Freesteel

I was pretty skeptical of the idea of diving in February, but someone from the Liverpool club copied the idea from the Manchester club and arranged to hire a chalet and leave the club boat in Oban for five weekends in a row.

And experiencied five weekends of surprisingly good weather.

We joined weekend four and decided to hang around doing a little kayak diving till the weather broke. We’re still here on Friday, mostly staying in the Oban backpackers and worrying whether our car will get broken into during the night. We did have one fine cold evening in the Kerrara bunkhouse that allowed us to paddle around the island over two days.

I regretfully failed to dive on the small island of Bache to the southwest of Kerrarra (too worried about currents that didn’t materialize), but we dived other places, most memorably in Clachen sound on a paddle from Clachan Bridge to Easedale.

This is the weather.

Here’s a closeup of the life on life underwater.

You can tell it’s a kayak dive because Becka is carrying the anchor.

This is from the weekend during a boat dive on the Thesus. No anchor necessary.

The conditions are pretty stunning and warm enough in the sun. The water at 7 degrees is bitterly cold and there are practically no fish (all off on their winter holidays). It’s very difficult to warm up after a dive, even with vigourous paddling.

Tomorrow we might check out Loch Fyne on our way home. And then back to work where things seem to get by quite well without me there to mess things up.

Slow on the old blog posting these days. The more that happens, the less time there is to report it. I do most of my reporting when there is nothing to report.

The office is gradually filling up.

On Sunday 7 February we abandoned guests at home and went for some mud mining in Northeast Inlet of Ireby, trying to dig the connection to another passage called True Grit. Neither is very roomy, and the squeeze halfway along Northeast Inlet requires you to lie on your side with both hands at your sides and wriggle. You cannot get through with one arm ahead, which is the normal reaction. My fancy Sten light went on the blink with some kind of electronic problem that would reset if I unplugged the cable and plugged it in again: not what you want to be doing with this depth of chocolate sauce mud.

I’ve got some videos of the affair, which I must edit down at some point.

Following weekend (13 Feb) was time to try out the first kayak diving of the year in anticipation of a imminent trip to Scotland (someone else chose the time). We kept it simple, and went to the wreck of the Hermine in Anglesey.

Water was about 7 degrees C, but conditions were calm and even slightly sunny. Nothing much visible on the dusty wreck that is right up against the shoreline. I sprang a nosebleed underwater, which I did my best to ignore while it filled up my mask.

Stayed with Bill at Y Felinheli, that coincidentally contains the house where Sten lights are imported to. That saved the postage. We took a bimble up the Menai Strait while suffering an irritating hangover from just two pints of beer. Grumble.

Nelson has a statue by the water here, for some reason.

Here’s to the summer when it eventually comes.

22 May 2009 – Trip out from Canty’s Cove towards Dunmanus Harbour to dive along the coast west of the Dunmanus Harbour headland.

It was one of the clearer dives we’ve done. The water is deep and the geological layers of rock are aligned vertically like slices of toast parallel to the shore. A better place would be on the back of the headland where the plates are coming out from the land. That’s for another time, if we get the chance.

I have lots of blurry pictures on the bottom of us playing at being a chain gang (Becka carrying the anchor, and me holding a loop of chain), but here is a clearer one on the trip back up to the surface keeping a close eye on the depth gauge.

The dive was short because I had just heard a small-craft gale warning on the radio, and was spooked. The wind eased off soon after we surfaced.

Here is a natural arch in Dunmanus Harbour. It may be small, but it’s impressive for being made of mud.

We pulled up on the side and diver Becka transformed into cyclist Becka (to fetch the car) and completed her own version of the triathlon.

23 May 2009 – We returned to Castle Point quay for a long day that brought us back to Schull.

Becka raced ahead to go around Duharrig where the big waves were. Then we headed downwind past numerous spikey reefs until we were wind-tunneled through the narrow channel in Goat Island.

It’s an L-shaped island with a lovely natural harbour (for us) in the corner of the ‘L’ where we parked, and then walked the whole length of the land to have lunch.

It was one of our more remote kayak dives (going down to the east of the south tip of the island), but it was in a wind shadow and very sunny. Not great viz. We got the anchor line all tangled up as usual during the haul out.

This map is centred on Goat Island.

View Larger Map

The day continued with a long paddle along the south side of Long Island (which I thought was quite long), visiting some of the caves.

We stopped at the beacon at the east end…

… and then headed over to the east corner of Schull Harbour where I’d detected a deep water with my sonar on the first day we had gone exploring. But it was all windy and wavy and I was spooked, but Becka told me to stop being such a wimp, and it turned out to be an excellent spot.

After pulling ourselves up, we headed directly into the harbour and straight to the shore in front of the house where we were staying, at Standing Stone By The Sea.

