Anchors Away! - 30/03/2014

Andrea & Big Al

Earlier in the week Andrea had suggested a trip to Anchor Point, Loch Fyne. I've never dived the site, but fortunately all my buddies had been there at least once. Accompanying me today were Andrea, Big Mack and Big Al. Fast Eddie and Grant (now dubbed Mr Fallsoveralot) had planned to come, but cancelled in the run up to our trip. So we set out, as a fantastic 4, if not the Fantastic 4.

As the clocks were 'springing forward' we met at the later time of 8.00am at Costa del Bonhill and drove to the site. 

The site itself is at a small lay-by on a single track road about 65 miles from Glasgow. From the parking spot, a small path leads to a very pleasant pebble beach dotted with a few large rocks ideal for sitting.

Big Mack lead us out for our first dive, aiming to hit a reef that dropped down to about 30m -  we began to fin. I think the poor visibility less than 3m on the first dive meant that we missed our target, but I still managed find a few things on the seabed that kept me entertainment including a nice catshark/dogfish hidden amongst the seaweed, scallops, the occasional nudibranch and two sea toads enjoying the beautiful McLovin.

Back on shore Andrea finally got my travel BBQ lit and we had rolls and sausage.

Dive 2 was to be a more traditional affair with us using the route mapped out in the Finstrokes guide. As we descended, it became clear that the visibility had deteriorated to around 1m. About 20 minutes into the dive while taking the photograph of the sunstar I lost control of my buoyancy for the briefest of moments and ascended quite quickly up. I recovered within a few metres, but once I got back down to my initial depth I couldn't find Big Al. I waited and looked around for the requisite one minute before safely heading to the surface. You can see how far I surfaced from the shore in the last picture. Alan popped up about 20 seconds later and 10m over. We swam back to shore against a strong out flowing tide.

Regardless of the bad visibility we all had a great day.

Travel BBQ

Lunch

Wall climbing urchin

Sunstar of doom

Surfaced