Play Misty For Me - 25/09/2017

Otter Ferry

After an evening camped out near the Oyster Catcher on the shores of Loch Fyne, Gill.I.Am and I headed to St Catherines to meet with the Kingmaker, the Announcer, Jester and Captain Al - who was insistent that after a considerable SCUBA lay off this didn't constitute a SCUBA refresher course.

The weather had been patchy at best, but we knew the sun was trying to breakthrough the fog and that ultimately the day would be as pleasant as the evening before. Which, by any definition, produced a beautiful sunset and a mild-ish September night ideal for van life.

The arrival at St Cats was a gloomy affair, but one ultimately lightened by the presence of the Kingmakers little 3 month old Collie pup, Misty - a name that for me always conjures images of scorned stalkers trying to kill reasonable people as a result of Clint Eastwood's 1971 classic, Play Misty for Me.

Misty

However, this little Misty's worst offence would be to lick Gill.I.Am' mug, eat some stolen grapes and chew on seaweed.

To add further intrigue to the day Jester had brought some masks and kit from LOMO, the watersports company for which he works. The hope was that we could get some natty pictures of it being modelled. However, given the collection of faces involved our chances of success were only ever going to be 50/50 - and I'll say no more about that.

Our first dive was leisurely and limited to the 30m 'shallows'. I buddied Captain Al in the event that after his lay off he was feeling a little rusty, but in the end it was all OK and the dive yielded a nice scorpion fish and a lobster amongst the teeming reef life.

However, disaster struck as I left the water and dekitted. I must have twisted and pinched a nerve in my back, leading to pins and needles in my legs. As a precaution, the Kingmaker called his better half - an A&E consultant - who reassured me that given our dive profile, easy ascent, safety stops etc it was unlikely to be a bend and more likely to be a pinching prolapsed disc of some sort. Either way I was under doctors orders not to dive again.

As a result, I got to be official photographer, enjoy my litle BBQ, the sunshine and Misty. A pretty sweet deal I think.

Fin modelling

Blue Steel

Fog, before it worsened.

Official Captain Al

The Darkness - 19/09/2017

Diving at night isn't for everyone. The imagination is a powerful thing and in the darkness people's imaginations often run riot out running even the most reasoned of minds. However, my own love it compels me time and again to introduce it to more people for the first time.

Tonight it was the turn of Freeflow Bob to experience diving in the dark for the first time. I couldn't tell if he was excited about night diving specifically or not.

On the way up I explained a few basic principles of night diving:

• Use a couple of lights to create an entry line for ease of navigating back to the shore - I rarely do this :)
• Dive the site in daylight before diving it at night - I've skipped this a few times too :)
• Don't turn off your torch underwater in case it doesn't go back on - I've experienced this first hand :)
• Carry a spare torch - top tip- I always do this
• Always, always do a buddy check. The incident pit can get so much deeper faster in the dark!

We were all set.

We kitted up and buddy checked at the car before entering the water. We dropped into fairly pleasant, clear, Finnart water. We went down to the big frame before spending the rest of the time looking amongst the wreckage for life.

We saw:

• 
  
• Catsharks
• Nudibranchs
• Lobsters 
• Wrasse
• Cod

Pretty much everything you'd expect to see. However, it was at the end of the dive when I revealed my favourite night diving feature. Encouraging the others to cover the light from their torches we blackened the sea bed then began moving our spare hands in the dark. Lighting up the sea with bioluminescence. If you haven't seen it before I recommend diving at night for that reason. 

You can learn more about the ocean at night here.

I think Ol' Freeflow may have discovered a taste for it.

The SS Kintyre - 17/09/17

When the Wylie Fox asked me if I was interested in diving the SS Kintyre I was immediately keen for a number of reasons. 

1. I could make myself available
2. An experienced diver told me the tide conditions would be ideal
3. The weather forecast looked good
4. It was to be one day shy of the 110th anniversary of the sinking 

It all seemed right and I had wanted to do this dive for sometime and one of the reasons why I had wanted to get the twinset.

It's deep,at around 36m with a long swim out to it from the shore. In fact, by the time you get to it breathing air you are almost in deco. I had asked if it was OK if I brought Jester along for the ride - which Wylie Fox was cool with.

Jester and I as a buddy pair planned as follows:

• Stage 1 - Dive the sewage pipe, if we were both happy by the end of the sewage pipe we'd move to stage 2
• Stage 2 - Dive along the guide rope to the bow of the SS Kintyre, if we were both happy we'd continue to stage 3
• Stage 3 - Dive down to mid ships at around 40m before returning home

Neither of us had any camera equipment - it seemed silly to take it on a dive where people do get into trouble given neither of us had dived it before.

The pipe was pretty, encrusted with anemones and with life all around it, but we ignored it on the way down, along the rope was pretty, but we ignored that too until we got to the bow.

It was magnificent, some people say it's deteriorated considerably, but it is still proud and ghostly as it emerges from the gloom. When I got to it I reached out and touched it - admiring it for a moment. I looked round to see Jester offer me a handshake. He must've felt the same way.

We continued off down along the port side spotting nudibranchs and little schools of fish. I could of stayed there for longer ( I certainly had enough air in the end), but a plan is a plan and we turned heading back.

