A nice day for a dive, calm and thin high cloud. Sea was quite flat too which is always a bonus, especially when the first dive was on the Glanmire. This wreck sits in about 30-33 metres of water, not far off the coast at St Abbs. It is a lovely dive, with a very obvious upstanding propeller, boilers, propeller shaft and bow. The bow sits about 15 metres away from the main body of the wreckage, but there is now a rope between them, and the netting has been removed from the bow. All of the wreckage is covered with a soft coral called dead man’s fingers. It is fluffy in appearance and comes in orange and white here.
The group consisted of eight divers, four buddy pairs. Two on rebreathers, and the rest diving on open circuit on air. The Glanmire is an easy dive, so air is fine, but it does shorten your bottom time a little bit, unless you are prepared to do some decompression. Which from the log sheet, it looks like nearly everyone did. 🙂
Once we were all safely back on board, chocolate cake eaten and a hot drink imbibed, we were ready to jump in again. The second dive was off Black Carrs well known for its wolf fish hotel. Nic always finds loads of wolf fish on this dive, and this time was no exception! At about 10 individuals the focus was moved on to searching for interesting nudibranches. Though on that note, they are a lot smaller than they have been in previous years, which may be due to us having had such a cold spring. The water temperatures just seem to be a couple of degrees less than they usually are at this time of year.
Laura and Richard (father and daughter) jumped in together, followed by Len and Rachel (our guest diver for the day) Nick and Niall then jumped in last….. The author of this article jumped in first…. she always does. 🙂
Everyone had a long and enjoyable dive on Black Carrs, which is no surprise as it is a lovely dive with lots to see and find. Although no one else seemed to find as many wolf fish as Nic and Andy 🙂 On surfacing we found that Derek hadn’t eaten all of Nellie Faulks’ chocolate cake, so there was more to go round. Perfect for a post dive indulgence. All of the cake was eaten on the way back to the harbour after two lovely dives. Thank you Derek!
