Diving at Cap Ferrat

I was quite an enthusiastic diver in my youth (not sure whether I should use the past tense or not there…?), back when I lived in the UK. I accumulated 69 dives (yes, I checked my logbook…) over about 3 years, in more and less exotic locations such as Stony Cove, Chesil Beach, Porthkerris in Cornwall, Thailand, the Red Sea and Australia. But I gave it up nearly 10 years ago. I’ve had some half-baked plans to pick it up again for quite a while, but nothing has come out of it so far.

Until today! The plan is to do some diving on our upcoming holiday to Mexico, so I figured a bit of a practice dive or two is definitely called for. Since our good friend JayJay (who will be our guide in Mexico), is heading back to Mexico soon after his 6 month stay in Nice, it was pretty much now or never. The plan was to do an afternoon dive at Cap Ferrat, led by Merlin, who’s dived quite a lot in the area.

Unfortunately, Merlin’s daughter got sick the morning of the dive, so it was just me and JayJay, then. Armed with a map from Merlin, we set out for the dive (after picking up some dive gear in Nice). Unfortunately we struggled a bit to find the dive site, but did finally find a beach which sort of vaguely matched the location on Merlin’s map. The concrete platform Merlin had described was clearly there, as well as the staircase he had mentioned. So we decided to chance upon this spot, got changed, hid the car keys in the bushes, and off we went!

The dive went surprisingly smoothly, considering my break of nearly ten years from diving (I have to admit to a bit of nervousness before the dive). I managed to control my buoyancy, didn’t panic, and had a great time all in all. It’s true that the water was rather nippy at 12.8 degrees (according to JayJay’s dive computer), and my air consumption is still rather bad (although it doesn’t seem worse than it used to be – I managed 52 minutes bottom time, 22 meters maximum depth with a 15-liter tank – filled to 250 bars though). The dive wasn’t particularly scenic though – we didn’t see all that much. There was some nice sponge, some really big clams, some nice coral and some big schools of fish. But no sight of the octopuses and moray eels that apparently are to be found.

We got the explanation later – we never found the actual cave where the octopuses and the Moray eels live. Oh well, next time I suppose, maybe with Merlin… ;-). But all in all, I was very happy to have done the dive, in spite of my hands which were numb from the cold. I think JayJay suffered even more from the cold, though… ;-)

After a late Breton crepe lunch at Villefranche, we called it a day, freezing a bit but rather pleased with ourselves…