narked at 30!

Our club's resident mega-keen diver (Max from Nevada) was enthusiastic to go diving on Saturday so I had my arm twisted & took him (it didn't take much persuasion to be honest)! We decided to make an early start to the day so that we'd hopefully get back home before the afternoon was over. So we met at our 07:30 and made good time: arriving at Conger Alley at the north end of Loch Long before 09:00.

We'd already rigged up our kit before leaving, so I turned on the hazard lights and stopped the car right beside the site to unload our rigs. Then drove on to the caravan site entrance, hung a U-turn & parked in the trusty big lay-by. Nobody else was parked there although there was a white van along at the "parking space of death" beside the white wall. Turned out that they were 2 divers from Hamilton ScotSAC club. We got suited & booted, decided upon our dive plan & made our way to the entry point. Everyone (including the Hamilton guys) was instructed to look for Gus' lost blue knife but to no avail.

Our plan was to head down towards the bottom reef and then zig-zag back through the standard reef. I would practise deploying my new dSMB. During the buddy check it transpired that Max's suit inflation hose was a bit dodgy: he had to push the hose towards the valve to allow it to work. Although not ideal, we decided that it wasn't worth curtailing the dive for as it was inconvenient but not unmanageable.

We submerged at 09:39. Viz was crystal in the shallows. Going a bit deeper the viz was about 5m: not as good as reported the previous week. I led us down to our max depth of 31m and we swam in the direction where the reef should be. Unfortunately the viz at this depth dropped dramatically to less than 1m.

We didn't reach the reef. Max attracted my attention & pointed to his suit inflation hose which had become detached from the suit valve. I approached him & we knelt facing each other. We were at 30m at this point. I had a go at reattaching it but it was tricky. I was trying to manipulate it with my left hand and the hose was quite short meaning that there was very little slack to play with. I spent a couple of minutes trying to complete this task but then decided that the best course of action was to head up the slope: after all, Max shouldn't need to pump air into his suit if we were ascending. I stopped us again at 25m and completed the task quite quickly and easily.



I can only assume that there were a few factors that conspired to make me unsuccessful with my first attempt at reattaching Max's hose.

1. Max is a recently qualified diver so I thought it would be better to rectify the problem sooner rather than later to avoid any stress: this put some psychological pressure on me.
2. We were at depth meaning that I felt under time pressure due to air consumption & deco limits.
3. The viz was almost zero.
   
4. Although I didn't feel mentally impaired, I was obviously not as dexterous as normal. This is backed up by the fact that upon ascending slightly up the slope, the task was completed easily.
   
5. I therefore conclude that I was affected by nitrogen narcosis brought on by physiological & psychological factors.
   

This is interesting as I didn't perceive any signs of being narked. I didn't feel tipsy or euphoric & I have a good recollection of events. I guess it's a level of narcosis that could be compared to one or two Martinis on an empty stomach!

Anyway, once Max's hose was sorted out he informed me that he was down to 100 bar. So no time to linger. We followed the slope, hitting the regular reef en route including the hiding spots of a couple of conger eels. I'd promised Max some congers, so at least that part went to plan!

I deployed my new yellow Kent Tooling CO2 dSMB from about 8m. It was an absolute doddle. The finger spool was also easy to use by means of a double-ended bolt snap for reeling in the line. Should be great as a back-up on boat dives.



The 2nd dive was a typical Conger Alley one. Found the regular reef without any bother. Headed to the north margin of it and decided to go down the slope in search of the deeper reef. Went to 26.5m but no sign of it. Were we too far north? Will need to explore this again some other time.

Saw some nice congers and the ubiquitous group of friendly ballan wrasse. Max had his first chance at deploying a dSMB and completed it well. He dealt with the reel adeptly. I practised firing up my yellow one using bubble inflation this time. Not quite as quick as the CO2 canister method but still fine.


All together it was a useful day's diving. We also got back to Stirling at about 15:00 which is probably a SUSAC record!

