Saturday 11 June 2016

The Gambler - 11/06/16

In diving, as in life, I am relatively risk adverse. My modus operandi is to wait as long as possible before booking to ensure the conditions are as I like them. On occasion this approach means I miss out fully booked trips, but you can't miss what you never had.

After agreeing on Friday night to dive at St Abbs early on Saturday morning. Now, as regular readers will know, I'm great in the mornings. So it was brilliant when my buddy, the Bombay Bad Boy (BBB), agreed to drive. I'd never spent time with BBB before but he seemed like a decent fella and his chat was moderately amusing. It made the drive that much shorter. 

Diving from Eyemouth, the boat headed out to St Abbs Head and Peticowick for some boat dives around the area.  

Dive one saw BBB almost earn a different nickname - The Grim Reaper - as he found dead creature after dead creature. The highlight of his corpse-fest was a dead wolffish, but that find was top trumped by the guillemots dive bombing us during our safety stop.

Diving with a new buddy meant that we had been under for about an hour with both of us cold before we surfaced, neither willing to signal to the other. We chatted back on the boat and agreed that the 2nd dive would only be 30 minutes -a limit that would be too long for me. 

As I went to reduce drysuit squeeze on the second dive my valve stuck and began to over inflate my suit. I disconnected it and put the cap on but not before it sucked in a substantial quantity of cold, North Sea water. It was to be a long 30 minutes.

Back on the boat I explained my slightly erratic behaviour as we warmed up with tea and chocolate buttons. Still it was a good day -  with no sea sickness.





Anemone
Bloody Henry
Dead Wolffish
Guillemot
Anemone
BBB
Sunstar
HArbour friend


BBB's small roll

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