Fantastic Farnes

Last year Ace Divers arranged a trip to the Farne Islands and I was gutted that the trip was full before I could get my name on the list.  Fortunately, another trip was arranged for this year and my name was first on the list.  The Boy started a new job this month and for a few days it looked like he might not be able to go so I was preparing myself for having to go without him.  In the end it all worked out and we were both able to go.

We headed off early on Friday morning to the harbour in Seahouses, Northumberland in search of the "big white cat" that turned out to be the Serenity II, a lovely dive boat with a diver lift - heaven! We passed Bamburgh Castle on the way.  It looked like it could give Edinburgh Castle a run for it's money.  Awesome!  Must go back and explore it some time.  When we arrived at the harbour we paid our £4 for a day's parking, assembled our scuba gear and carried it all on to the Serenity.  There was a bit more room that I'm used to on a dive boat.  I'm used to boats that are fully loaded with 12 divers but the Serenity took 15 of us and still had space for more.

As we headed out towards the Longstone / Outer Farne lighthouse one of the crew gave me a bit of the background and history of the area.  There are a lot of sea birds in the area but, for divers, it's probably most famous for it's seal population.  We could see the odd seal popping it's head above the water on the journey. It didn't take too long to reach our destination and soon we were all kitted up and ready to jump in.  I was in a buddy team with The Boy and Niall so the three of us did our deep water entries off the lift for our first dive.  Niall was so busy protecting his camera that he forgot to hold his mask.  I got to the bottom and realised I'd left my dive computer on the boat.  On any other dive that could have been a big problem but we knew that to see the seals we had to stay shallow so it was just annoying not having it.  Ironically Niall's camera housing flooded as soon as he got to the bottom so no photos for him.

It didn't take long for the first seals to appear.  I think there were maybe 3 or 4 of them, but they were very playful and interactive.

That's me in the bottom left corner:

 They loved The Boy's white Seawings:

They were all juvenile seals and, like any human baby, they explore by having a nibble.  You swim along looking for seals and suddenly you feel like you're kicking something with your fin. You turn round to look and find there's a seal attached to one of your fins.

Black Seawings were nearly as popular as white. Niall having his fins nibbled:

This one was heading for me:

I couldn't work out what it was doing but apparently it was nibbling my hood.  I think it liked the white logo:

The Boy managed to coax them in quite close:

At one point Niall and I had to try and hold The Boy down and manhandle his integral weights back into place after they tried to part company with him.  Thankfully we managed to avoid a rapid ascent.  Eventually we made a deliberate ascent to get back on board the cat.  The skipper tied up on one of the islands while we had lunch in a calm little bay and the crew made us tea and coffee.

After a reasonable surface interval, we got kitted up for dive number 2.  I made sure I took my dive computer this time.  The tide was coming in so the skipper dropped us in the shelter of some rocks and told us to stay behind them out of the current.  We were also advised to drop down straight away rather than waiting for the whole buddy team to get into the water before descending.  That dive was a bit of a weird experience.  Most of the dive took place at a depth of between 3 and 5 metres, so almost the whole dive was a safety stop. What was weird was the washing machine effect of the current.We could all feel ourselves being moved back and forth in the surge but we were in the middle of a kelp forest which was also moving in the surge.  Unfortunately, the kelp wasn't moving the same way as we were so the whole effect felt extremely odd and, for the first time, I felt sea sick under the water.  The cause of the sea-sickness:

There were a lot more seals this time but they weren't as interactive as the ones we saw on the first dive.  We would come across each other swimming through the kelp:

The seals in action:

This one was vertical in the water, nose to lens with the camera housing:

Eventually we called it a day and decided to surface.  The Boy inflated his SMB to show the boat where we were and we started to ascend.  Then he turned round and showed me a reel with a broken line and no SMB attached.  Fortunately I had my own SMB and reel so I inflated my SMB and we ascended to the surface.  The Boy was not amused at losing his SMB.  The boat picked us up and we scanned the sea for something bright orange and horizontal (as an SMB with a diver attached below it would be vertical) and ..... we found it!  The skipper took the boat round and picked up the escaped SMB so The Boy could smile again.  At least now he only needs to buy a new line, not an SMB and line.