Just incredible that the site was so quiet on such a beautiful day.

easy access to island diving

Sarah & I had a couple of fantastic dives at the weekend in the Firth of Forth. It was maybe just as well that we weren't fully aware in advance of the accidental sewage discharge from Seafield. Upon discussing the issue on the boat, nobody seemed too concerned. Certainly, Sarah and I have probably built up an efficient specific immune response to many of the nasty coliform pathogens through our veterinary work over the years.

We were booked on a trip organised by Chris on congeralley.com. The charter boat was the Pegasus of Dive Safari Scotland with Brian as our skipper. We arrived in Dunbar at 9am and made our way to the harbour, unloading our kit on the quayside. The access to the boat was the easiest that I've had recently: all that was involved was carrying the kit down some stone steps to the boat's deck. Everyone got their kit loaded in good time to allow ropes off at 10am. It was interesting to be on the water in Dunbar harbour rather than within it as on our last visit there!

The cruise to the Isle of May took about an hour & was a pleasant calm trip with little swell. The boat seemed to skim along at a good rate of knots. Upon arrival, we pitched up at the scene of the sinking of the SS Island. There's little of the wreck to see under water - just a few plates & boilers - much of the wreckage has actually made its way onto the rocky shore! Sarah & I buddied up and made our stride entries, descending in about 15m depth. I led the dive & we immediately happened upon a couple of the metal plates that were easy to spot in the visibility of approx 10m. They weren't very spectacular with little or no colonisation so I decided to take us away from the shore to get some depth so that we could get a reasonable 2nd dive without worrying about a reverse profile. Moving away from the shore, the rocks became covered in a carpet of brittlestars somewhat reminiscent of our dive 2 weeks ago in Loch Melfort. However, periodically there were little oases within this desert usually in the form of beautiful multicoloured anemones. Having missed out on photographing the anemones at Diver's Hole the weekend before, I resolved to redeem myself and became a compulsive anemone photographer on this diving day!


Our planned max depth was 25m so on reaching 23.1m I decided to return towards the island. The water temperature varied from 6.8-9°C. There was a mild drift which dragged us to and fro and we made our way back in a leisurely fashion, spotting one of the largest starfish that I've seen, with a puny brittlestar perched on its back.


Eventually we got back to the rocky walls and gullies marking the shoreline. There was some colonisation here with deadmen's fingers. I led us through some of the gullies and managed to lose sight of Sarah at one point which wasn't a pleasant experience. I think that she was slightly above me at the time making it hard to spot her. She got a bit cold so we headed up to the top of the gullies & I inflated my dSMB. I used my new Buddy Blast air horn which also acts as an air nozzle under water. It was really easy to use as I could stick the whole apparatus within the baffle of the bag and activate it by squeezing it within the material. We surfaced very close to shore so had to swim out towards open water for the boat to pick us up. The diver lift was an absolute joy: what an easy way to get onto a boat (especially with twin 12s)!

After the dive we cruised alongside the island with the local populations of puffins and seals proving captivating. It was then full steam ahead towards the Bass Rock with lunch eaten en route.

The Bass Rock offers spectacular wall diving. We approached the north cliff face and dropped in to free fall alongside the cliff. There was a shelf at about 17m which we swam along to our max depth of 20m. The visibility was about 8m, the dive being a bit darker than the morning's (hopefully not due to sewage!). However, there was much more life on offer. Some beautiful spiny squat lobsters, large velvet swimming crabs and multiple anemones were on tap. I spotted a butterfish & the toothy mouth of a fish that I couldn't identify unfortunately before it receded into its crack. From the shelf, we returned to the wall and drifted along it. Sarah was fortunate enough to see a free-swimming octopus; I only saw its ink trail - she must have scared it! The profusion of life on the wall was glorious. This was a first class dive & one that I would like to repeat soon, maybe heading a bit further down the wall next time (it goes down to 46m apparently).

Once everyone was safely back onboard, we made our way back to port. Everyone seemed elated with the day's diving. We all seemed to agree that visiting the Isle of May was highly prized but the Bass Rock took the biscuit (actually, a whole box of Twixes that the skipper kindly supplied for our delectation)!

more photos
stewart's video (watch out for Sarah on the diver hoist at the very end: smiley!)