Judge Dredger - 05/07/2018

When a relatively new company Wreckspeditions put up an offer to dive the Greenock Dredger on a warm sunny night, myself, the Wylie Fox and Jester thought it seemed like a decent idea. As a result, we gathered up a further 5 divers to fill the boat. My buddy for the evening was Jim. We were planning for 30minutes at 30m on a 32% mix. The weather, as forecast, was ideal, and we headed out full of optimism. 

As the last buddy pair to enter the water we were charged with making sure that the temporary shot line was free of any blockages. Once Jim and I hit the bottom there was already a fair amount of silt at the touchdown point, meaning I had a bit of a hassle moving the shot to a clear spot. My first attempt failed as in the gloom I didn't know I was dropping it into a second whole. Eventually, after a couple of minutes I felt I got it onto a spot that would be ideal. 

With that Jim and I headed off to the stern of the ship looking for the prop and rudder, before sheltering from the current up the port side to the bow. At that point Jim was getting uncomfortably* low on air. So we began our staged stops 7 minutes earlier than planned.

It was a weird dive, particularly gloomy, as most Clyde wrecks are, but recognisable as dredger with the old hoppers still lying on the deck.

* He still had plenty, 80bar and a full pony, but we didn't want to push anyone's comfort limits.

Work Pays - 02/07/2018

Sometimes life throws up a serendipitous moment. For me work had required me to attend a meeting a few miles from my usual diving haunts. The meeting would take me to lunchtime by which point I had enough time in the bank to flexi off in the afternoon.

Jester, who never works Monday, had agreed to drive up and meet me for an afternoon dive at Seal Reef, St Catherines.

I was still without my camera so was again on the look out for things for Jester to photograph. We had been swimming about for 15 minutes when I noticed a cluster of clam shells lying outside a hole.  I peered in and saw the pulsating mass of an octopus. I signalled to Jester and showed him the hole, he looked in and wondered what I'd seen. Eventually after an underwater argument explaining what he was looking at, he reluctantly took a picture and continued the dive. 

Back on the shore we laughed. It was Jesters first ever octopus and my first ever octopus at the site. 

Work it seems pays.

Window Shopping - 01/07/2018

With the camera out of action I headed to Anchor Point with Jester. I was just window shopping for Jester as he took photo after photo after photo after photo. We found all sorts of nudies and catsharks. 

It was two nice dives that sandwiched a cheeky BBQ. Afterwards Gill.I.Am and I headed to Otter Ferry and one of our favourite overnight spots for the campervan.

Deep & Done - 30/06/2018

When Chairman G asked me to take him deep, I decided to return to the site of my own Scotsac Deep Diving course. We kitted up and headed down to 37m and generally speaking had a pretty pleasant dive.

We chatted, had some bants with some other divers on the site then after a couple of hours we did our buddy check and headed back in. As we entered the water, the explosion happened as Chairman G's HP hose blew. We took it as a sign to abort the dive!

Shawaddy Wuddy - 24/06/2018

When the club headed over to St Abbs for the third time in three months, I wasn't sure what to expect. I was diving with the Wanton Hussy. It was his first dives off a boat, he was relatively in experienced. The problem I wasn't expecting was that my relatively new Sealife DC2000 was to be the thing that went wrong - It was subsequently returned, and replaced under warranty.

As a result, I have no pictures of any of the cool things we saw including the octopus. Sad times. Meanwhile, while we were under the water England won 6-1 against the mighty Panama. Apparently they're going to win the World Cup.

Shutter Eye - 23/06/2018

When a member of my dive club asked me if I could help her take better photographs. I said yes, but explained that I’m not really that into the details of photography and that where I could really help was by spotting things to take photographs of.

So we headed to Anchor Point  a site with a bit of everything - sandy bottoms, a wall and a rocky reef.

We got the cameras out and went looking...

Scapa Flow Day 7 - The Junkyard of Orkney - 15/06/2018

The last day of our trip to Scapa Flow was to provide us with a brilliant ending. We were repeating a dive on the SMS Konig then we were heading to one of the debris fields (SMS Seydlitz . I wasn’t sure about doing a debris field, but the two Flying Dutchmen on the boat zwere super keen and, well, we’d bullied them into doing all the sites we wanted. It seemed only fair.

The Konig was fairly uneventful, but the debris field was spectacular in terms of small life. I genuinely loved it. 

There were loads of nudibranchs, a baby shark, a sea mouse and a whole host of little macropodia rostrata, but surprisingly little debris. 😀