We counted heads on the boat, decided we were still a few divers short, and went in search of SMBs again.  There were a few dive boats in the area, not to mention quite a few curious seals on the surface, so it was a bit of a challenge deciding from a distance which heads belonged to divers rather than seals and which ones were our divers.  Happily, we found everyone fairly quickly and got them all back on board.

We all had a great day.  Thank you to Martin for another fantastic diving trip.

Getting to know Tinkerbell

I was sitting earlier this evening looking through photos on my Facebook page and I came across a whole album from 1st April 2011 that I'd kind of forgotten about.  I hadn't forgotten the event, only the photos.  It was an event arranged by Martin at Ace Divers.

1st April.  April Fools Day.  The significance of the date didn't escape me as I contemplated what I was going to be doing that day.  I can't deny I was looking forward to it but there was a small, terrified voice in the back of my mind that surfaced occasionally to ask me what on Earth I was doing.  What I was going to be doing was going to Deep Sea World to dive with Tinkerbell and her friends.  Tinkerbell is a Sand Tiger Shark who is over 3 metres long.  Admittedly I'd not heard any horror stories about customers being eaten but I tend to be a bit behind with the news so that meant nothing.

On the day, we arrived with our scuba gear which was swallowed by a huge dumb waiter and transported down a couple of floors below the car park.  We were allowed to bring a couple of guests so we brought Alan and Lomai and thanks to Lomai bringing her camera we have plenty of photos to remember it by.  We were taken into a presentation room and given a briefing about the dive, what to expect, the dos and don'ts,  the most important don't being "don't touch the sharks".  As if I needed to be told!  We were then split into groups of 4 for the dive and The Boy and I (or was it just The Boy?) volunteered to be in group 1.  The good thing about that was that we didn't have time to stand in the tunnel and watch the sharks before we got into the tank beside them, so I was spared this view until after I came out:

I'm not sure whether that's Tink or one of her buddies.  We went to get changed while the other groups went off to the tunnel to watch us.  We didn't need to wear fins as the water is only 3 metres deep in the shark tank so we would be (moon)walking along the bottom rather than swimming.  We jumped into a shallow tank in the quarantine area, did our weight checks then ducked through to the platform we would descend from:

Some of the smaller fish swim around you while you're on the platform and there's a rope to guide you down to the sandy bottom.

Once you get in there you look like a munchkin through the thick, curved glass of the tunnel.  The munchkin in the pink mask is me.  You don't really appreciate how much smaller everything looks from the tunnel until you've seen it all from inside the tank.

As you walk along the sandy bottom you have to keep your eyes open as there are flat fish and rays lying, hiding in the sand & I don't think they'd be too impressed at being stood on.  There were also two Angel sharks when we were there.  Since then, the female has given birth to almost 20 babies so there will be a whole lot more of them to look out for once they're all in the big tank.  There are photos of the babies here: Baby Angel Sharks

You can see a fish half buried in the sand in this photo in front of me & The Boy:

As you can see, we were both kneeling down in the last photo.  That means there must have been a shark nearby.  The Deep Sea World guides who were in the tank with us kept a look out and signalled to us all to kneel if a shark was near.  Like the one below.  It's behind you!

Or, in this case, it's above you!

I did find the view of Tinkerbell's teeth a little worrying when she was directly overhead but she was perfectly well behaved while we were visiting.  The Boy had our  camera and was trying to get a few up close, candid shots:

For a wee bit of authentic atmosphere, check out these videos The Boy took from inside the tank:

And then there's this one:

We had a tour of the shark pool and all it's wee nooks and crannies.  That meant jumping over the tunnel a couple of times.  Once again, the Deep Sea World guides made sure that our way was clear for jumping so that we didn't head butt a shark on the way over the top.  Here's me being ably assisted by Tina:

And here's the live action version:

Oops! I uploaded the wrong video, LOL.  Try this one:

Then it was The Boy's turn.  He managed to avoid the flat fish on top of the tunnel:

Naturally, The Boy couldn't resist messing about, he never can, so he posed for a few photos minus an air supply:

Eventually we went full circle and ended up back where we started so we ascended the rope to get back to the platform and out.

