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

Return to the Glanmire - 09/07/2017

When I last left the deck of the Glanmire amidst the disaster of the Rope to Nowhere I didn't expect that it would be more than two years until I'd make it back given its a two hour drive from the house. OK, I've dived in  Spain, California, Florida, Vietnam, Qatar and deeper wrecks in the Clyde and Egypt, but TWO YEARS?

I was definitely ready tackle my nemesis armed with 32% nitrox and a twinset when Captain Al arranged a boat for the day. 

My buddy was Jester who'd be diving it for the first time. I was confident. I mean, what could go wrong?  We buddy checked and jumped into the water. I casually swam for the rope and waited for Jester. It was then when I heard him say something about something loose.

I looked down and saw my finger spool slowly spinning down. I tried to grab it but and pull it up, but doing that was just slowly tangling me. I called for Jester to unleash his knife and cut it at the clip. The spool was only worth £9 - about the same as the nitrox in my tank and a fraction of the £35 for the days diving. 

It was cut and we were ready to descend, but it spooked me. "Perhaps the Glanmire is my wreck nemesis?" I thought as I descended the rope. This was never going to be a chain of thought that would help me control my breathing as I descended.

At the bottom, I lay briefly on the deck and waited for Jester and to calm my breathing rate. I did, but not before I'd wasted a lot of air. We swam round the deck and about halfway through I watched as Jester started following another twinset wearer. Did he think that was me? I signalled him and realised we had been joined by another diver for the remainder of the dive.

It was just as well too, as sans reel I had no way of putting up the SMB when we failed to find the rope back up and JEster is always notoriously reluctant to offer his!! As we decided to go up I realised we had picked up the Wylie Fox who promptly, and expertly deployed her SMB. Up we went slowly stopping a little longer to cover her deco stop.

Back on the deck of the boat I laughed, it was my nemesis, but I'd won this time. 

A lengthy surface interval later and we were back out the boat diving the shallow Cathedral Rock. It was easy but surprisingly light on really interesting life. Still, we had a good time, of the 9 of us who dived it we all came back out without significant incident.

Lobster

Wylie Fox on the line

Jester Safety Stopping

Sunstar

Double Trouble - 28/06/2017

Double Trouble is, simultaneously, perhaps one of the worst Elvis movies and also the title of another terrible movie from the 1990s, but that doesn't deter me from using it as a blog title to describe my first dive on my new twin set.

My buddies were Captain Al and Jester and we had chosen the Slates because I had agreed to show the site to a group of divers from Scuba Leeds on their annual pilgrimage to the west coast sea lochs (or "locks" as they call them 😃 ). My plan had been to dive my first dive with a 15l tank and then have a shallow splash with the twins before heading down the road.

In the end Captain Al advised me to get a bit of time with them to start to get used to them before doing any formal training. So, I jerry rigged up a regset that was a representation of a Hogarthian/DIR twinset regulator set and set about testing my system before doing any formal training in it. I've been using the Rectotec blog as background reading as well as discussing it with more experienced technical divers.

PLEASE NOTE: I am a relatively experienced diver with experienced buddies, I do not recommend this kind of ad hoc experimentation for inexperienced divers!

For those interested in the geekier side of it I dived:

• manifolded twin faber 12l
• Scubapro horseshoe wing
• Steel backplate
• jerry rigged regulators

Anyway, once kitted up I realised that I'd need to make some adjustments as I couldn't  reach my knobs on the dive, so that meant that in reality I was really just getting used to diving the wing with what was in effect a single cylinder.

The result was that I wasn't really into taking many photographs, but the weather, light and visibility were all so good that I took a few snaps.

Dive one saw us spend the best part of an hour at around 15-20m spotting ling, cuckoo wrasse, dogfish, nudibranchs and sunstars. 

The first thing I noticed is that the dump valves weren't effective given their position, and to get the best out of the hose dump I really had to be in a fairly upright position. It meant that on this dive there were a few minor buoyancy issues on this dive. Which, by the time we shallow dived the bay on dive two I had rectified, despite breathing the twinset down to just 40 bar ( a common tipping point or so I'm told).

