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”
Inverinate, Loch Duich – June 2013
This was the second of two very different dives in one day in neighbouring Sea Lochs – Loch Duich and Loch Carron. The first dive had been earlier in the day at Conservation Bay, Loch Carron (the subject of a future blog entry!).
The morning’s dive had been stunning and our expectations of Inverinate were ‘realistic’ since it is so much further into Loch Duich than Conservation Bay is into Loch Carron. This generally makes for less current and less life to see, although we were very pleasantly surprised and impressed with our first dive at this site. Continue reading “Inverinate, Loch Duich – June 2013”