We enjoyed the experience so much we went back and did it all again in September.  The staff at Deep Sea World looked after us extremely well both times (Tina in April and Suzie in September) and the sharks are totally awesome, especially Tinkerbell. I cant wait to see the baby Angel Sharks in the flesh.  I've only seen photos so far.

Check out their Facebook page:  Deep-Sea-World on Facebook

First dive of 2012

Apologies for my lack of communication.  It's been almost 3 months.  Having a real job again has put paid to an awful lot of my leisure time.  So, what have I been up to since October?  This and that.  Apart from gifts for friends and family my jewellery making has mostly had to take a back seat for now, although I have had time to make a few new things.  The weather has been too awful for cycling and I don't have time to go to the gym any more.  I have still been diving - yes, at this time of year, in Scotland.  During November and December I was working towards my PADI Rescue diver certification.  As a result of achieving that and several other PADI specialities and having logged more than 50 dives I am also now a PADI Master Scuba Diver. Woohoo! Go me!

Don't think that because it's now officially winter the diving has stopped.  The Boy and I are still managing to dive every week or two.  We made sure we had enough full air cylinders to be able to dive throughout Christmas and New Year while we were on holiday.  On 2nd January eight of us had our first dive(s) of 2012.  The plan was to drive to The Slates at Ballachulish in the west of Scotland.  It's a former slate quarry and a pretty good dive site.  Even I can get in & out of the water there without too much trouble.

Sadly, the weather forecast was for snow at Ballachulish which meant the 3 hour drive could turn out to be impassible.  We had a bit of a confab and decided to try for St Catherine's on Loch Fyne instead. It's almost as long a drive but as long as we could get past the Rest and Be Thankful the road is more accessible.

When we set off it was cool, verging on cold, and damp.  It seemed no worse by the time we reached Arrochar so we carried on.  As we approached the Rest and Be Thankful pass the weather took a turn for the worse and the road started to look like this:

Thankfully, once we reached the other end of the pass the snow turned to rain and the journey was less of a white knuckle ride.  We drove through the village of St Catherine's and turned off on to the old road that serves as a parking area for the dive site.  As we were getting ready for our first dive the wind really started to get up and there were waves on Loch Fyne that looked more suited to surfing that scuba diving. Here we are getting into the water:

This little video taken by The Boy might give you a feel for the surf:

Once we descended into the loch it was a great dive.  We even went back in for a second dive.  There was a surprising amount of aquatic life to be seen.  There were the usual Squat Lobsters, from the teeny to huge ones. This was quite a big one:

There were Velvet crabs, Harbour crabs, Spider crabs, Hermit crabs in all shapes and sizes.  There were loads of fish, a lot more than I've seen in ages including this Ballan Wrasse:

and this Butter Fish that looks like it was posing for the photo: 

Then, on our way back to the surface at the end of our second dive we found a shoal of silvery fish, the first time I've seen more than a handful of fish in one place in Loch Fyne.  Apologies for the lighting in the video, I tried to provide light with my torch while The Boy filmed but, as usual, we weren't always looking in the same direction:

The water was a toasty 10 degrees centigrade compared with the barely above freezing temperature on the shore.  We didn't hang about getting changed. In fact, I packed away my drysuit, kept my thermals on and finally changed into real clothes in the car on the way to pub to fill in our log books.  The Rest and Be Thankful pass was at least being consistent on the way home:

Let's hope this is the start to a fantastic year's diving.