Anyway, decent little learning experience with fine buddies.

Dogfish / Catshark

Common Sunstar

Flabellina Lineata

Northern Sunstar

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

Wet 'n' Wildlife - 12/05/2016

After the weekend's heroics it was back to a more sedate shore dive with the Zookeeper and Jester. We piled everything into The Beast and headed west. In the end we lazily plumped for St Catherine's, which on a fine night is ideal for high jinks.

Having kitted up quickest, I was getting hot. I headed into the water and waited. The vis seemed promising, around 4m. Once all were ready we headed down. The Zookeeper thought I was narc'd when at the deepest point of our dive when I started knocking my malfunctioning camera off a rock. In fact, the memory card was malfunctioning. Naturally, banging it on a rock resolved the situation, though made me look crazy. Them's the breaks, but you get to enjoy a 2nd rate photograph of a northern/purple sunstar.

We worked our way back up nice and slowly seeing a few nice creatures en route.

As we surfaced, the discussion centred on those who emerged wet. Jester it seemed emerged cold and wet enough that he feared he'd lost an appendage while the Zookeeper was also had a wet bum. I felt relieved that I was dry. I smugly smiled internally.

Sunstar

Nudi

Scorpion fish

Nudi

Cushion star

Penetrating the Lady Isabella Barque (2) - 08/05/2016

Now, you may recall in my previous post I explained how Jester and I were now cocky, experienced Scottish RHIB divers, well my cockiness was quite misplaced. As I prepared myself to meet the Lady Isabella Barque I rolled or, perhaps, slipped backwards into the water on what was one of the worst boat roll entries ever made. Even as I sank, I heard the gentle ribbing of K-Pep ringing in my ears.

Lady Isabella Barque was once a graceful sailed barque carrying a load of nickel ore, now she lies in the shallow waters off the southern tip of Little Cumbrae, I wasn't expecting much (I think K-Pep intentionally talked her down) but she was rather beautiful. As Jester and I moved round over her seaweed heaving ribs, we spotted sunstars, three varieties of nudibranchs, ballan wrasse and edible crabs. 

Nearing the end of the dive we finally found the remains of her narrow holds and, being a gentleman, I gently penetrated, popping my head in to have a look. There was little to see though.

After we had all dived her, we spoke of how much we'd all enjoyed the dive. The calm waters, on a point that is often exposed, made for a great second dive. As wrecks go she's incredibly shallow sloping from two to fifteen metres. Jester rated her in his top five dives. K-Pep, who'd last dived her 15 years ago, was also highly complimentary. It seems, that despite lying on the seabed for more than 100 years, the Lady Isabella still has her charms.

The blast home was a much more choppy affair and I regretted, my decision to partially remove my drysuit instantly as the spray soaked my face and shoulders. As compensation Mother Nature threw one last curve ball - a lone porpoise.

And with that, we returned to base.

Lady Isabella

Lady Isabella 

Candy striped flatworm

Nudibranch

Sunstar

Lady Isabella 

Lady Isabella

Candy striped flatworm

Pony Trials - 21/02/2015

Jester has been hinting for ages that he quite fancies having a pony - not the equine variety. I have a pony that I only tend to take with me when I'm doing deeper dives or I'm diving with pretty inexperienced divers. To salve his disappointment about missing out at diving the Council Yard on Thursday I offered to go diving with him on Sunday and let him ride my pony.

We were joined by the Frigophobe, who is just learning about diving in coldwater.

I won't lie, it was cold from the off and without too much life. We worked our way down to around 30m before heading back.The way back saw Jester spot a couple of nudibranchs (all too small for decent photographs) and me a fine sunstar.

On the surface we voted 2 to 1 to can a second dive due to the cold. Instead we went to the pub for lunch. A dive and a lunch in the heat sounds like a win/win to me.

As for the pony, apart from the initial weight of putting it on I think Jester was quite comfortable in it. I can see him buying one soon.

