Oban: 29th October – 2nd November 2004

On board the JaneR - Skipper Gordon Wadsworth

And Luuuke thought he had problems with trips. At least he manages to fill them eventually...

Ricky managed to get four of us for the Oban trip. On a boat for twelve. Oops.

At least it was going to be roomy...

Friday 29th October.

Drove up. The weather wasn't too bad, despite the dire warnings on the weather forecast. When we got to Oban (at six) we were treated to a fabulous sunset even!

Saturday 30th October.

Gordon upset the other skippers by setting off early. As usual, he wanted to get ahead of the rest of the fleet heading off from Oban that morning. The weather was fantastic - clear blue sky and flat calm sea. Marvellous.

It was chuffing cold though!

We went to the Rondo first - a nice 50m dip to start with! I put my 10/50 in the breaver - this would be my first ever sober dive on it! I dived with Jeremy. He used air as dil. We entered the water and went down the short shot to the wreck. The water looked fairly murky - viz was about 5m. We didn't hang around but went fairly quickly down to 45m or so. Jeremy admitted afterwards that he was off his tits down there! It was dark going down. It started dark, and just got darker. Once we turned round though there was a sudden change - it was light and getting lighter. We took our time and slowly zigzagged our way up the wreck, doing our stops on the way up. At one point I lost Jeremy completely and was swimming from side to side across the wreck shouting "Jeremy! Oh Jeremy! Where are you Jeremy?" It didn't take long to find him again.

Completing our stops on the rudder there was a huge noise of engines as the Loyal Mediator turned up and dropped its divers in. Suddenly we were surrounded in diver soup! They didn't take long to drop past us and leave us in their pesky bubbles.

From the rudder the sun was clearly visible above - the sea was absolutely calm.

Back on the boat Gordon killed the engine and we just drifted while we had lunch. It was utterly peaceful out on the Sound of Mull. Beautiful. A school of Dolphins was making its way up the Sound and came over to play around the boat which was cool. There had to be at least a dozen of them around the boat.

We then went over to the Shuna. Jeremy wanted to take in his latest toy - his digital camera and housing. I took in a line so we could tie into the wreck.

Having tied in Jeremy spent half an hour going around a small section of the very silty wreck, taking photos as he went. He tried with and without the flash. I took a photo of him with my camera so he'd have a record of his attempts! It was waay waay too silty to make it worth while taking any more though.

After 40 minutes we went back to the shot (it was easy to find as we hadn't gone far from it!) and gently ascended back up. At 6m we came across Andy and Ricky - Andy had some stops to do.

Once back on board Gordon pulled up the shot and we steamed to Tobermory. Once again we were surrounded by many dolphins - they came over and played in the bow wave of the boat. Very cool. The Loyal Mediator, also going up the Sound with us, also had them under their bow.

It was in to Tobermory for dinner, then a classic night at the Mishnish - Gordon was telling Andy how to shot wrecks, how a three pronged grapnel is better than a four pronged one, and what size waster is required for what size of boat (Andy only needs to use tie-wraps).

Eventually we cleared off to bed leaving the two Gordons to it.

Sunday 31st October.

Awoken by the sound of the engines starting. I rushed into my weezle in order to give Gordon a hand with the lines. We cast off and headed off to Coll. I made porage and toast for breakfast, then it was a two hour steam over to Coll, Gordon cleared off to get some sleep, leaving us to drive across.

We arrived off Coll and Gordon reappeared, so we got kitted up ready to dive the Tapti. The water here looked much clearer than in the Sound of Mull.

We jumped in to find it was indeed much better viz; 15m or more. At 20m deep on the wreck it was very bright and we took some good photos down there. The Tapti is a good wreck, lots of intact bits still, with the masts lying out across the sand. A very good dive.

We didn't mess about on the surfacing - there was a reasonable current taking us across the rocks so we couldn't afford to drift far. We surfaced quickly and then got picked up by Gordon.

Once back on board we motored to the little harbour at Coll, at Loch Eatharner. We had lunch there, then with the gentle rocking of the boat from side to side we all decided that a little sleep would be a good thing!

After that we motored just a little North to where there's a very broken wreck in a little bay. We jumped in and descended to 12m - there were rocks with kelp growing on them, and then a sandy bottom, but no wreck. My drysuit was leaking (a poorly fitted neck seal) so we only did 20 minutes then surfaced. As we ascended the strength of the current became apparent - we were swept across the bottom at quite a rate.

Once back on board I stripped out of my soggy suit, put the weezle in the engine room to dry, and got in the shower.

We had dinner and went off to the Mishnish again.

Monday 1st November.

The engine woke us up at 7. I crawled into the weezle again, and went on deck to find out what was going on - we didn't need to leave until the ferry went at 8. There was a fine drizzle coming down. We moved the Jane R onto a mooring buoy and went back to bed.