Diving Loch Creran Marine Conservation Area

A couple of weekends ago The Boy was scheduled to perform PADI Dive Master duties for the Aquatron Diving School.  As they were going to be diving in Loch Creran, which is a conservation area, I decided I'd tag along.  Loch Creran is a bit of a trek for us and would normally mean getting up at 5:30am to arrive in time for a 9:00am dive.  This time, The Boy suggested a nice, leisurely drive up on Saturday, a night dive and a stay in a B&B so that we could stay in bed longer on Sunday morning.  I couldn't begin to describe how happy I was at the thought of someone else cooking breakfast and making packed lunches for a change.  The Boy found The Loch Creran View B&B and I booked us a room.

On Saturday we drove to Glasgow to fill our air tanks at Aquatron's shop then we headed up the road to Loch Creran.  The sat nav took us straight to the door of the B&B even though it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere overlooking the Loch.  I was well  impressed at how clean and fresh everything was, especially the en-suite. We got ourselves settled into the room then changed into our thermals and headed off to the dive site.

It was starting to get dark when we arrived and the tide was out so we had a slightly longer walk than normal to reach the water.  Look how calm it was:

The water was perfectly clear once we got in and, unsurprisingly, we had the place to ourselves.  Loch Creran isn't too deep so we had a nice, long, fluffy dive taking photos of the assortment of aquatic life along the wall next to the shore.  As usual The Boy kept possession of the camera so the credit for any decent photos on here is his and his alone.

First we came across this pretty normal looking harbour crab sitting on the bottom.  I couldn't say whether it was responsible for all the shells around it being empty or not:

A little further on we met this velvet crab sporting what looks like a pretty, pink fascinator:

The wall was alive with Leachs Spider Crabs from teeny ones to fairly big ones.  Some of them were very hard to see until you got up close with a torch.  Here are a few:

You can see how they can blend in with the plant life, the way they are covered in pieces of sponge, etc....

Then there were gorgeous Sealoch Anemones like these ones:

Not sure if this humpty looking harbour crab, covered in barnacles is The Bad or The Ugly.  What do you think?

We were amazed to see a couple of these worms.  Normally, at the slightest hint of movement they suck all their flower-like tentacles into the tube below and hide so we must have been doing something right:

Ok, so if the barnacled harbour crab was The Ugly (I think it was) then these must be The Bad - a pair of moody looking, double decker crabs perched next to a Sea Orange.  The mood was provided by uplighting from The Boy's torch:

And here is a Long-Legged Spider Crab sitting above a Sealoch Anemone:

This little bloke here (a Spiny Squat Lobster) looked like he had furry legs and claws through my mask.  Isn't he a colourful wee chap?

There were also tons of scallops skipping about, opening and closing like wind-up false teeth and lots of little fish, ordinary squat lobsters, hermit crabs and Scampi.  I haven't mentioned all of the sea squirts and other marine life we saw as well.

After 45 minutes of diving we ended the dive with loads of air left and headed back to the Loch Creran View.  We changed back into our clothes and drove to the Hawthorn Restaurant in Benderloch, as recommended by our host, where we had a lovely evening meal to round off the night.

In the morning, we had the luxury of sleeping in until 7:30 (I used to think that was the middle of the night).  Our hostess, Edith, made us a full cooked breakfast and a huge packed lunch then we headed off to the loch again to dive with the school and experience more of the same stuff as the night before.

Towards the end of the day, these two swans appeared and came up to see what was going on.  I finally had control of the camera but, sadly, this was the only photo I managed to take before the batteries in the camera died.

Oh, I nearly forgot.  On the way back to shore after his last school dive (without a camera to record it because I was using it to photograph swans) a Thornback Ray swam underneath The Boy and his buddies.  Everyone except me seems to manage to see Thornback Rays.  One of these days.....

We had a great weekend, bliss for me as it involved no cooking whatsoever.  Will we be back? Yes I think so.

