Tuesday 31 October 2017

An Aging Wine - 25/10/2017

It is said of fine wines that they improve with age. I hope the the same is true for me. You see, Jester and I went diving the day before my 40th birthday. We headed for St Catherines hoping for cuttlefish and decent weather (according to the forecast).

As we arrived the rain poured down. It slowed to a drizzle at which point we jumped out and kitted up. Gill.I.Am, who had come for the bantz, was not impressed that she'd be stuck in the car. 

We kept it pretty shallow, heading to the boat and then onto the reef. It was a good night for life with loads of scorpionfish, cuttlefish, a few nudibranchs and a coy conger.

What was amazing was that the scorpionfish were improving with each one we found. Slowly getting bigger and bigger in size until at the end we found the daddy of them all - who was about the size of a football. Needless to say I never went too close, but Jester took a few photos.

We emerged to find Gill locked in the car, imagination running riot as she read a crime thriller. I assume the victim is killed in a parked car by a rural dive site.

Reaching out

The big yin



Monday 23 October 2017

Single Again - 13/10/2017

A trip to the The Caves beckoned as myself and two additional member of Eastwood Divers started a new monthly Friday Night dive. The prospect of it being Friday the 13th didn't bother me, but the descent at the Caves to the waters edge in the dark, in a twinset was enough for me to rejig one of my regulators and dive it on a single cylinder.  A decision that as I mountain goated in and out of the water I did not regret.

The weather had been wet on the run up to the dive so the stream running under the road was in full flow. In some ways this made the entry less slippy and hazardous and by the time I was half way down I noticed the tide was high, reduce my clamber considerably. 

The dive itself proved to be lobster themed as we went about cutting them loose from the fishing line left by fishermen at the site. We plodded on for 45 minutes in decent visibility before heading up.

As successful first for our regular club night dives.

Tuesday 3 October 2017

The Journey to Atlantis - 01/10/2017

Earlier in the year I took the decision to improve upon my diver training. As such in 2017 I'd already added the following to my diving arsenal:


This weekend I was about to add another - ScotSAC Deep Diving. The course which it seems is run once a year teaches divers to "dive to depths appropriate to the equipment you use, to a maximum depth of 50m".

So with a full day of lectures complete, a few practical planning exercises done and our planning done for our dive, myself and Marchen (my buddy for the day) headed to the curiously named Hangman's Reef with our instructors and we were set to go. We planned the dive and dived the plan overcoming the flashcard hurdles put in our place. 

The whole thing was more of an exercise in discipline as opposed to diving deep. It certainly taught me a more disciplined less computer-centric approach to diving beyond 30m.

We surfaced bang on time. Now qualified to go to 50m. Later that evening I had dinner with the Gandalf of the Internet and the Kingmaker, we made plans to go to deeper. So now the journey to Atlantis begins.