It's a long dive with plenty of deco. In fact, I felt that one of our companions (K-Pep)  had the right idea with a nice O2 rich 'travel gas' and air on the wreck. It certainly meant that he didn't have to hand about for 15m at 3-5m at the end.

All in all, it was a memorable success.

Done

Entry

Going in

Going down

The First Tango in the Dark - 16/09/2017

My club had planned to dive at the Farne Islands this weekend, but that was kiboshed by the unpredictable nature of East Coast weather. By way of contrast West Coast weather was looking great. The club then decided to have a small camp out at St Catherine's and potentially a night dive.

So I invited Jester to be my guest for the evening now that he had overcome a bout of Common Cold / Manflu / Manthrax / Unspecified Certain Death.*

I had been invited to dive the SS Kintyre the next day by the Wylie Fox and Jester was going to accompany me. So it seemed sensible for him to dust down his deep diving skills ** and prep for the next day.

I had expected a few members to join us, but their preference, after a hard days diving, was to enjoy a bottle of wine on the beach round the campfire. So we kitted up alone in the dark and headed down.

It was funny, because before we went in we had wondered if we'd see any old night diving chums such as sepiola atlantica. As it was we did, along with a catshark, a few nudis, sticklebacks, cushion stars etc.

It seemed Jester was ready to return to some sensible diving.

* Delete as appropriate

** He has none, this is a joke

Haylie's Comber - 09/09/2017

With a brief break in my own amateur football season and Wylie Fox and her very cute dog Haylie looking for a dive day on the beach, we headed to Anchor Point for a splash. 

The weather prior to and the next week had been and was to be miserable. Our phones indicated an eight hour weather window, which we were damn well going to take advantage of. 

We arrived after a leisurely start, and kitted up as Haylie darted around enjoying the sights and smells of the beach.

Before going down we has a brief discussion about how we each dive the site. I, it seems, opted for a left hand sided approach while Wylie plumped for a right hand side approach. Our two dives yielded similar results - something that is hardly surprising given we were on the same reef just traversing it from different sides.

There was plenty of interesting life and my performance underwater earned me an invite to dive one of my bucket list dives.the following week with some far more experienced divers. So it was a successful outing!

Me

Haylie & I

Weather Window

Quint & the Seapen Graveyard

I had considered diving the the Old Cemetery 1 and 2 for sometime. However, something always came up and I never got round to it. So, when I got a message last week from my old dive instructor asking me if I wanted to go dive. I told him about my plan to head to Loch Leven camp with my new van and awning before heading to the Old Cemetery for a couple of dives. He seemed game.

The Old Cemetery has two dive sites - Cemetery 1 to the right and Cemetery 2 - to the left. Based on the guide there is the potential for all kinds of camping fun and shenanigans. However, times have changed. Parking in the lay-by is now restricted to three hours. Probably, judging by the number of beer bottles around the site, because of antisocial behaviour. Still, three hours was enough for us.

Quint and I kitted up and choose the easiest access to the beach we could find which coincidentally turned out to be the entry point for Cemetery 1, but given we wanted to do the second dive it meant that we were required to go down and turn right. 

It is probably true to say we spent too long going down and not enough time swimming left. We seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at seapens standing on the seabed like a continuation of the cemetery on the surface. 

However, we eventually hit the wall we were looking for - it bottoms out at about 20m, so don't go too deep! Once there I saw an octopus, nudibranchs and a nice collection of seastars. We returned via the wreck of a little wooden skiff.

Feeling we had seen pretty much all there was to see in the area we headed back round the loch to the Slates for something a little, well, erm, deeper. 😃

Quint & I

Loch Leven

Testing the camper

Bouncing Bombs and the Wrecks of Loch Striven - 27/08/2017

Panoramic view from the Ferry

When I suggested to member of the club that we could do a little getaway and BBQ at Loch Striven I wasn't sure how many people would come given how inconvenient it is to get to. So I sold it on the promise of an introduction to wreck diving. However, at around the same time the BBC and BSAC very kindly cobbled together a news story that included one of the loch's most famous episodes.

Sir Barnes Wallis designed the 'highball' during WWII to allow aircraft to better attack large battleships, but the design and principle would ultimately used to more famous effect in the Dambuster raids.

Today there are still highballs on the bed of the loch, but our plan was to dive the shallow wrecks of a small WWII landing craft and a barge at a depth of 12m at Brackley Point. The shallow depth means that our ScotSAC Branch divers can enjoy two nice little wrecks.

With a number of people requiring to complete a variety of different training tasks, the Land Lady had decided to take control of the operation and earn her expedition organiser stripes. That allowed me to take a back seat and just dive with our only willing branch diver - Freeflow Bob.

We all arrived and pitched up for the day at what, it seems, is a very popular site for outdoor enthusiasts of all ilks.

We made friends and went diving. Freeflow Bob led me through our buddy check and took me down to 12m and off we swam. Almost instantly we hit wreckage and then swam along a relatively bland sandy bottom. We returned underwhelmed, but Freeflow Bob had managed to take a few snaps.

Our second dive a couple of hours later was to the right which offered up a larger, more identifiable wreck.

Back on the surface there were BBQs, frying pans with burgers, happy children and kayaking. It really was a fun day. We'll be back.

Dive site

Near the surface

Fun on the beach