24 May 2009 – Launch from quay at Tranabo Cove, paddled all the way to the other side of Gokane Point and dived in Toehead Bay north coast just past the first cove where the depth suddenly dropped to 20m. (A friend stopped by for a couple of days and took this picture (after having had a nice paddle with Becka all morning while I slept in the sun).)

As usual, we got into a big tangle of anchor line and chain. It was a bit silty.

Our second dive used the remainder of our tanks in the notch to the west of Drishane Point in Tragumna Bay. We discovered a wall more than 18m deep running due south out out to sea. Unfortunately I had over-compensated on the length of the anchor line and we ended up hanging off the petals of the anchor at 15m for the first half of the dive.

A blurry photo can be sharpened…

But a very blurry photo has to be totally transformed…

(Mostly I was taking videos.)

Then up Barlodge Creek, through The (what) Rapids and across Lough Hyne to where our friend had moved our car.

25 May 2009 – Walk to Three Castle point, then quick rather swelly shore dive from the intimidating Dunlough Pier, and then a walk over Mizen Peak having arrived too late to visit The Mizen Head Authentic Irish Experience.

It should actually be called “Three Tower Castle”. They’re connected by a wall from the Dun Lough to the sea cliffs. They are quite striking and mysterious.

Three Castle Head was extremely colourful in a way that couldn’t be captured on my camera.

On the other hand, I tried quite hard to capture the tasteless colours of these jewel anemones.

Best to end with a nice view from above Mizen Head looking north across Bantry Bay, explaining why I didn’t want to risk putting the kayaks out at Dunlough Pier where we may have been tempted to go for a wander up this fine coastline which is better seen than felt.

Quite tired in the evenings, not surprisingly. Here’s a few views from the last three days as the weather here in Ireland got better. Consequently we had to paddle further “to make the most of it”.

Here’s an exciting blowhole at the bottom of a tall cliff…

…which is centred just about here…

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…in middle of absolutely nowhere.

They call this area — Mizen Head — the Land’s End of Ireland. But it is nothing of the sort. Land’s End is heaving with tourists on every cliff and footpath. There is nobody anywhere here, on the footpaths or on the water. So it’s a bit intimidating.

We didn’t dive there, even though it was sheltered. We dived back in Canty’s Cove where it shallow and friendly and pretty:

Then on the next day we investigated Kedge Island from Trafraska and very rapidly ditched the idea of diving the Alondra once we saw the swell and the exposure. Things look so much easier on the map. Here’s us heading through Kedge Island sound towards home.

We paddled back to Trafraska for lunch, and headed around the headland into Baltimore for air fills and a new pressure gauge to replace Becka’s leaky one.

This is the beacon on the headland with lots of scaffolding and men working on it. Not sure what they could possibly be doing as these things generally are low maintenance.

As this was obviously too slack for Becka (only 2 hours paddling), today had to be a big day, starting out of the Galley Cove on the left, ignoring the first island and diving to the NE of the second island on the right, Carrigadeavaun, along the cliffs:

View Larger Map

There was a bit of a wind-tunnel effect in the channel, and scary waves on the seaward side from it, but we managed to find a dead space to kit up in. I put out 30m of anchor line and it was still near vertical and taut. We went down to find it had fallen through a gap in the rocks at 26m necessitating a bit of fiddling to get it out. So there was quite a surprisingly substantial drop-off that made it feel alarmingly like a proper boat dive. It’s places like these you use guidebooks to find.

Unfortunately, my camera box kept steaming up, so I didn’t take any snaps. Also, Becka lost the big torch somehow. (My fault of course — the clip wasn’t any good.) Here’s a pic of when we went through the big arch at Streek Head (facing NE).

It’s all a great place to kayak, but sea kayakers in Ireland don’t seem to write up their trips and post them on the web. There was a wind and a current going through it, but no waves. I paddled back to the start and dived through along the bottom, which was very pretty as there were jewel anemones in only 3 metres of water under the arch. Here’s the unedited 3 minute dive from start to finish:

Then we headed over to Spanish Point, had lunch slightly out of the wind and realized that neither of us had brought any water. Luckily Becka had packed cucumbers and sliced beetroot sandwiches as well as two juicy carrots.

Next stop was Amsterdam Reef, which didn’t take long to get to as we were going down-wind. I didn’t think much of the exposure of the site. If I have to abandon ship (or more likely the ship abandons me) I want to feel like I can swim for real land I can walk home on, not some isolated pinnacle. So we went instead to Ballyrisode Point and tucked round the east side of it, still in the wind. It was kind of silty, but there were fish and it was suitably deep, and we came up with the anchor after not very long.

