Baw Deep - 04/06/2015

Here in Scotland we have a phrase - 'baw deep'. It's a coarse turn of phrase with an overtly sexual content. It represents the natural limits of coitus. It has also come to be used in common parlance as term for very deep. For example in Scotland you might hear a conversation such as follows: 

• Person 1 "See that Davie, he's been done by the polis."
• Person 2 "Ooft, he's in the sh*t now!"
• Person 1 "Aye, baw deep"

To Translate into common English:

• Person 1 " Davie has been arrested."
• Person 2 "Oh dear, he's in trouble now."
• Person 1 "Yes, deep trouble."

In diving parlance, it would therefore be appropriate to describe a dive to the edge on ones limit and experience as being baw deep.

You see, both my self and the Zookeeper are qualified to 40m, but as she is the jealous sort, she envies the fact that my computer has registered a 40m dive and hers has not. Tonight the plan was to journey down to 40m so that she could log a limit equaling 40m dive.

We chose Seal Reef, St Catherines largely because we knew we could get the depth, it was familiar and it would have better visibility than any of the easy depth sites in Loch Long. 

We arrived just before two other entirely untrustworthy diver - Sergeant Chris and the Smooth Criminal. They were hunkering down for a night of beach spooning and male bonding with cups of tea and a BBQ. In fairness, it was a nice night for it.

A nice night for beach spooning and male bonding

Regardless, myself and the Zookeeper kitted up keeping company with the pair of them and headed into the water.

We dived straight down, passing some nice Highland Dancers but nor stopping to take a photograph to prolong our bottom time. We skirted the edge of the reef and continued our dive catching the tail end of the second reef at about 37m. We then turned and went straight. With the Zookeeper on my left I stopped at 39.5 m. Meaning that I reckoned she'd be registering around 40m. She did (40.2m). We were baw deep.

We headed for the surface at a more sedate pace, pausing to enjoy the sea pens, sea cucumbers and langoustine before heading over to the main reef. 

I was testing out some new gloves. which weren't great for taking pictures. As such I only took a couple of snaps.

Sea cucumber

Langoustine