Our first long weekend boat diving of the year took place this weekend at our usual Easter haunt of Loch Fyne, basing ourselves at Argyll caravan park a couple of miles South of the Royal Burgh of Inveraray.
Following a heavy early Spring snowfall which threatened to call off the weekends diving, twelve divers plus families and two of our RIBS made the six hour journey up from Cheshire to start diving on Good Friday and well worth the journey it was!
First dive of a sunny Friday morning was at Pennymore Point. Steeply shelving under water cliffs where you can pretty much pick your own dive depth down to 100mtr plus! The waters whilst a chilly 7'c were quite clear (circa 10 metre viz) and bright even down to 25 mtrs or so.
Marine life here is abundant with various star fish (sun star, spiney, cushion star, etc.), squat lobsters, urchins, anemones and dead mens fingers.
The cold waters meant for fairly short dive times (circa 30 mins max) and fairly long thawing out times!
Second dive of Friday after lunch was to Kenmore Point (the opposite end of the same cliff system as Pennymore Point) much the same marine life but just as rewarding a dive if ever so slightly spoiled by rubbish dumped off the cliffs into the depths! This dive is mostly a cliff wall dive down to around 27mtrs before hitting a steeply shelving mud bank down to the depths of the Loch.
Easter Saturday and after some initial drizzle another sunny day. Saturday's first dive was to one of the most spectacular dive sites the Loch has to offer... Stallion Rock! A rock pinnacle along the Kenmore to Pennymore cliffs that rises from 35 mtrs to just break the surface at low water. Another sheer cliff dive with a small cavern at the base, the roof of which is smothered in blue sponge and adorned with feather worms. Urchins, squat lobsters, etc along the drop off.
Saturday afternoon post lunch and another dive along the cliffs for those warm enough!
Easter Sunday morning after Easter Eggs we took the 45 minute trip down the Loch in the RIBS to find and dive Creggan Dubh on the opposite side of the Loch. Another stunning dive site of boulders and reef down to 25 mtrs+ with wrasse, conga eels, urchins and the ever present squat lobster!
Sunday afternoon and a split of opinion! One RIB heads for Loch Shira a 'marmite' kind of dive site (you either love it or hate it!) and home to the very rare pachycerianthis or 'fireworks' anemonae which for some reason is profuse here in depths from around 18 mtrs. One of our divers, Phoebe, has produced a video on previous dives to this site which can be seen here ~
http://www.youtube.com/user/PhoebeSparke#p/u/4/QsAYdNmu0cY The other RIB (the marmite haters ;-) heads back to Stallion Rock for a more traditional Loch fyne dive!
All divers meet up Sunday evening however for the traditional get together in 'The George' pub in Inverarary for drinks, eats and swapping of dive stories!
Bank Holiday Monday unfortunately brought torrential rain :-(
So much so that those who hadn't already set off home for Cheshire decided to shelter in the warmth of the caravans and camper vans rather than dive again, which was a dampner in more ways than one to end an otherwise excellent weekend!
So... All in all another fantastic dive weekend at one of our much loved dive sites... Can't wait to dive there again! Many thanks to Stella for taking on the unenviable task of organising the trip!
DH
