My God! A weekend when I’m not working and have no diving plans – what’s going wrong?? So off I go posting to see if anyone fancies a dip on the east coast o’ bonnie Scotland (albeit perilously close to England!) at St. Abbs. One rapid response from Dave and a few maybe’s from a couple of others and a time of 9am (urgh) Saturday morning is arranged
Now, due to a little concern over parking availability, I’m for once organized and on the road at 7:30am, due to arrive at St. Abbs for 8:30 and grab 2 parking spaces with a tactical bad parking maneuver. 9am comes and goes, and after a few calls and jokes along the lines of “You re-enacting Driving Miss Daisy?” and “Really, turning up with empty cylinders” Dave and co arrive “slightly” late….. And yes, before a certain someone says anything I admit my timekeeping can be a little erm, lax :turtle:
Well, we sort a rough plan and Dave organizes a trip on Billy’s boat (
http://www.divecentrestabbs.com) :yelclap: . We’ve got some time to kill so Dave stuffs his face and jokes about feeding the fish start to fly. We watch a few other boats come in and comment on the lovely, caring procedure of hauling the kit up the harbour wall – crunch, scrape and bang – we decide to load up the old fashioned way, and I question the logic of climbing down a ladder onto the boat with a 15l + 3l pony strapped to my back! :pity_party:
Well, soon we are steaming out of the harbour and welcome of a cool breeze after baking in our drysuits :smilie_anim: (or in the case of one brave individual – a semidry!). Five minutes later, we kit up, buddy check and jump in. Dave and Mark drop in and as I’m about to join them Billy moves the boat! So a short surface swim later, we are back and ready to drop down as a four.
Going down, the viz is pretty good. We get a little muddled as I start to lead off and Dave has stayed by Mark (later we get the comment – “I wondered where your pony bottle went!” :rofl2
but we get sorted and head off. 10-12m over rocks covered with deadmens fingers and strange worm like things on them (any ideas folks?) and every knook and cranny is poked, prodded or illuminated. I lead off south and just see the back end of a large, metre long fish (brown, with a small triangular dorsal – dunno) disappear through some rocks.
Next comes one of the best bits. Following the current, we find a gulley with 5-8m high walls on each side and about 2m wide. The current fires each of us through – what a ride! This opens onto a boulder strewn area which drops down to 18m. As we pass though a thermocline everything goes hazy, then “Who turned out the lights?” I look up and massive schools of fish (must be more than 250) go past and back round past again. Shining the light on the fish splits the school in two, which then reforms and heads off again. :shocked:
I have never seen so many large fish (each about a foot long) in one place in Scotland. Wow! We keep on south and play up an undercut cliff for a while until Dave shows me just over 50bar. So I whack out the dSMB (bright yellow of course!) and the dodgy reel I was given free. A minute later, and many swear words though the reg I find out why the reel was free. So collecting the slack in my hand we do a bluewater ascent. :rambo: At 5m, suddenly out of nowhere, a flotilla of jellyfish appear to keep us company, including one of those funky, pulsating shiny ones…
Back on the boat, we meet up with Dave and Mark, each exchanging wide eyed stares, “did you see…..” and smiles so large no reg would fit!
We get back and decide to go for Cathedral after a SI of bacon butties and coffee, kindly provided by Alison (Billy’s wife) in the shelter of her conservatory as the heavens open wide. Just as we think it’s going to be wet and miserable for the second dive, out pops the sun.
So we kit back up and wander round, with the :oldman: leading the way until he has to stop for a breather! We get round and in to find the current is going at a fair rate (about 2 hours past slack) and head off. Things go slightly wrong as last time I was at St. Abbs, I went to Cathedral via the far side of Broad Craig. Thinking this would be too hard with the current and to conserve air, we follow the harbour south and cut through underwater at Little Green Carr.
Oh bugger, the current here flows in a totally different way to what I was expecting and start to wonder about my sense of direction. :jpshakehead: We perceiver for about 10 mins thought thick kelp and narrow gulleys (anyone see the dead cod in there?) until my sudden massive arm movements indicate the Holy Grail. :jump013: A massive 5m arch opens up in front of us.
I head on though, a little nervous (well, overhead environment!) and stare in disbelief at all the soft corals and leave the three others to play in there. On the other side I make a new friend. A foot long spotted wrasse circles me, playing in the beam of my torch (and no, St. Abbs is a conservation area so no urchins were involves!) for a good 5 mins. Bliss :ogle:
Suddenly, as I approach the opening, the SECOND school of fish appears over the rocks at the entrance. Same type as before but only about 100 or so this time. We head out and back to the harbour, seeing more life on the way (what was that thin, silver fish we saw?) and again Dave and I play with the reel and head up…
F*kin’ ell! How did we get here? We surface on the inside of Thistle Brigs and swim in,. Fortunately now the current is with us and helps. After playing in the waves we scramble out only to see Dave and Mark surface right at the entry! We soon find out however just where they got to and how they got back……
Next time guys, we should follow the wall out to the angular rocks, go through Cathedral and return via the far side – it’s cracking diving round there if you get it right.
Well, another long walk, a slow dekitting and we agree it’s a must-do-this-again-soon dive – No worries chaps, how about Sun 7th or Sat 20th/Sun 21st July? Just need to let the Wow! Muscles recover….. :ogle: