A rainy February day with winds blowing F6-7 south westerly is not most people's idea of a good day to go diving. The direction is a problem for a lot of sites in the south, but not parts of Falmouth where the shoreline faces west. So we headed off to Gyllyngvase Beach. Onstreet parking was free and unsurprisingly there were plenty of spaces.
We entered the water at the south end just near to where the rocks started. Underwater, we followed the line of where the rocks gave way to the sandy bottom. It was quite shallow even though it was within an hour of high tide. Maximum depth was just over 6m. There was lots of kelp, and a few fish including pollack and corkwing wrasse. The viz was a relatively good 5m and it was just under 10°C, so a couple of degrees warmer than NDAC the week before. Those couple of degrees really make a difference.
The following day, the wind had got stronger but had swung around to the north west which meant that Pendennis Point was a possible dive site. There's a free parking layby on Castle Drive. Park here and then there's a path at the south end which leads to some steps down to the water's edge. Again, you want to do it close to high water. There are a series of gullies down to the sandy bottom in about 9m. There are also the remains of u-boats in the shallows which were brought here to salvage. We came across one of them on this dive in about 6m, a different one to we found last time which was a bit shallower. The wreckage is heavily salvaged. It's not recognisable as a particular section. The rocks are covered in kelp and there were pollack and corkwing wrasse around. The viz was about 5m.
Getting in and out was relatively easy. You need to check you're in the right gully for the steps on exit before getting shallower than 2m, as this offers some protection from the swell and waves though it was relatively flat.
It started hailing as we got out, which was an improvement on the previous day's pouring rain.