Hello Goodbye - 22/01/2018

A Kell's Eye View

After a recurrence of an ear infection had kept me out of the water for another too weeks. However, when Hell's Kells says she want to squeeze in a check dive before she boards a plane to Belize with a one ticket it's kinda hard to stay out of the water.

We met up at our usual haunt and headed (due to time constraints) to the A-Frames in Loch Long for a blisteringly cold dive.

Unusually, there was quite a lot of boat traffic. I suspect as a  result of a recent tragedy in a nearby loch. A timely reminder, if it was needed, that our loch's are safe, but danger is never too far away.

As it was, our dive plan was simple:

• Kit up & buddy check
• Go down
• Check the kit
• Swim about until one of us felt cold 
• Surface safely

We stuck to it rigidly, stopping only to enjoy the odd nudibranch,, an anemone and for me to be me and write rude things in the silt. :)

We surfaced with Hell's Kell's reckoning that was the best and coldest she'd ever seen in the loch. At less than 2c in the water it was certainly cold.

With that we headed back to Glasgow where Hell's Kells waited 48 hours and then caught a flight to Belize. Very much a case of Hello, Goodbye.

Tropical Reefs - 09/08/2017

With the weather staying nice I took the decisive decision to take a day of work. I was happy about this as it meant I was going to get a long lie, didn't have to go to work and could also enjoy a slightly further afield dive site.

Jester, Jim and I all decided on Triple Reef. We were delayed in our start due to technical issues, so we limited ourselves to one nice long dive.

We followed the traditional guide route as I did last time and found ourselves floating around each of the three 'reefs'. It was nice with plenty of anemones ans sunstars to keep us all entertained.

As we surfaced, we popped up 20m from the entry, which increased the length of our our stagger back to the cars. 

It completed a great four days of diving.

Dahlia Anemone

Daisy Anemone

Common Sunstar

Northern Sunstar

Triple Threat - 10/06/2017

Ed mourns the loss of his 'latte'

With Scotland playing England at football (soccer for my American friends), Fast Ed and I decided that we would do just one dive slightly further afield than we'd normally go and then head back to get us home in time for the game. 

We had made a shortlist of three sites, but in the end decided on Triple Reef. We decided to follow Peter Gunn's suggested route in the comments of the guide.

The day didn't start well for Fast Ed who lost his latte to carelessness and also forgot his giant baby romper (undersuit). 

We crawled along the B8000 looking for the site we found it. Had a quick exploration and then kitted up.

Now both Fast Ed and I have a few dives under our (weight) belts and the guide was reasonably accurate. However, there was a triple threat even for the more experienced recreational diver.

1. The entry/exit is hazardous it's not worth pretending otherwise. I did it with my twinset and I won't lie the walk up was especially hard work.
2. It was all a little deeper than expected, with longer swims from point to point. As such decompression (for those who wish to avoid it) is a real risk if you are taking a leisurely approach..
3. We dived it mid flood and the current, particularly at around 15m,was seriously strong. Resulting in an increased SAC rate.

All this said, it was a great dive. The site was hoaching with fish, edible crabs, a conger eel, anemones. All with great visibility.

Back on the surface we took a little time to plot some additional, nearby sites in the sat-nav for a future trip.

Cushion Star

Northern Sunstar

Dahlia Anemone

Common Sunstar

So Much Nature Part 3 - 27/03/2014

So with the arrival of Evolution Divers we vacated St Catherines (see part 1 and part 2) prime parking spot and headed over to dive Loch Long. We were deciding between the Twin Piers, which we'd drive right past or the Caves where Laura had previously lost a bag that we were going to look for. The Caves won.

We quickly kitted up, buddy checked and headed down to the water where a seal, probably Beryl, was waiting patiently for us. We entered the water and it quickly became clear that we were diving as a buddy three as Beryl swooped between our legs, crashing into us chasing fish and any other critter that came into view. A few wrasse dodged under rocks. Bottoming out at 22m, we probably had the best seal action at around 10m.

Aside from Beryl, sea life was at a premium. By way of contrast, thanks to Beryl, silt was not.

By the end of the second dive both Laura and myself were exhausted largely due to 'so much nature'.

Dahlia Anemone

Beryl

Laura filming Beryl