Corrywreckan and Torrans Trip Wednesday 20th to Sunday 24th August.
Seven full days of challenging diving with a group of 12 made up of divers from the NE Region BSAC and a group from North Wales. For me there were several old faces whom I had met on previous expeditions to Scotland. The trip was organised by Andy Hunt of the Newcastle branch. The idea of week was to give experienced divers some really challenging dives. Andy certainly did that.
The most challenging dive was the Corrywreckan. Only on a neap slack for about 20 minutes do the whirlpools and up and down currents melt away. On the first day of visiting there was too much wind which made it very difficult to judge the tide. On the second day conditions were ideal. Dave Ainsley (from whose boat we did all our diving) issued clear instructions; “At the first whiff of current put up your SMB. You should get 20 minutes”. One the signal the divers rolled over the side and drifted towards the shot line. Then the surface was clear. They had all submerged. Now it was like Houston Control must have felt as the space craft Apollo passed behind the moon those many years ago. No communication just waiting. Just a watery blackness. Then almost to the minute, up popped the SMB’s like a litter of kittens being born. All safe, and eventually on board.
The other days and dives were excellent. The visibility was very good, but this did cause a problem in that seaweed was to be found prolifically down to 20 metre.
The weather on the last few days was remarkable. My memory of our last days having dived the Torrans was returning through a sunny, windless, glassy sea of the Firth of Lorn, with Minke whales surfacing and diving all around us, groups of sea birds bobbing up and down in the swell as if out on a Sunday picnic. Behind us a trail of smoke undisturbed trailing back in a straight line as far as the eye could see.
I cannot finish without saying something about the cooking ‘amazing’ and the jigsaws which seemed to occupy most of our evenings ‘Very challenging’.
Thanks: to Rohan & Kirsten, Iain, Ewan, Ruth, Nick& Sabrina, Neal & Mary and Andy Ffiona for the excellent company and great diving, to Dave Ainsley, skipper of the Porpoise, for putting us in the right place safely.
