Seaford Day Dive

Seaford is a historic seaside town just to the East of Newhaven. It was well known as a haven for smugglers and there was a 17th century prayer God keep us from Seaford and its shags. Shags being the term for smugglers! There are over 14 wrecks from the beach and we were aiming to find the Gannett. 

We all met up in the car park by the Martello tower at around 11:00 am. There were 15 of us with a couple of partners and children, the weather didn’t look to bad, it was a little overcast with a slight wind and the sea was looking calm.
 
After reading through the Dive Sussex book I was assured that the Garnett was around 50 meters from the shore in line with a water pipe in the sea wall, unfortunately for us since the book was written there has been thousands of pounds of shingle dumped on the beach to stop the erosion and the water pipe has been covered over so we took a guess as to where the wreck would be.          

High tide was at 13:30 so we entered the water around 12:00 to ensure that we did not get caught in the strong current after high tide. Entry into the water needed to be backwards due to the waves and steepness of the shore. When we arrived at the site the waves were small and sea was quite flat but as high tide drew nearer the waves got increasingly higher

Entry into the water was difficult to say the least a number of us were knocked over and were unable to get up due to the strength of the tide coming in. The waves were about 4 foot which doesn’t sound much but in full SCUBA gear it a nightmare.      

Once we were passed the waves we descended and found that the visibility was around half a meter and that the waves were kicking up all the sand. The only thing we were able to see was pebbles whilst we groped along the bottom. After around 15 minutes we gave up and ascended only to be knocked off our feet on our way back to the beach.

 Although my dive was not too good a number of the others did find a cannonball and some twisted metal which we assumed was from the Garnett. This site may be a little better in the summer when the tides are not so strong so we may try again next year. Liquid refreshment was taken in the Ship public house just round the corner from the beach

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