Poseidon's Parlour: St Cats One and Done

Panoramic swwep from the shore

Sunday - another day another dive. I was meeting the diver formerly known as Mr Fallsoveralot (TDFKAMF) at Aquatron. He was getting a fill and hiring a tank. They were all out of hire tanks, so having just packed two tanks, we trudged back to mine get my other tank and headed off to dive a new site in Loch Fyne. However, as I waited for the overly enthusiastic barista in Starbucks, Milton to make my Chocolate Creme Frappe (or chocolate milkshake as we called it in the olden days) I realised I had DIN fittings and TDFKNAMF A-clamp. The plan to do two dives was out the window.

We headed to St Catherine's, Loch Fyne to dive one of the lesser dived sites in the village. There is some debate as to the name. It's either St Cats 1 or 3 depending on whether or not you number north to south or vice versa. For the avoidance of doubt we'll call it St Catherine's Pier.

I've never read a guide for the site, but a map of the area can be seen here - the pier is pretty obvious. Back at the shop the Moonster had given us a tip to dive in on the right hand side of the pier and then turn right. Our plan was pretty much just that.

After a brief chat with some fishermen we went in following the line of the pier down to 21m, then turned 90 degrees to the right before heading due south (taking us back to the shore and pier). In essence we were diving a right angle triangle - turns out trigonometry does have its uses. Mr Allen (my first year mathematics teacher), you have my apologies.

The dive was quite interesting with the usual array of life and an array of underwater objects. These included:

a gnome
a roll top bath
a huge anchor

Even at the relatively shallow depth (though it was low tide) there were a couple of nice firework anemones, lots of langoustine, some dabs and the usual sealoch anemones, sea squirts and peacock worms.

I'm not sure what TDFKAMF thought, but it was 50 minutes well spent underwater. However, condensation due to high humidity at the surface and a very cool 6.0c bottom temp restricted my snapping underwater.