The Caves, Loch Long, Dive 89, 26th September 2006.
Dived with a top bloke who I had never met before, Paul Hindley the DO of Atherton SAA Club.
We are in the middle of a new printing services project at work and Paul works for the supplier Oce’. Paul and I had a quick chat last week on the phone, discovered we both dived and arranged to go a wee dive after work.
Left work, got Paul’s gear from the hotel and off we headed to the Caves at Loch Long.
This was the first time I had led a dive at the Caves and my first time diving with Paul who has over thirty years diving experience so I was a little nervous.
I forgot my hood and gloves which didnt get us off to a good start, luckily Paul had spare gloves and I had dived Crotia at 13oC without a hood so decided to give it a try anyway.
It was getting very dark when we got to the Caves at 18:30 hours. I set up a strobe and weighted it down near the entrance / exit. the tide was out and it was a clear night.
Diving the twin 12’s manifolded with EAN32 and Paul was diving a single 15 with Air.
We did a simple buddy check going through all kit and I gave Paul a brief of the site from memory, explained that we would go down to about 25 metres, keep the reef on our left and after about 20 minutes we would come across the scree slope and follow it up to around 12 metres then turn and head back, planned runtime around 40 minutes.
Nice little dive almost exactly to plan, with one minor incident that we should have spotted during the buddy check!
On descent at six metres Paul noticed he hadnt connected his drysuit inflator hose, so I went behind him and passed it round, he connected it whilst submerged and away we went to contiue the dive. I was kicking myself for this as I had initiated the buddy check and should have noticed that!
The dive was pretty good with a fair amount of crabs, prawns, a free swimming conger, plenty Gobbi’s and teh usual scenec undersea cliff faces with the anenomes. After 22 minutes at 25 metres we came across the scree slope exactly as planned, we ascended to 12 metres and turned to head back along the shallower reefs. At 39 minutes we found the strobe done our safety stop and surfaced.
All the gear in the car and back to Paul’s hotel for a quick pint, a lovely wee evening dive well worth the afterwork chill time.
Dive 89: 19:05 entry, Duration 44 Mines, Max Depth 26.5 Metres Viz 3-10 Metres (In torch as it was dark, this is normal at the caves).
Total dive time to date: 61 Hours 16 Minutes.
