I had been looking forward to this weekend of diving for around a month when Dave (Key Lime Pie) from YD said he fancied coming up and I had a chat with Jenny and she said she would come up too.

They both arrived on Friday night and we settled down early after a couple of beers and mugs of Tea, we agreed that we would just go do some easy shore dives around Loch Fyne as the visibility is normally much better than Loch Long and that due to the weather forecasts had less chance of being blown out.

The Bawbag’s Stew (YD - Stew) , Fran (YD - Fran) , Chris, Gerry and Sponge bob where also rumoured to be heading out on Sunday so it had potential to be a fun weekend of diving.

Left the flat at 8.30 am, car loaded to the brim with seven cylinders all the gear and the three of us minus my computer which we went back for. It takes around 2 1/2 hours to get to Furnace from my place at a sedate speed.

When we arrived I had told Jenny & Dave all about the large jump entry and off course I hadn’t checked tide tables so it was only when we arrived we realised we had a Lunar eclipse due that night on spring high tide so instead of a 3-4 metre jump entry we had a very tame one metre stride from the concrete wall, not only that but all the tales id told of lugging kit over the fence and down to the pier where shown for the pack of rubbish they were as the Quarry gates lay wide open to let us drive right down to the dive site.

Furnace Dive: - 122 Start Time: 03/02/2007 11:22 Max Depth: 25.8 Metres Water Temp 9oC Air In:234Bar Air Out: 142 Bar Duration: 41 Minutes

In we went off the jump and down to our left, pottled about, found a rather large Anenome, lots of Squatties, Sun Stars, Common Star fish and a large Wrasse who followed us around for a while.

Great clear waters with visibility at some point ten metres plus. I led the dive as planned to 20 Metres +/- 5 Metres and for 40 minutes. My suit stayed dry and warm, my buoyancy pretty good considering I was mucking about with a camera for the first time, I took lots of photos, I even published a small collection over on YD in the photography forum.

Dave & Jenny looked happy and the climb out was pretty easy.

During the surface interval the rain poured down for about 30 minutes while we sat in the car and ate our lunch, chatting about our nice wee dive.

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Furnace - Dive: 123 Start Time: 03/02/2007 13:29 Max Depth:19.8 Metres Water Temp: 9oC Air In: 138 Bar Air Out: 69 Bar Duration: 43 Minutes

When the sun came out and we had around an hours interval we started kitting up, ready to jump in and head off to the right, keeping the reef on our right side till we turned the dive.

Again nice visibility around 8-10 Metres, a lovely dive, the underwater seascape at Furnace is always very pretty and its amazing how different the two dives can be from the same entry point.

I took a couple of photos of Dave (His 100th logged dive!) Congratulations Dave!

& Jenny (not that clear)

Lots more crabs on this side of the dive and a lovely sea snail with bright white body with blue spots although my battery was flat at this point and Neither I nor Jenny managed to get a picture of the little red anenome near the end of the dive.
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After the days diving we packed the car and drive off to the Argyle Caravan Park which is only 5 minutes drive from Furnace, we got our tanks filled with AIR from the QMS Dive shed, The QMS lads are friendly and open seven days a week, if they are not around when you arrive on site just call the number in the window and they will be along shortly. The Air costs £3 a cylinder and although the website advertised NITROX, none was available.

After sorting out the cylinders for the next days diving we headed off to the George hotel in inverary for the customary bowl of soup.

We drove back to Hamilton, got showered and headed out for a wee Ruby Murray and a quick pint before settling down for the night.