Dive Trip – St.Abbs 15th -17th July 2005

Dive Organiser and Leader Jeff Owen, Participants Hilary Boliss, Steve Slade, Heather Ogden, Paul Cooke, Steve Taylor, Dave White.

People have said that returning to a place for a second time is not always as good as first time around. I can say that this was certainly not the case for this trip.

I had been fortunate to go to St Abbs back in April, and although the consensus from our more experienced members was that it wasn't the best trip (for a host of reasons), I was more than happy to accept an offer from Jeff to go again.

Things didn't start too well as it took me over 6 hours to get there on the Friday. I arrived about 10pm, met up with the rest of the group in the bar, and after a couple of beers, soon forgot about the journey.

We discussed dive plans for the weekend and organised buddy pairs; Hilary was mine.

Saturday morning saw us headed down to St.Abbs harbour - conditions were perfect - clear blue sky, no wind, and the water, looking extremely inviting, was still and clear.

First dive was going to be to Big Green Carr. We walked around the harbour wall and entered the water. We made our way through the kelp and dived gently down to around 5m. Visibility was very good, and we soon came across several different forms of jelly fish - cone and bell shaped. Continued onto Big Green Carr and slowly made our way around the rock. Incredible variety of anemones and crustations and those jelly fish seemed to be everywhere.

Continued round the rock bumping into the two Steves on our way. Depth was now around 10m and visibility was still good - but had seen little other forms of marine life.

We surfaced on the far side of the rock and took a leisurely surface swim back to shore. Have to say this was brilliant; sun was shining, extremely warm and couldn't think of a better way of relaxing slowly drifting back to shore.

Having enjoyed the dive, Hilary suggested that we go to Cathedral rock for our next dive. Having not done this before, I was quite excited (how sad is that?). However, disaster struck - on entering the water my octopus free flowed so vigorously that by the time Hilary and I had managed to stop the flow (by turning off my air) I had just over 130 bar left. As you may know, my air consumption rate is not the best, so we agreed not to take the risk of heading out towards Cathedral rock.

Instead, I took the opportunity to sunbathe back at the car park. It was then we witnessed possibly one of the longest swims/dives in the history of the club. Heather and Paul had set off to Cathedral rock and on their return had somehow misread compass bearings, as they surfaced on the other side of Gull rock - some 300-400 metres away. Both were OK, albeit shattered.

Jeff meanwhile had arranged to dive later that evening to the wreck of the Glanmire. A charter boat took divers out to the site at a cost of only £10.00 per diver. More important to Jeff was that the boat was fitted with a hydraulic lift which raised divers out of the water and onto the deck. Not sure if this facility is available for RIBs? Jeff made it to the wreck but wasn't too impressed, mainly due to fact they had a long wait in the boat due to tide conditions and also visibility was quite poor.

The following day, Hilary and I agreed to go to Cathedral Rock again. Whilst walking round harbour wall Hilary met someone she knew who kindly gave us the compass bearings for the rock. To ensure I had enough air, Hilary recommended that we surface swim out as far as possible and then dive rest of the way. Surface swim was much further than it looked, but make it I did and we dived. Again visibility very good and much more marine life for us to look at. Several Ballan Wrasse and those jelly fish again.

Nearer we got to the rock greater numbers of fish appeared and suddenly rock appeared in front of us. Having not seen it before it was quite an incredible site. Water was clear around it so you could see why they named it. Swam through the bottom arch (depth 15m) and then Hilary saw the entrance for the top arch and motioned me to follow her and then signalled for me to swim through. On exiting on the other side and looking back at the rock it is even more impressive. Again more fish and became a bit transfixed by them that didn't notice Hilary motioning for us to return.

On shore discussed the dive with the group finding out that Steve and Heather had found an octopus at Big Green Carr and had great fun either playing or annoying it.

Have to say it was a great weekend for many reasons including the company, the dives, the weather. Thanks to Jeff for the invitation and the work put in to organising the trip and thanks to Hilary for being an excellent buddy. Roll on the next trip

Dave White

St Abbs Revisited

This trip was planned because the April trip hit some unnusual bad weather and high seas, we fancied going back and doing it again in the summer. My decision to come along was very last minute as I had earlier planned to do some diving with some former buddies that weekend and it wasn't until the Wednesday evening before we could get some accomodation booked. However I was really glad we made the effort because we had a very good weekend with some lovely diving thrown in. Things really began to look up after we arrived and Jeff said that there were some spaces on a hardboat to do the Glanmire the following evening, so we got our names down for that one straight away.

The diving, for me, got off to a poor start as I missed Cathederal Rock and we ended up in around 15m swimming past some pretty interesting rocks etc. We ended the dive with a look to see where we were - it was a long swim back to sure. I must get a new compass.

The Glanmire was another matter - I have tried to get on this a number of times but tide and bearings and equipment failure have prevented it up until now. It was a bit of a swim down the shot but landed bang onto the engine. The engine and the boilers are absolutely covered with life and are picturesque in a similar manner to the SS Chadwick. From here we travelled along the prop shaft towards the stern to a dissapointingly small propellor and then back to the centre, and that was it our 20mins was up and time to head towards the surface. A very nice dive but the current and the depth make it quite hard work

Sunday saw easily the best dive of the lot "Seagull rock" at high tide a pleasant swim which allowed a lot of browsing of life. The first unusual thing I saw was a very small area inhabited by about half a dozen flatfish - the only place I did see them. I also managed to see some pipe fish, nudibranch and for about 10 minutes I was accompanied by a pet ballam wrasse - obviously expecting some dinner. Add to this about 6 lobbies (one very large) and the usual crabs, squat lobsters anenomies etc made for a very scenic dive with some quite different landscapes including kelp, sandy bottoms, gulleys etc, made for a dive that lasted 1 hour. It was the first time in quite a few visits I have done this dive - I will be doing it again.