In 1992, we anchored in the Ria de Barquero on the North coast of Spain. I put out two anchors because the wind had been veering around and was blowing 30 knots. The next morning, we had problems pulling up the anchors because we'd swirled around and swept up at least three lobster pots. I had to snorkel down in 12 metres of very cold water to free the resulting tangle. It took half an hour to sort it all out and I was exhausted. I decided that I should learn to scuba dive and buy a set of gear in case this sort of thing happened in deeper water.
This small incident led to a love of scuba diving. I did a basic course in Menorca and then an Advanced Open Water course in Malta. When we arrived in Grenada after our Atlantic crossing, I worked in a dive centre for a month and became a Padi Divemaster. Later that year, I qualified as a Padi Open Water Instructor and we bought a small dive compressor enabling me to run small dive courses from our yacht, Glencora.
Glenys and I have dived from our dinghy as we have been cruising and one of the frustrations is the lack of information about the diving that one can do near an anchorage. I'm hoping that our descriptions of the various dives that we have done will be useful to other cruisers who want to dive by themselves.