Dive With The Devil - 07/10/2018

After my experiences earlier in the year at Scapa Flow I was definitely sure that I wanted to continue my diver education and look at accelerated decompression. Now, technical diving isn't for everyone, but continually working to improve your experience and your skills is.

For that reason I never found it too hard to find a buddy to enjoy me on the IANTD Advanced Recreational Trimix Course. On this occasion, it was Alex that stepped up to the plate.

There are a number of benefits to both accelerated decompression and trimix. These include:

• Reduced narcosis at depth (T)
• Less time in the water getting cold (AD)

My original plan had been a to do an accelerated deco course (I was already qualified to 50m), but our instructor looked at out experiences as divers and suggested the trimix course - which also covered accelerated deco. That meant that Alex and I would be playing with voodoo and the devil!

We spent one day at Prestonhill Quarry and a second at a pretty weather beaten Slates doing drills, planning dives on trimix and 50% O2. 

It was overall a great learning experience and I'm not ashamed to say that Alex was better than me at almost every skill except for one. However, it was a great experience to share with such a fine young buddy. Henceforth, known as the Devil's Buddy.

My congratulatory post final dive handshake

Devil divers

Farne Way - 14/09/2017

It’s been a few years since I last dived at the Farnes. Sometimes you forget what it’s like. I mean, you remember the visuals, average diving, seals, the village of Seahouses, but I always forget just how playful and fun loving young seal are.

I was taking young Sarah in for her first taste of seal action. I explained the rule was to always let them come to you.

We did. They came, they posed for photos, they nibbled our fins, they tried to bite our fingers, they played with us. I think 

It genuinely has to be Farne away one of the best places on earth to dive with marine mammals.

Once More With Feeling - 02/09/2018

The end of summer is definitely approaching. The sea may  stay warmer for a few weeks and then starts to cool for winter. With that and mind, myself and Jester headed to St Abbs to dive the Glanmire before doing a shallow dive at Skelly's Hole. 

As usual we were diving with Pathfinder. We were diving to plans on the first dive and as a buddy three. We dropped down in great conditions and went in search of the props. On previous vists, the visibility has made navigating the wreck a little more challenging, but today in around 8m the wreck made a lot more sense to me. It was nice to see it more fully too. Definitely worth the last minute decision to go.

We bimbled around for about 34 minutes, going a little deeper than we had originally planned and headed up doing our deco stops on the deeper plan. Simple. 

After a quick surface interval we headed to Skelly's Hole for a few swim-throughs and out over the gullies. We buzzed about for a bit before surfacing and congratulating ourselves on a very decent days diving.

Prop

Anemone

Lobster

Bloody Henry

Anemone

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.

Werewolf Fish - 26/05/2018

I've done St Abb's already this year, but this time myself and the Wylie Fox were warming up for Scapa Flow in June so we turned our attention to the Glanmire and it's square profile.

Regular readers will know I've done it before in the Rope to Nowhere and Return to the Glanmire. In each case I never exactly covered myself in diving glory. Today I knew it would be different. Firstly, I was pretty dived up and secondly I had learned lessons.

I was right, Wylie Fox and I descended the shot line and dived the wreck and surfaced doing our 10 minutes of decompression on the way up. The dive was quite unremarkable apart from a pleasant snakelocks anemone. That was exactly the sort of experience we both wanted for our Scapa preparations. 

It was the second dive that was to be the standout however. A shallow dive (14m) at Skelly's Hole. I swapped buddies so that I could do some compass work with Walker Texas Ranger. WTR was leading as part of his ScotSAC Sport Diver training. 

The site is pleasant with a series of narrow ravine's and gullies and at certain times of the year home to the Atlantic Wolffish and Lumpsuckers. I've seen a small lumpsucker once many years ago, but an adult has always elluded me and I had never seen a live wolffish.

As we cut our way through the ravines we first saw a large male lumpsucker. It was bigger than I'd expected and way more colourful. It would not have looked out of place in the tropics.

Then one of the other members of our group signalled he'd found something. I'm not sure he knew if it was a conger eel or a wolffish, but it was definitely the latter. 