Visiting sad old ladies

Firstly, I have to apologise for not being around much lately.  I started a new job a couple of weeks ago and I've hardly had time to draw breath since between one thing and another.  One of those things being a diving weekend in the Sound of Mull organised by Martin at Ace Divers.  "So what does that have to do with sad old ladies?" I hear you ask.  Everything because most of our dives were exploring ship wrecks on the bottom of The Sound.  I had never dived a wreck before and what an introduction it was!

It took us around 3 hours to drive from central Scotland to the Lochaline Dive Centre and that included our ferry crossing and 20-odd miles driving up a single track road.  The Corran ferry must be the shortest ferry crossing ever. You barely get parked on deck and turn off the engine before it's time to drive off again.

We were meeting friends and staying in the bunk house at the Lochaline Dive Centre.  I had never stayed in a bunk house before so I was expecting something pretty basic, maybe just a step up from a tent.  I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped into our compact but bijou room.  It was very small but looked as if it had been freshly decorated and was very comfortable with it's tiled floor (with under floor heating), two bunks and en-suite toilet / shower room.

We arranged with the owner to have dinner later and headed out for a night dive at the West Pier.  The customers in the Lochaline Hotel were probably traumatised at the sight of a bunch of divers stripping off and getting kitted up outside their windows.

As you can see we had typical Scottish weather.  We had a nice, leisurely swim along a wall covered with all sorts of aquatic life then headed back to the bunk house.  I think we all expected burger & chips for dinner but we were treated to chicken breast stuffed with smoked bacon followed by cheese cake for dessert.  It wouldn't have been out of place in a high class restaurant.

The next morning we drove down to the harbour and loaded all our gear on board the Brendan, a dive boat that takes 12 divers.  David, the skipper, took us out to visit our first sad old lady, the SS Hispania, who was launched in 1912 and met her end in the Sound of Mull in December 1954.  She is thought to be the best Scottish wreck for diving outside of Scapa Flow.  We all changed into our drysuits and connected up our scuba gear then sat around the back of the boat until we arrived at the site.  It took a little longer than expected and we ended up doing a few Mexican waves with our fins while we waited.  More challenging than it sounds when you understand how little room there is to move once we're all kitted up.  The Hispania should only be dived on a slack tide to avoid the strong currents that can be present around her.  David, our skipper got the timing just perfect.  As The Boy and I were doing our PADI wreck diving speciality over the weekend the others let us go into the water first before anyone kicked up any silt.  We descended the line from the marker buoy and the first old lady came into view, much clearer and more spectacular than I had imagined.  A huge, green and yellow body started appear out of nowhere and seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, covered in over half a century's aquatic life.  This is me following The Boy around the wreck (he had control of the camera , as usual):

The PADI skills for the first dive weren't too complicated - swim around the wreck identifying potential hazards, maintain neutral buoyancy, navigate back to the ascent point, avoid touching the bottom.

We met a few Ballan Wrasse like the one in the photo.  They are very curious and will usually come up close for a good look at divers. When I got home I read up on the Hispania.  The author described what happened to him when he got the tides wrong.  When he exited the wreck the current nearly ripped his mask off his face and he had to grip the funnel and shimmy up it to reach the ascent line to prevent himself from being swept away.  Thank goodness our skipper read the tides perfectly.

David had the kettle on by the time we were all back on board and while we had lunch he set off to find our next sad, old lady, the SS Shuna.  She was built in 1909 so it wasn't long until she met her demise in May 1913 after hitting rocks in a storm.  It was looking a little overcast by the time we started our visit:

Things soon brightened up below the surface when we came across some of the old lady's friends, local wildlife:

That crab was huge - about a foot across (30cm in new money).

Ok, so the last photo is not so local wildlife.  Guess who? :o)  That looks like Martin's white mask below my arm.  I hadn't appreciated how much I look like an ad for ScubaPro. :D

PADI skills this time included swimming around the outside of the wreck identifying and avoiding potential hazards, mapping a wreck and marking points of interest, surveying a wreck for a penetration dive and evaluating possible entrances then navigating back to the ascent point.  David had the kettle on for us again when we reached the boat.

