To try out some new dives we organised a dive weekend in the Oban area. Agnieszka, Alistair, Louise and myself made our way west to Loch Melfort on Friday morning, with Gary joining us there in the evening for a dusk dive.
After setting up tents Louise and I came just in time for the end of a very detailed dive plan Agnieszka and Alistair worked on for her final Ocean Diver lesson. As is so often the case, the best plans are often moot within minutes. Especially, if a new drysuit requires some weight adaptions first. Once finished the dive was already over.
Louise and I had a little better luck and found the a nice reef with lots of brittle stars, tube anemones, starfish, butterfish, peacock worms, a candy striped worm and much more. For our second dive Gary joined us and we explored some other parts of the reef, with a little less life. All in all, a very nice dive site that is worth coming back to.
The next morning we went to Dunollie Castle, in the north of Oban. Alistair, Gary and Louise were to try a drift dive from a rocky entrance north of the bay into the area south of the castle. It would all come down to my ability to read tidal flow charts and get the timings right. After some scrambling and carrying kit over the rocks, they set off and from the surface it at least looked like they weren’t carried further north uncontrollably…phew…about an hour later and slightly overshooting the exit, they left the bay and let us know they enjoyed the dive, saw some nice things along the way (with some disagreement about maybe having been too deep). There were dead man’s fingers, crabs and a nice cat shark. Agnieszka and I tried to work a little bit more on her getting comfortable with the new drysuit. Every dive will bring some experience and improvement.
Heading to Puffin for re-fills we stayed there for some more dive practice with Agnieszka, while Alistair and Gary attempted to find the wreck of the Altair in murky condition. While they were unsuccessful, Agnieszka was rewarded for her perseverance with some good progress and a thornback ray we encountered resting on the seafloor.
After a short dip into the Oban night-life on Saturday evening we headed to the Falls of Lora for the dive this whole weekend was planned around. We were joined by Simon, who made his way over from Dundee in the morning. Unfortunately for Alistair had to give the dive a pass. His bad fortune was my good luck, as I got to do the dive as his replacement. Thanks to James, we were ideally prepared when it came to time to enter and where to go. Coming from the gully down into the larger bowl I fully understood why James called it one of his favourite shore dives in Scotland. After an amazing forty minutes between the two bowls, Simon and I headed back to the surface, where a small cat shark came our way through the gully.
Back on the surface and back into our street clothes, we returned to Dundee, where we arrived after a hot drink overlooking the Falls and a food stop in Tyndrum. The end of a very enjoyable dive weekend.