Growing Pains - 27/01/2019

A trip to Twin Piers is never the most inspiring dive, but as a ScotSAC Instructor I had agreed to help with club training. I had experienced some sinus pain while helping in the pool the night before, but thought nothing of it.

Today I was going to be doing some skills with Vadar. He's a pretty decent fellow and for a very new diver actually shows considerable promise. 

Our dive was to be unspectacular, down to 7m do some mask stuff, have a swim about and head out the water. We did it, but not before my sinuses screamed and Vadar had a suit leak. I couldn't get out the water fast enough.

These things are sent to try us.

Dude, What Do You Bench? - 19/08/2018

Recovery

So after our last epic failure lifting the anchor Jester and I returned to have another go. This time we were joined by the Wylie Fox & the Wee Barra.

We were working on a two dive strategy:

Dive 1 - Locate and buoy anchor, survey

Dive 2 - Controlled Lift

This time we had two LOMO 70lb lift bags with dump valves and a further 25kg bag borrowed from a friend.

We planned to fill one bag at the top of the anchor and partially fill the second at the same place until the anchor was neutrally buoyant. Then we'd control the lift by dumping air from the full bag. Meanwhile we'd attach the second bag to the chain attached to anchor. It would all be attached using a 23kn screw gate carabiner. The Wee Barra would be charged with reeling in the marker SMB. 

We began and to our surprise it worked perfectly. Our only problem was at the shore where the lift bags no longer shared the combined 100kg weight.

Up, Up and Away - 12/08/2018

When I was asked about doing a seabed survey for the Long Long Jetty Association I immediately hatched a plan. My plan involved getting ScotSAC Master Diver trainees to do sweep searches, noting anything they could see.

They did a sterling job, and I managed to create a map that puts the Jetty Association's mind at rest as to any potential problems they might encounter in their quest to reintroduce boat visitors to Arrochar.

However, someone had also mentioned that there was lost 50kg boat mooring that had been accidentally dropped in water that was a little too deep. We were asked if we could find it and potentially recover it. This appealed to Jester and I. We haven't enjoyed a good adventure like this in a while. So armed with a lift bag, we left the trainees to enjoy a dive by themselves as we then attempted to lift the anchor.

The anchor had been located by Jester on a previous dive and marked with an SMB. We then headed over to the anchor with a my £5 lift bag from ebay. We connected it up and started filling. The bag worryingly had no dump and as it began to lift we had no way to slow it. Our only choice was to swim away from the danger of anything coming back down. 

I looked aup and saw the bag hit the surface with a jar and our lifting rig broke lose of the anchor causing the anchor to fall back down. thankfully we had exercised the no one underneath rule.

I came to the surface only to see my lifting bag floating away down the loch. I never recovered it, but I did see it in the middle of the loch a few miles down the loch.

We returned to shore a little wiser with a plan....

Our Map

Floating Away