under a marker buoy to the blunt end of the Scylla.   Although this was deliberatley sunk as a reef project just two years ago, the whole of the ship is encrusted, with many soft corals and sponges.   There are swim-throughs (i.e. you can see the other side) in the superstructure, which is all intact, and the wreck can be penetrated lower down, through the hull, for those with a Wreck Specialty qualification.   The bridge and wheelhouse has a large square hole cut in the roof, which means that divers not qualified to penetrate wrecks can go inside this section.   We made an anticlockwise tour at deck level, reaching the pointy-end, with the anchor chain still disappearing into the distance, then round to the port side, with a tidal current which assisted our swim back to the stern.   You will need several dives on this wreck to see all of the exterior, let alone penetrate inside, so we will be coming back here.   We made our ascents up the stern line, pausing for our safety stops at 5m, then surfaced and signalled to the waiting skipper to come and pick us up.  

This dive boat has a lift to extract you from the water.   Unlike many electrical lifts, this one is geared in to the boat's driveshaft, so it rather catapaults you up, knees bending under the g-force, with sound effects like "whoooah!!!".   then sit yourself down and let the next diver be projected up and out of the water.  

Hot tea and bikkies were served on the boat as we lay off a sheltered bay and switched cylinders for our second dive, the James Eagan Layne.   This is a world war two "Liberty" ship, attacked in the Channel by the Germans and taken under tow towards safety, but which sank before it got there.   The wreck has been "dragged" to remove all the sticky uppy bits which might sink other ships, so there is nothing left above deck level.   The deck itself has largely eroded away, as have many of the side panels of the hull, leaving a skeleton which you can swim through, looking at the remains of the military cargo.   Most striking of all are the gun-carriage wheels that lay on the seabed and poke through holes in the hull.   Presumably the field-gun barrels are somewhere nearby, or were salvaged.   The bones of the ship were home to shoals of fish and one giant crab.   The tide was beginning to run, so we made our way back to the pointy end and up to end the dive.

Then back to Plymouth, disembark and pack everything away in the cars for the trip home, and a bit of a karaoke sing-song on the way.