For our last dive of the day we had a nice, 'fluffy' dive along the wall at Calve Island.  We saw a couple of seals swimming along the shore as the boat approached the drop-off point but they hid from us once we were in the water.  This was my 50th dive so it was nice just to have a gentle, relaxing dive without having to demonstrate any skills.  There was long wall with lots of crevices hiding aquatic wildlife.  I did feel a little bit like a sheep dog by the end of the dive as we had been in buddy teams of 3 people all day and my 2 buddies (The Boy and Martin) both had cameras and kept wandering off trying to catch 'the' photo.  Thankfully The Boy is quite hard to lose as he has white fins that glow underwater.

After our last dive we headed to Tobermory where we were booked to stay the night:

After a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast it was back down to the harbour to board the Brendan again.  Our first dive of the day was a visit to the third old lady, the SS Rondo.  She started life in 1917 as the War Wonder (1), was renamed the Lithopolis, then the Laurie and in 1934 became the SS Rondo.  Ironically, in 1935,  she grounded on a lighthouse rock in the Sound of Mull then eventually slithered off the edge to land almost vertically in the water.  I was slightly worried about my encounter with her as the lowest part of her bodywork is at a depth of 50 metres, 20 metres deeper than I'm allowed to dive but I was worrying for nothing as she was extremely kind to us.  As dive number 3 in our PADI Wreck Speciality The Boy and I had skills to demonstrate - deployment & retrieval of a penetration line, for practice, on the outside of the wreck, swim along the penetration line without kicking up silt using a dive light and maintaining contact with the line, navigate back to the ascent point.  We also did a short 'swim through' in a gap between the vertical hull of the old lady and the rock face to practice following a penetration line.  If you look closely you can just see the penetration line on the right.  The air cylinder apparently wearing a fishnet stocking is mine.

Because of her vertical position in the water the Rondo is a very easy wreck to explore.  After we surfaced, David took us to a quiet bay while the air cylinders were refilled.  The sun was out and we did a spot of fishing and caught half a dozen mackerel.  We had lunch (not mackerel I hasten to add) and enjoyed the stunning scenery for a while then headed off to visit our last old lady, the SS Thesis.

The Thesis was launched in 1887 and a short time afterwards, in October 1889, she ran aground.  There is a section of the ship where the outer plating has been removed and the 'ribs' are exposed.  An ideal place to practice our last set of PADI skills, planning and performing a wreck penetration, laying and following the line without disturbing the silt and using a dive light.

After we'd done our skills I followed Martin out of the wreck and up a slope.  When I looked up to see where he was I was amazed to see a huge shoal of fish (probably saithe) swimming past right above us.  That was my first encounter with more than a handful of fish at one time.  As we explored the rest of the wreck, The Boy found a couple of Sea Hares and a conger eel poking it's head out of a pipe. To the untrained eye, ie, mine, the Sea Hares look like little pieces of curled up, red seaweed.  They are also tiny,

While we were photographing the Sea Hares a Ballan Wrasse came over to see what we were up to and hung around for a while having a good old look.  Here I am apparently doing a little underwater ballet:

We said goodbye to the Thesis and ascended the line to the boat.  That was our last dive of the weekend and were all tired, happy bunnies.  We had a slight detour on the way back to shore thanks to Nicola (aka The Dancing Queen and the only other female on the trip).  During her attempts to remove Lion's Mane jellyfish tentacles from her diving boots she dropped one overboard.  To his credit, David turned the boat round and went straight to the stray boot so it was reunited with its owner.

Afterwards David dropped us off at the pier in Lochaline so that we could pick up our cars and start the 3 hour drive back home.

Don't ever let anyone tell you it's not worth diving in Scotland.  Yes, there are times when the visibility can be bad but that can happen anywhere. And, yes you need to wear a full drysuit due to the water temperature but if I can cope with that anyone can.   I am in awe of what I see every time I dive.  When you're standing on the shore it's hard to imagine how much is going on under the surface of the water.