On 5 September 2005 Chris Baker, Graeme "Spotty" Hastings and I met at 4.00 a.m. for another "Boys Day Out", this time our destination being Portland in Dorset. The previous evening, Chris & I had told Spotty that the departure time would be 1.00 a.m. A suspicious Spotty had rung my wife, Eve, to establish the truth. "Well, you cannot talk to Malcolm" she brazenly told him. "He has pulled all the curtains in our bedroom and has been asleep since 6.00pm." However the thought of having to put up with a tired and irritable Spotty for a full day forced Chris & I to relent. So we told him the truth.

After the long drive from Folkestone in Kent we arrived in Portland and immediately took a vote on whether to have a cooked breakfast before our first dive. Spotty and I voted "yes" to an early breakfast, Chris "no" so we went diving!

Chesil Beach, our first dive, is one of Britain's most popular shore diving sites. This 18 mile stretch of pebbles and shingle starting from Portland was formed at the period of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago.  After Spotty had finally finished kitting up, we began this beach dive.  The visibility underwater was 5 to 8 metres. As soon as we descended from the surface of the sea, Spotty saw a cuttlefish and after that we saw two further cuttlefish, a pipefish and a small lobster as well as other sealife. Returning to the shore Chris finally allowed us to have breakfast.

Next we called in at the Fathom & Blues Dive Centre in Portland Harbour to enquire about boat dives. We were in luck, their R.I.B. Aqua Spice was available for two dives and even better, we could have it all to ourselves. Aqua Spice took us to two wrecks. The first was The Enecuri, a 3000-ton Spanish Steamship. In 1900 she dragged her anchor during a force nine gale and ran aground on rocks close to Breakwater Fort, a short distance by R.I.B. from the Fathom & Blues Dive Centre. In disappointing visibility of 4 to 5 metres, Chris, Spotty and I briefly penetrated the wreck. Badly silted and well broken up, she was almost unrecognisable as a great Steamship. Fish highlights of this dive were wrasse, a lobster pot with a spider crab in it and bass. There had been quite strong winds for the previous two days and probably as a result the underwater visibility had been affected. Certainly it had fallen short of my expectations on our first two dives of the day but I was hopeful that the visibility would be better on our third and final dive. This was on The Countess of Erne, an "old paddler" that sank in 1935 not far from The Enecuri. We slowly finned the length of the wreck in visibility of 3 to 8 metres, fish highlights of this dive being a tompot blenny and various wrasse. All too soon we were back in my Landcruiser heading for Folkestone having enjoyed another Boys Day Out.