I surfaced delighted.I can't wait to return at the end of June.

Lumpsucker

Wolffish

Lumpsucker

Dahlia Anemone

Flabellina Lineata

Dahlia Anemone

Snakelocks Anemone

Eastbound And Down - 29/04/2018

Since the turn of the year I have been the "Expedition Officer" for my dive club. I'm selfish and like diving, so it is well suited to my interests. The better the diving, the better it is for me. So it was without hesitation that I booked Pathfinder for a few days throughout the year. This was the first of those days. 

Myself and Gill.I.Am had arrived the night before in the van to save me getting up too early in the morning. It's a pretty decent deal as you can park a campervan overnight for a £10 donation to the St Abbs Harbour Trust. 

In the morning I awoke to sunshine and an eerily quiet harbour. However, soon enough the troops had arrived along with groups of day trippers. I had agreed to take responsibility for a club Branch Diver and, if she felt comfortable after her first boat dive, a little instruction on the second. 

Once on the boat it all went swimmingly and the only thing that let us down was the visibility which was pretty poor (2m). However, we endured the cold for 41 minutes which meant Sarah could log her longest ever dive. 

After a quick trip back to shore for snacks and some chat we all headed out again. This time Sarah was going to finish her Sport Diver compass work before enjoying a little pootle around rocks.

It was reciprocal heading. Pretty basic stuff. It did mean that we were unlikely to get back to our starting point, but with improving visibility I could see the Black Carr Rock that was enough for a pass. From there, Sarah and I just went from rock to rock looking for the famous wolf fish residents of St Abbs. We never found any, but we did find a nice scorpionfish, beadlet anemones  colourful bloody henry starfish. Not bad for a training dive.

Parked up for the night

Setting up for the day

Add caption

My buddy

Pathfinder

Scorpionfish

Return to the Glanmire - 09/07/2017

When I last left the deck of the Glanmire amidst the disaster of the Rope to Nowhere I didn't expect that it would be more than two years until I'd make it back given its a two hour drive from the house. OK, I've dived in  Spain, California, Florida, Vietnam, Qatar and deeper wrecks in the Clyde and Egypt, but TWO YEARS?

I was definitely ready tackle my nemesis armed with 32% nitrox and a twinset when Captain Al arranged a boat for the day. 

My buddy was Jester who'd be diving it for the first time. I was confident. I mean, what could go wrong?  We buddy checked and jumped into the water. I casually swam for the rope and waited for Jester. It was then when I heard him say something about something loose.

I looked down and saw my finger spool slowly spinning down. I tried to grab it but and pull it up, but doing that was just slowly tangling me. I called for Jester to unleash his knife and cut it at the clip. The spool was only worth £9 - about the same as the nitrox in my tank and a fraction of the £35 for the days diving. 

It was cut and we were ready to descend, but it spooked me. "Perhaps the Glanmire is my wreck nemesis?" I thought as I descended the rope. This was never going to be a chain of thought that would help me control my breathing as I descended.

At the bottom, I lay briefly on the deck and waited for Jester and to calm my breathing rate. I did, but not before I'd wasted a lot of air. We swam round the deck and about halfway through I watched as Jester started following another twinset wearer. Did he think that was me? I signalled him and realised we had been joined by another diver for the remainder of the dive.

It was just as well too, as sans reel I had no way of putting up the SMB when we failed to find the rope back up and JEster is always notoriously reluctant to offer his!! As we decided to go up I realised we had picked up the Wylie Fox who promptly, and expertly deployed her SMB. Up we went slowly stopping a little longer to cover her deco stop.

Back on the deck of the boat I laughed, it was my nemesis, but I'd won this time. 

A lengthy surface interval later and we were back out the boat diving the shallow Cathedral Rock. It was easy but surprisingly light on really interesting life. Still, we had a good time, of the 9 of us who dived it we all came back out without significant incident.

Lobster

Wylie Fox on the line

Jester Safety Stopping

Sunstar

The Gambler - 11/06/16

In diving, as in life, I am relatively risk adverse. My modus operandi is to wait as long as possible before booking to ensure the conditions are as I like them. On occasion this approach means I miss out fully booked trips, but you can't miss what you never had.

