Jules and H do Abbs with New Horizons

[HelenM]

[First posted in May 2004 - pre 'The Great Crash of '04]

New Horizons were my school / club / place-to-dispose-of-all-spare-income when I lived up in Cheshire. I’ve stayed in touch with them, and they always run excellent & well organised trips – and it’s always good to catch up with the people I know up there. I’d signed up for this one much earlier in the year, and when hearing that they had a space asked Jules if she fancied it. Given that she is really not bad for an honorary Northerner, I was delighted when she said that she could. Since I’d found us the trip, I tried to Abb-dicate all responsibility for writing this report to Jules, but unfortunately she wouldn’t play ball, so I’m doing the words, and she’s doing the music (well, the pics anyway – you can find them in the underwater photography forum [assuming she re-posts them]). I think that’s quite Abb-horrent of her, but we had such an Abb-solutely excellent time that I am just Abb-out prepared to Abb-solve her. Oh God, somebody please make this stop… .


It’s a fair old hike from Cheltenham via Huddersfield to Eyemouth, so we didn’t make it up there until pretty late. We got to The Ship pub in Eyemouth on Friday night to find that some of the guys I knew from a Plymouth trip earlier in the year had very kindly ensured that we had made it onto the pick of the boat trips. Cheers boys! We were to be on the second wave on Saturday, and on Sunday we were on the first boat – meaning both that we could do the Glanmire (woohoo) and I could get an early dart for my long trip home. Result. Having sussed that we were sorted on that front, and had a quick drink with the guys we were diving with, I was pretty anxious to go and grab some food as I’d eaten the square root of sweet FA all day. It was at this point I realised that food is not exactly easy to come by in Eyemouth later in the evening – even the chippie was shut! I was starting to look hungrily at the seagulls, but fortunately Jules managed to find a Chinese takeaway, so the town was spared the sight of little Miss Mutter trying to wrestle with a bird the size of a small pig. We toddled back to our B&B (Redhall Cottages – v nice place with great rooms, top brekkies and a drying room) to devour this, crack open some wine and allow Jules to set up the strobe she’d hired from New Horizons. She took the ‘odd one or two’ pics of a trainer before she was happy… Honestly, I’ve seen fewer flashes in an ultra-dubious nightspot. Once that was sorted, we guzzled more wine, chatted and laughed before conking out ready for the next day of diving.

Saturday
Although on the second boat we really didn’t fancy missing out on a parking spot at the harbour in Abbs, so it was up at 7am for brekkie and a scoot up (up? down? Geography not a strong point!) to Abbs. Once we were down there Jules took the additional time we had to fiddle around with the strobe a bit more with the able assistance of a couple of guys who are keen photographers. I’m sure she’d want me to pass on special thanks to Neil for all his help and advice…

We got all our kit sorted, had a very civilised pot of tea and were generally very smug about the fact that we were on the second boat of the day. When the time came, we all toddled down to the boat – loaded out kit on board and motored off to the first dive site of the day. We were on the ‘Selkie’ (a mythical seal for those who are interested in such things), Pete Gibson’s boat, and were lucky to have him – the boat was ideal, and he was a top skipper – but more of that later.

The first dive of the weekend was ‘Black Carr’, a lovely site, and a great welcome to Abbs for me – I’d not dived there before this weekend. There were fabulous and intricate gullies laced with an absolute profusion of life. We had a lovely dive, viz was about 15m, we were enjoying ourselves seeing what we could spot in terms of ‘little stuff’ and Jules had fun playing around with her camera and strobe. Safety stop featured plenty of general amusement too – those who follow such things will be entertained to know that Jules has now added the ‘Funky Chicken’ to her repertoire of deco-dances. I swear we each wasted 30 bar on every dive with cases of the giggles. We came back onto the boat after just over an hour with grins a mile wide. In the general post dive excitement, one of the others said that she’d seen five (count ‘em) Octopus. Since we’d not noticed any Jules and I put this one firmly into the ‘must try harder’ box, and resolved to see what we could spot on the next trip out.

Back to Springbank cottage for butties and tea, and then in the afternoon we headed off to ‘West Hurker’ for our second dive of the day. This was a gorgeous site, more gullies and a huge pinnacle. We saw huge shoals of fish, nudibranchs, etc etc, but I was on a mission. I wanted to claim an Octopus sighting! About 35 mins into the dive, persistence in looking into every tiny crevice finally paid off – there was a very contented little Octopus curled up. Jules got exceptionally excited at this point – she’d not seen one before and now developed a new little dance routine to celebrate. With our mission accomplished, we kept moseying round cheerfully. About five or ten minutes later I was waiting for Jules to finish lining up a shot when I spied a little tentacle with suckers on it. I gestured to her to come and take a look, and she got a quick photo and lowered the camera. At this point the Octopus took umbrage at being watched so intently and made a bolt for it…I’ve not seen one of these little guys free-swimming before and got unreasonably excited about it. They can shift. Abbs was now treated to two women doing underwater dances. Glad there weren’t any of the others in sight at this point! Back on the boat at 65 mins (after giving the Funky Chicken plenty on the safety stop), and this time we were the ones babbling about Octopus sightings… and ours was ‘free-swimming’, and IMHO therefore much better! We babbled on about this all the way back to the harbour, and I believe that the subject also came up once or twice over dinner didn’t it Martin? :laugh:

Grub and bevies on Saturday night were at the Red Lion in Reston, who gave us top nosh, and did an admirable job of dealing with the 24 of us. Highly recommend this place.

