As regular readers will know, on a previous outing Laura and I scouted out the access to the lesser dived part of St Catherines, Loch Fyne. However, St Catherine's 3 - Bottle Bank is also a much contested site between divers and local residents who rightly have concerns about a minority of divers who persist with antisocial behaviour.
Laura and I had planned to dive the site, but chance comments by Martin and Ben in Aquatron made us wonder if we could keep all camps happy by diving the length of the shore between St Catherine's 2 & 3.St Catherine's 2 being the less contested site that features regularly on this blog.
Our new plan was to build up kit at St Cats 2, drive along the lane to the St Cats 3 entry, I'd drive back to St Cats 2 before walking the 500m back to the kit and Laura. We would then enter the water, dive the reef before heading as far along the shore as our air would safely allow. Still following?
Specifically, we were going in diving to 20m heading NE to the reef, working our way up the reef to 10m, where we would leave the reef and head NE to our distant exit point. At 80 bar we'd start to ascend to 5m and at 40 bar we'd surface.
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| Our Plan |
The plan was set and it appeared as though it had appeased Poseidon himself as a pod of porpoise and a seal frolicked offshore and the tide flowed in our favour.
As we dived we encountered catshark after catshark - I mean loads of them. The dive came alive in a fun way when Laura who was feeling a bit floaty in her new undersuit grabbed what has now become known as her "Gandalf stick". Feeling a bit left out I too grabbed a piece of driftwood and continued our Unexpected Journey.
We almost made it too. We came up about 50m short of the target only to see Fast Ed cruising the lane in his car looking for us or perhaps something more sinister - you never can tell with that boy. We signalled with torches and we chatted from afar as the tide gently swept us to our destination.
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| Butterfish |
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| The Gandalf Stick |
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| Catshark |
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| Nudibranch |
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| The distance travelled |
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