Yesterday's diving trip was very successful.  I travelled down with Peter Swarfield.  The journey was uneventful; we chatted about club events past and present, club members, and other 'man' topics.  Arriving at West Wales Divers we met up with John Evans, Jeff Canning and Richie Grice.  A brief discussion, then Richie left to fill the boat with fuel; he met us at Broadhaven.  Our launch was almost successful, but we misjudged the depth of water and the boat grounded onto the sand.  Thankfully the tide was rising; we manhandled the boat into deeper water and were soon riding the wave crests as we headed for Ramsey Island.  The journey was lumpy, a result of the poor weather conditions of late, though thankfully the sun was shining; it was a lovely day.  Arriving at Ramsey, Richie used our new monitoring system to gauge depths and we dropped anchor in a sheltered bay.  I dived with John 'Crabhook'Evans.  We dropped into 18 metres; the visibility was good and the current slight.  John followed his favourite pursuit ie, find the lobster, I followed behind, admiring the marine creatures of which there were lots.  Towards the end of the dive, John shouted at me (well, he would have if he could have)  I followed his moving torch beam and saw a large grey seal.  This inquisitive creature played hide and seek with us and eventually came close enough to nibble at my fins.  I was ecstatic!!  I've seen it happen to other people, read about it, and seen pictures, but when it happened to me, I was over the moon.  He or she looked up at me with large soulful eyes; I reached out, and in a flash, he was gone.  He re-appeared as we were ascending, this time playing around John's fins.  Back on the boat we were like a pair of school children as we tried to relay our experiences to the others.  The same seal interacted with the next pair of divers.  After their dive, they recalled similar experiences.  Our next dive was in another bay.  Here we experienced a mixture of reef and sand.  There were lots of dog fish, lobsters, velvet spider crabs, and scallops.  We got back to base around 6-30pm.