Without a shadow of a doubt 2013 has been one of the best years for diving I have had since I took up the sport seven or so years ago. I quickly totalled up the number of dives I have done since the start of the year and discovered that I have just completed number 88 with a third of it still to go! The vast majority of these have been around Scotland and I already have a sizeable backlog of blog posts to sort for these. The backlog has however just become significantly larger as I have been lucky enough to spend the past few weeks enjoying some amazing diving in the much warmer waters around the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and Bali.
Continue reading “Bunaken Island – Sulawesi, Indonesia – July 2013”
Skelly Hole, St. Abbs – July 2013
The St. Abbs VMR is a dependable spot for some nice, easy scenic diving and since Summer seemed to finally arrive at the start of July, seven of us decided to make the most of the great weather and booked spaces for the weekend on Paul Crowe’s boat the Tiger Lilly.
We dived West Hurker and Tye’s Tunnel (which I haven’t dived in years) on the Saturday and then started Sunday’s diving with a dive at Skelly Hole.
This isn’t a dive to be attempted on a day where there is any swell as the boat has to be maneuvered into a fairly tight spot to drop you off. It’s reasonably shallow too so any wave action would turn it into a fairly good approximation of a dive in a washing machine. Fortunately we had two warm days with reasonably light offshore winds and conditions were ideally suited to attempt this site.
Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne – January 2013
This was my my first ever visit to this site and my second dive of the year on a very chilly but calm day back in January. We followed another of the dive guides over on the Finstrokes website which was typically spot on with all the details. We came across one solitary Dogfish shortly after setting off and I snapped a pic of it just in case it turned out to be the only one we saw. Ten minutes later and we were literally finding piles of them! Continue reading “Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne – January 2013”
Conservation Bay, Loch Carron – June 2013
When you read rave reviews about dive sites you always take them with a pinch of salt. One reason is that there are as many different opinions of what constitutes a good dive as there are divers. With this in mind and having done a fair amount of research it was time to dive Conservation Bay and form my own opinion!
Conservation Bay is situated along the north shore of the Strome Narrows near the mouth of Loch Carron. It is just to the west of the very picturesque North Strome, itself the site of a couple of shore dives which I have yet to explore. Continue reading “Conservation Bay, Loch Carron – June 2013”