Farnes Island recomendations please

[chrise]

I'm organising a BSAC club trip to the Farne Islands next weekend 9/10/11 sept and am looking for recomendations of dives sites.

I've managed to fill Colin Rutters boat Wavedancer so hopefully he will give us some options of sites.


Any favourites ?

Chris.

O2dive

 

[rdbark]

Chrise,

You could try http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk/ as it's got more information about UK diving.

Although the club I'm in dives the Farnes I've not been yet so I can't tell you who they use.

Hope this is kind of useful.

 

[Kev Martin]

Chris

Wavedancer will have no problems finding you somewhere to dive.

However, depending on qualification and experience, here are a couple of my favourites.

The Somali - quite possibly the best wreck up in the Farnes. Maximum depth approx 32metres, so I would class this as an advanced dive. Named as the UK equivalent to the Red Sea's Thistlegorm! An excellent wreck with lots to see.

Staple Island - A couple of nice, relatively easy dives around this island. Max depths around 25metres but, if divers stay well inshore of the island, you can stay around 10-15metres. The south end of Staple Island boasts the "Pinnacles", rock columns that stand as tall as the island itself. This area, underwater, has lots of boulders spread across the sloping seabed. Lots of fish life which invariably attracts the seals and, incredibly, the seabirds which live on the sanctuary situated on the island. You can see puffins, cormorants and other fish hunters whizzing past you in their search for lunch.

To the east of Staple Island there is a nice dive into a bay on the island. At 24metres there is the very broken wreck of the St Andre. Basically some plates and a boiler but they house some interesting critters! From there you can swim up into the bay and then carry your dive on toward the west around the island. It is even possible to swim as far as the Pinnacles.

Blue Caps - a series of small rocky islands which, being sheltered on three sides, makes a reasonable dive site when conditions elsewhere are bad. To the east of the Caps you have some excellent gullies and sheer walls. I've seen some beautiful examples of Lumpsucker around here.

Knivestones - over the years many ships have come a cropper on these rocks. Lots of gullies to dive in and around with lots of interesting little finds to look at. Nice seal dive. The only real wreck of note there would be the Abissinia - two large boilers, scattered wreckage and a lot of anchor chain.

I could go on and on.

Hope this is of some use to you. Enjoy and have a safe diving weekend.

Kev

 

[rdbark]

Misunderstood the question.

Thought you wanted to know of another boat you could use, cos your first one was full

 

[chrise]

Thanks for the responses, the trip was actually about 3 weeks ago.

We dived Blue Caps, Pinnacles, Somali, plus some others I can't name at the moment.

The 1st dive was filled with thousands of moon jellyfish, few comb jellies and Lion mane jellies. The sea was flat calm but foggy as hell. We almost didn't dive but Davey the skipper agreed we could go in which smb's up.

All 4 boat dives we did were great, unfortunatly it was too foggy monday to go out, while down south record temperatures were recorded. Wierd.

The seals did not come out to play unfortunatly but that gives us a reason to go back again.

I did a shore dive in Beadnell monday instead, the knackers I think it was called, didn't get below 4 metres in the 1 hour dive so came up with 150 in the tank still.

photo's of the trip & jellyfish can be seen at www.o2dive.org.ukhttp://www.o2dive.org.uk/Photo-Farnes03/index.html Farnes underwater photo's

 

[Jonathan]

check your original post - you did say Sept even though those dates aren't actually a weekend ut:

glad you had some fun - but no seals, unlucky

 

[chrise]

oops, my mistake