Our intrepid divers have just returned from week of stunning dives in the caves and wrecks of Malta, organised by our D.O, Gary. Here, Jane gives us the lowdown on a fab trip.
The early hours of Tuesday 4th October found 10 members of SSAC in a minibus enroute to Manchester airport for a 6am flight to the sun-baked island of Malta.
Perched in the narrowest stretch of the Mediterranean between Italy and North Africa, Malta is less than a 3½ hour flight and prices are very reasonable, with October temperatures suiting shorts and t-shirts and a 5ml wetsuit for sea temps of around 24c.
The sun came out at for our arrival at The Luna Self Catering Complex on the north of the island, overlooking Mellieha Bay. So far so good. However, the rooms allocated to the singles sharing were a little too cosy for comfort, containing one small double bed! Gary had to explain that whilst we prided ourselves on being a friendly club, we weren’t that friendly.
Our five-day dive package was booked with Aquaventure, a PADI/BSAC Dive Centre on the other side of the bay. Each day we were collected at 8.30am, on site at 9am, dive, surface interval with lunch, second dive and out of the water by 2pm.
We were back at the Looney complex by 3.30 and, being sensible divers, we thought it safest to off-gas, debrief and write up the dive logs at sea level by the pool (with the option of a post dive beer).
At 7pm we gathered in the hotel bar for a pre-dinner aperitif and then a short stroll down the road to the Blue Waters, a local restaurant run by a very friendly Maltese family, for a hearty supper.
And now for the best bit - the diving! Our dive guides for the week were Lee (Helene) Martin and Paul Eley. They were exceptionally professional, knowledgeable, good humoured and great fun to be with (just like us really).
The majority of the dives were shore and all easily accessible, though the Blue Hole was a tad tricky. We dived out of Paradise Bay on Marfa Point for two days but had six completely different dives on each occasion.
This was the entry point for one of the most popular dives of the week, The Rozi, a 40m long tugboat. Scuttled in 1991, it rests upright and complete on white sand at 36m.
The second wreck dive, the P29, was also out of Paradise Bay. More recently scuttled (2007), this 52m long Patrol boat lies slightly deeper at 38m. Gary dived the P29 the year it was sunk and was glad to report the wreck is slowly being colonised by local flora and fauna including a resident moray of which he took a fab photo.
For those choosing not to dive the wrecks, Paradise Bay offered a variety of depths from 2-25m featuring walls, caverns, grottos (the Statue of the Madonna), swim-throughs and arches.
Fish life, though not massively abundant, was varied; octopus, moray, red scorpion, barracuda, groupers, rainbow wrasse and glassfish to name but a few. The Mediterranean waters were a joy; clean, blue and clear with visibility often in excess of 30m at a perfectly comfortable 24c.
On day two we took the short ferry crossing to Gozo to dive The Inland Sea (listed by Jacques Cousteau as one of his top ten dives in the world) and The Blue Hole. The Inland Sea dive is truly impressive as you leave the salt-water lagoon, enter the ravine and slowly make your way through the velvet gloom towards the incredible blue of the open sea.
All the while, above us, returning divers are suspended in the crystal clear waters like UFOs with their torches illuminating their flight path in the upper reaches of the chasm. We entered open water at around 33m to continue with a magnificent wall dive (base line 80m plus).
In the afternoon we were treated to the challenge of The Blue Hole. This was the only site that entry and exit was a little arduous. Also, for some reason that day, it was more Grey Hole than ‘Blue’ but once outside the funnel it was business as usual - good vis, majestic boulders and a single file swim up a vertical ‘chimney’ to the reef top bathed in sunshine and glass fish.
The penultimate day’s diving was a delight. We boarded a luzza, a traditional Maltese fishing boat, for the 30 min trip to the small island of Comino. Moored up in a sheltered cove (sea conditions were beginning to pick up) we had two dives in the fabulous Comino cave system. The dive started with a fish feeding frenzy on white sand at 8m where we were mobbed by thousands of saddled seabream.
Into the cave system, we surfaced for a minute in a dry bell and then it was down and out through a large arched cavern into the open sea. The topography, scenery, light levels and clarity of the water made this a truly beautiful dive.
On our last dive day we travelled down to the southwest corner of the island to The Blue Grotto, as did every other diver on the island due to a force 6 north easterly. Diving was split into two groups; one completing a reef sortie whilst the A team dived the Um El Faroud, a tanker scuttled in 1998.
The Faroud sits at 35m and is far too large to complete in just one visit so our guys restricted themselves to the stern section. And a jolly good time they had too.
With no diving the next day we took a well-earned rest in the hilltop village of Mellieha. Our guides, Lee and Paul, joined us and we had a fantastic Chinese meal washed down with a couple of glasses of Malta’s surprisingly fine wine. The next day we relaxed, shopped and enjoyed a last team supper before flying back to sunny Blighty at a very civilised hour on Tuesday.
Conclusion: Aquaventure are absolutely ace and we had a Bang Tidy week yah!
Director: Gazza ‘FB’ Coles
Supporting Cast: Salty ‘Violet’ Soltysiak; Clare ‘ Most Serene’ Soltysiak; Geoff ‘What’ Watts; Sally ‘Base Camp Mom’ Watts; Rachel ‘Guzzler’ Hamer; Andrew ‘Bang Tidy’ Neale; Colin ‘Cool Hand’ Morris; Jon ‘Princess’ Prince; Jane ‘Jaeger’ Mitchell
Click on ‘Read the rest of this entry’ below to see a fabulous selection of pictures courtesy of Jane, Gary, Clare and Salty.