Sunstar

Limacia Clavigera

Jester warms the Frigophobe

A Simple First - 03/01/2016

Sometimes what is passe to the experienced diver can be something quite cool and interested to those less experienced. That was the case today when I was joined by Bridget and Dougie for a swim around St Catherine's Seal Reef. Neither diver had ever been near the small wreck.

So with almost every site from Glasgow to the Rest & Be Thankful chock-a-block we went to the small boat. The pair of them swam around it for a time before we began the swim to the reef.

For me, the reef offered more interesting times with a nice northern sunstar and a shy conger eel. I'm still without torches which is a bummer, but hopefully that will be sorted soon.

Oysters & Cristal - 29/07/2015

With the Mermaid camping with JoeLe up on Loch Linnhe, the Zoekeeper and I decided to trundle up and join them for a dive on the Kentallan Wall. Loch Linnhe itself forms part of the Scotland's Great Glen fault line and the wall is part of a deep canyon that seems to run up the fault line. 

We met up at the campsite and headed to the entry at the Holly Tree Hotel. Where the water was calm and the tide was on a gentle flood. We spent some time constructing ridiculous fourway selfies before finally kitting up and entering the water.

Straight away JoeLe was having some difficulty so he abandoned the dive, but the three of us continued out. Surface swimming about 40m from the end of the pier to the point where the bottom was beginning to disappear. At that point we dropped in over 10m of water and continued the swim to the wall underwater. After a further swim we got to the edge.

Before choosing to tumble down the verticle drop our first significant find was a large Janolus Cristatus - the crystal tipped nudibranch. It's quite spectacular - the Cristal of nudibranchs.

Dropping further we found more, a large conger, saw lots of large fish, sunstars etc. However, the main draw has to be the topography. I've heard a lot of talk about diving the fault line Iceland, but here I was swimming along the very same thing right here in Scotland. And the visibility was superb! It was easily 15m, perhaps more!

We returned to shore entirely underwater and surfaced to be greeted by a variety of people.  We dekitted and headed into the Holly Tree for a quite delicious meal - which included my first taste of oysters. My review can be read on yelp if you are really interested, but given they provide you with the parking it seems only right that they benefit from divers custom.

After lunch we headed to the Slates for an easy second. Which I'm glad of. For the second time I got up close and personal with the elusive male cuckoo wrasse,

Site Entry

A fourway selfie

Janolus Cristatus

Burrowing sunstar

Janolus Cristatus

Janolus Cristatus

Northern sunstar

Common Sunstar

Cuckoo Wrasse

I'm Gonna Hit The Brakes... He'll Fly Right On By - 23/03/2015

To celebrate his 100th dive I suggested the TDFKAMF would be allowed to change his name on my blog. He chose a slightly camp Top Gun reference - Jester. Jester is of course played by the legendary Michael Ironside, "Jester's" secret man crush. I am, however, not one to judge. So I'll leave it there.

Our original plan had been to photograph firework anemones at Drishaig, but with the weather looking pretty pleasant I suggested a blast up to Loch Leven for either the Slates or Manse Point. We plumped for the Slates as we had no idea of tide times and Manse Point had a recommendation for an hour before slack. As it was there was a strong current running.

Jester had never dived the site before. So, I told him what to expect. I explained how I'd never seen a dogfish here. What was the first thing he spotted? You guessed it - dogfish.  I lead us out along the point agauinst the current to give him an idea of what the wall side of the site was like before hitting the brakes and letting the current take us out into the flatter bay area of the site.

The water was a pretty cool 6/7c and the viz wasn't the best I'd had at the sight, but it was still a good 4-5m.

We encountered some pretty sweet life including:

• Pipefish
• Large Pollock (like proper Godzilla sized ones)
• Northern & Common sunstars

We finished in the shallows with me a bit disorientated (I'd left my compass in the car). We popped up from around 5m after a safety stop to find we had a 20m surface swim back to the shore, but given it was night and I was sans compass, that wasn't too bad.

Pipefish

Common Sunstar

Common Sunstar

Catshark

Common Sunstar

Bloody Henry and Brittle Star

Northern Sunstar

Smoking Mussel

Northern Sunstar