After agreeing on Friday night to dive at St Abbs early on Saturday morning. Now, as regular readers will know, I'm great in the mornings. So it was brilliant when my buddy, the Bombay Bad Boy (BBB), agreed to drive. I'd never spent time with BBB before but he seemed like a decent fella and his chat was moderately amusing. It made the drive that much shorter. 

Diving from Eyemouth, the boat headed out to St Abbs Head and Peticowick for some boat dives around the area.  

Dive one saw BBB almost earn a different nickname - The Grim Reaper - as he found dead creature after dead creature. The highlight of his corpse-fest was a dead wolffish, but that find was top trumped by the guillemots dive bombing us during our safety stop.

Diving with a new buddy meant that we had been under for about an hour with both of us cold before we surfaced, neither willing to signal to the other. We chatted back on the boat and agreed that the 2nd dive would only be 30 minutes -a limit that would be too long for me. 

As I went to reduce drysuit squeeze on the second dive my valve stuck and began to over inflate my suit. I disconnected it and put the cap on but not before it sucked in a substantial quantity of cold, North Sea water. It was to be a long 30 minutes.

Back on the boat I explained my slightly erratic behaviour as we warmed up with tea and chocolate buttons. Still it was a good day -  with no sea sickness.

Anemone

Bloody Henry

Dead Wolffish

Guillemot

Anemone

BBB

Sunstar

HArbour friend

BBB's small roll

The Rope to Nowhere - 10/05/2015

Diving St Abbs area on Scotland's south east coast has been on the "to do " list for quite some time. Previous trips haven't suited my hectic schedule, but finally I was able to make it. We were to be diving the Glanmire followed by a shallow scenic dive departing by boat from Eyemouth.

Captain Al and I had had a pre-dive discussions about diving the Glanmire, which lies in 30m. It's a square profile dive which is well suited to a 32% Nitrox mix to extend your bottom time by around 5 minutes. We both plumped for that. Sadly, it meant I had to get one of my tanks O2 cleaned at Aquatron, my local dive shop at short notice, but they were very accommodating!

I won't lie, I was feeling a bit unwell even on the trip over. I took a variety of medications to soothe pending sea sickness, and I knew from previous experiences I'd be fine in the water and while the boat was moving.

Anyways, once on the boat we kitted up and prepared to go in. We dropped in last and went down the line. I felt like I was following a rope to nowhere, then at about 15-20m I started to see the wreck take shape. The current was strong on the line and I knew that if let go before hitting the deck we would be blown off - as happened to my chauffeur for the day Jim and his buddy. 

As we touched down, at 30.1m, amongst the ships boilers I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned round to see Captain Al in a maelstrom of bubbles. On the surface I'd later find out it was free flow. I offered my octopus, but he was well equipped with his pony and we started to ascend. Heading back up the line he seemed to temporarily fix the problem and suggested going back down, but to be honest. I've always erred on the side of caution and, despite his best intentions, I rejected the offer in exchange for both of us making it to the surface without any further problems.

So that was it, my visit to the Glanmire was fleeting. At the surface Captain Al apologised for 'ruining my dive', but in all honesty I think my dive would have been ruined by not making it back to the boat safely. That constitutes a successful dive in my view and, as a bonus, at least we saw the wreck. Moreover Jester had made me promise not break Captain Al prior to the trip. I like to think I held up my end of the bargain.

There were a number of people who while they made it back alive, didn't make it back safely and had to sit the second dive out as their computers had locked them out for failing to maintain safety stops, missing deco stops or some other misadventure. :)

After a brief vomit over the side of the boat I was feeling good for the second dive. For that we entered a small bay behind St Abb's Head and dropped into a fairly shallow 14m to the wreck of the Odense. You can read about through the link, but aside from some metal and a boiler there isn't much left. There are, however, some nice anemones, the odd wrasse, edible crabs and lobsters. Oh, and great volcanic rock formations.

A note to the Glanmire: I'll be back.

Odense

Odense

Dahlia Anemone

Dahlia Anemone

Rocks

Dahlia Anemone

Deeplet Anemone

Captain Al