Two hours later we up again. The drizzle was gone. It even looked like the sun might come out!

We had a lazy breakfast. Porage, then a fry-up, then a gentle steam back down the Sound of Mull to the Hispania. We got there and the tide was still running quite a lot, so we hung around for another hour, difting along with the tide, enjoying the scenery.

Eventually we went to the buoy and decided it was diveable. It was still running a bit, but Gordon had been coaching us on getting in when the tide was still running, then decompressing in slack, so over we went. There was fair old current running and it was quite a pull down the line. I got there first, then turned and waited for Jeremy.

The next person to appear was Andy. Then after that Ricky appeared. I checked the tension on the line - there was still someone else there on the line. Eventually Jeremy appeared and we went off towards the bow, hiding inside the wreck to escape the current. I found a particularly dark looking passage and disappeared of down it. I was barely a metre by a metre. To start with I couldn't see any light at the end and wondered if I was going into a dead end. Before long a green glow appeared and I popped out into free water again.

I turned round but there was no sign of Jeremy following. I looked down through the hold, then back along the deck. Still no Jeremy. I went back along over the deck and eventually found him; he'd waited to see if I reappeared out of the hole and had just given up and was trying to find where the hole came out.

We continued aft, ducking in and out of the wreck. It was very bright - the viz was good, the wreck was covered in nasty squidgy things. Eventually we reached the stern, and went down to look at the rudder. There was still a fair bit of tide here and we had to take care not to get swept off the wreck completely.

We then followed the deck forwards, worming our way through the various bits of superstructure. We went through far smaller spaces than we did on the cave diving in France only a few weeks previous!

Before long we were back at the shot. We had a quite look at the bow, then ascended up the shot.

Back on board we gently steamed further down the Sound. The mountains around were covered in cloud and were very spectacular, but we had a patch of blue sky over us which was good.

On arriving at the Thesis we discovered it was already slack so we quickly kitted up and jumped in. It was already starting to getting dark by this time, and down on the wreck it was like a night dive. This created some brilliant light effects through the ribs of the vessel when Ricky and Andy were outside it and Jeremy and I were inside; the light from their torches creating huge sunburst type effects.

Jeremy and I went down the wreck to 25m - we stopped there as Jeremy didn't want to reverse profile. I called him a poof - I don't think it bothered him much.

We then steamed into Lochaline where we did a pirate raid onto the Gaelic Rose. Gordon wanted a book from it. It was moored onto a buoy in the harbour, so we went alongside and boarded it. Gordon found the book, and we were off. It was a distinct act of high sees piracy.

We parked on the sand jetty for tea and went off to the social club for a quiet beer or two before bed. It must have been a quiet beer as Ricky was in bed before me for once!

Tuesday 2nd November.

Another lie in. Eventually I got bored with just lying in bed and got up, put on the kettle and made the porage. Half an hour later everyone else was up too, just as the porage was ready. We had a quick breakfast before steaming off to the Peter Brown (Slate Wreck) just off Lochaline.

Gordon motored in to the coast and dropped us in. The water was fairly choppy - there was a brisk wind blowing today. We swam in to the shore until we could see the bottom, then sank beneath the waves, hitting the kelpy bottom at about 8 metres.

We followed the steep slope down to 20m and then started looking for the wreck. I found a slate lying on the bottom, so picked it up and launched it towards Jeremy. It went away from me, and tilted upwards. Of course it then lost momentum, then came straight back at me. I got out of the way as it landed at my knees.

At least we'd found the wreck. There were piles of slates lying all around us. Not higgledy-piggledy pieces like in Dorothea, but regular cut pieces of roof slate.

At 22m there was a cliff edge as the Loch disappeared off deeper. I looked at Jeremy. He knew exactly what I wanted to do. He wasn't keen on going deeper, but The Darkness Beckoned. Jeremy waited on the ledge while I dropped over and followed the fairly shear cliff down to 40m. I could see Jeremy above me even at 35m - the viz was pretty good. I could also see Ricky and Andy a little way away around he cliff.

I didn't stay at 40 long - it really was a token effort. I ascended back to Jeremy, and we continued to explore the wreck. There were large wooden planks sticking out of the seabed in places, although most of the wreck had rotted away. We zigzagged our way back up the side of the Loch, covering most of the wreck as we did so, before we finally got bored and surfaced.

Back on board Ricky promptly went back to bed while the rest of us set about packing, preparing lunch and generally helping Gordon out. We steamed back to Oban, and Ricky reappeared just in time to eat lunch before we arrived back.

Sadly that was it. Our fantastic four day break on the JaneR was over. What an excellent four days it had been - very relaxing with just four of us on the boat. We had mostly excellent weather, with dolphins, seals, wrecks and good visibility. Well done Ricky for organising it :o)