Sunday

At 6.15am I was presented with a far-too-chipper Jules prancing round the room making tea and delivering blackcurrant squash (to me). Those of you who know me well will be aware that I couldn’t generally be described as a morning person. I was huddled under the covers, making a sterling effort to contain my cantankerous instincts, right up to the point at which Jules danced up next to me and lined up her camera – with attached strobe – by my face. Imagine my delight. At this point the list of reasons not to be buddied with a photographer increased by one.

Eventually, I managed to convince myself that the Glanmire would be worth levering myself out of bed for, got my stuff sorted sharpish, went to brekkie in order to gloat about our (by now legendary) free swimming Octopus again, and once more we headed off to Abbs.

Down at the harbour we loaded our tanks onto the boat and headed off for the Glanmire. I’d heard a lot about this wreck, and it didn’t disappoint. This was also where Pete Gibson really came into his own. Another couple of skippers hadn’t quite waited for slack and had tried to get their divers in the water first – they were pretty much all pulled off the wreck – not least because they pulled the shotline off it on the way down. Pete asked us to hold fire until he called slack, and in the meantime re-shotted the wreck for us, telling us that the shot was on the boilers, but that if we pulled it off then we should take a bearing of 120. As Jules and I descended we found that the shot was actually only one metre away from the boilers at 31m. Don’t think you can ask a skipper for any more than that really! We started to head around the wreck, admiring her atmospheric nature and the huge amounts of life. I really liked this wreck, and I’m not sure that I can explain why – I look forward to heading back and having a poke around the bits we didn’t get to this time.

One of the many reasons that I like buddying Jules so much is that she has an uncanny ability to understand exactly what I mean when I start making up signals as I go. We were having a very animated little chat underwater – so much so that when we got back on the Selkie we were asked by those who’d seen us if we had been either a) having a huge row underwater or b) narked out of our little boxes. Actual truth was much simpler – we were just agreeing an amendment to our dive plan. When the time came, Jules sent up her SMB and we headed back to the boat. I did feel for those on the second wave who wouldn’t get the chance to have a look around this cracking wreck on this particular trip.

In the afternoon, we were a couple of divers down, so Jules and I were joined by NeilM (who I see we have persuaded out of lurk mode) and the three of us dived together. The site was ‘Ebb Carr’, a series of pinnacles. Again these provided us with the astonishing amount of life I had now come to expect from Abbs. Steve pointed out a wolf-fish to Jules, but unfortunately I think it was a bit photoshy. A really lovely dive. Neil was initiated into the Jules and H ‘make up yer signals as you go’ culture and proved a real trooper in this respect. About halfway into our dive Jules started to give me an underwater rollicking for failing to Octopus spot. Suitably chastised, I started looking, but unfortunately Neil spotted one first. The score was now Helen 2, Neil 1, and Jules – well let’s be charitable to the poor blind woman and just gloss over that bit shall we? . And besides, one of mine was free-swimming and therefore worth a lot more! We treated our new buddy to the Funky Chicken on the safety stop, but unfortunately he didn’t seem inclined to join in. We’ll get him doing it next time… We broke surface at exactly 60mins, broad grins pasted across all three faces.

So then it was back to shore – kit off the boat, and – as all weekend – everyone chipped in and worked as a team to get this sorted. Once all the kit was back in cars, it was time for a final tea at Springbank Cottage, reluctant farewells, and time to hit the road.

Anyway, how would I sum up our weekend? Great diving, super company, top bunch of people, all in all ABB-solutely FABB-ulous. Sorry, I’ll get mi coat

(Just before I finish this report, I should just check - did I mention the FREE SWIMMINGOctopus? Good, didn’t want to miss that one out!)

Cheers all – but especially Jules for being a fab buddy, Martin for giving me hugely funny flack about the Octopus and Neil for being strobe guru to Jules.

Tootle pip

H

[paul-gte]

well done on a really good trip report , take note fellow YDers a standard has now been set .
cheers paul

[Jules]

ok so here are the illustrations....
octopus (not free swimming at this stage but no doubt able to swim when it puts it's mind to it...)




H failed to mention the zillions of jelly fish that were around..




Helen

[Neil M]

Nice pics...

Did that photo of me come out??? (or did the lens crack - before either of you 2 say it......)

Cheers
Neil

[Scuba1]

And verry nice pics. It must have been a verry strong octopus to swimm arround with all that seabed stuck to it.

Michael

[parahandy]

Nice photos, hard to beat that camera Jules