(The blue and white flag is my own little diver’s A-flag, not that there’s anyone around to notice it.)

Following this, we let the wind (which was picking up) blow us past Dick’s Island to Castle Point and scrapped the planned third dive owing to being too cold and blown about.

We parked up in the quay:

Becka got on the bike that we had sensibly left there on the drive over, and headed back to the car into the wind. It took quite a while. I’d packed everything up, jumped off the pier several times, snorkeled around for at least half an hour, tried to pick up a spider crab, got my finger nipped, and then lay on my back the rest of the time.

Here’s the view from the quay looking back to Streek Head.

We’ve washed up in Schull for a couple of weeks. The accommodation is cheap, but the food is expensive. Haven’t found out the price of air yet.

Quick trip out directly from the back step of the flat across the harbour gave this view back to town.

Then we got into the strong westerlies. Today we went to the north side of the peninsula and paddled out of some cove until we got scared of the strong westerlies on that side too, but the water was clearer and this time we decided to dive. The camera ran out of batteries, but I got this picture of a big flat-fish which we chased across the sea bed.

There were lots of colours around and also a secret waterfall. No doubt with more strong westerlies blowing in, we’ll return to same place again, and I’ll get some pictures.

We also wound up on the last day of the Fastnet Short Film Festival, and went to the last event, which was hugely crowded and involved giving a lot of awards to the winners for best films — none of which we had seen. We clapped along anyway.

Some bloggage is occuring over on the straight choice (mostly by copying old Chris Lightfoot posts), so here’s some pictures, some of which belong in the last week’s post, but I didn’t get there in time.

Jack Thurston hunts for some wifi out on the balcony

I work for food. In this case it's a stuffed artechoke

The hotel room was quite nice too, though for me a sofa is usually adequate.

This is the Farm Subsidy press conference. Yes we are all staring at a URL on the screen.

Here's the money room for that First European SME week with a man looking like he's just been pick-pocketed in Brussels-Midi

Meanwhile back home I had to fetch some big pieces of free wood.

Then spend three days cycling in this sort of weather on these sorts of roads for exercise.

...through these sorts of towns (Llangranog) -- note the shape of the back garden.

...before I could even think about going out on the kayaks and shitting myself on the big waves round the top of Cardigan Island.

I’d forgotten to pack the paddles (very embarrassing). Luckily we could hire some from a shop in New Quay. The person at the local diving business there, SeaMor, told us of the local diving spots (which she will hopefully put up on her website at some point). Unfortunately, with all the wind and waves, the viz was too bad to make it worth it. We also missed seeing any dolphins. We’ll be back at sometime.

In the meantime, there’s our trip to Ireland next week to prepare for. We’ve got wifi in the flat and will be taking only one bicycle. This means when the weather is too windy and the sea is too scary, Becka can go out and exercise on her own and leave me to my own devices.

Here’s a soothing video I put together from a quick excursion towards the Great Orme and under Llandudno Pier last weekend. (If I’d read that wikipedia article I’d have known that it was intended to land large ferries at the end, and would have had a look — except for the fishing line.)

Now I’m in Matienzo (Spain) at its permanent british caving expedition with a hang-over while it’s raining outside. Ho hum.

Regular blogging has been delayed due to a lack of pictures. Becka keeps swiping the camera, downloading the files onto her computer because mine is full, and stashing everything away in her own office. But plenty has been happening.

The North Wales Caving Club scheduled a rescue practice in Parys Mountain, Anglesey for Sunday 21 September. The weather was sunny and flat calm, so we got in gear and got out there on Saturday for a paddle out of Amlwch harbour

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My long-planned visit to Pembrokeshire to see my old club UBUC on their annual Skomer trip was delayed by going to Mashed -08 on the weekend of Saturday 21 June, a canceled visit by a friend on Wednesday, and Becka’s sudden urge to review a paper throughout all of Thursday, punctuated by five-a-side football at lunchtime and the secretary’s leaving do in the afternoon.

We got away at 6:30pm, so it was no surprise we arrived in Marloes at mid-night completely knackered and cross. There didn’t seem to be anybody at West Hook Farm, the site of UBUC’s Skomer summer encampment for the last 30-odd years, as well as implied by the map on this page of their modern-looking but informationally-challenged website. The farm had changed hands and no longer did camping. But I didn’t know that, so we rolled a further kilometre down the road into East Hook Farm and moved into the late night arrivals field. I ran back along the bumpy Pembrokeshire Coast Path in the dark back to West Hook Farm and into the field just to check my memory wasn’t completely lost. The last time I’d been there was in 2003 — but many formative times before then because it was an annual migration.

I spent the whole of the next day (Friday) looking for where the f*** UBUC had gone. There were at least 20 of them, two boats, and everyone I spoke to recognized who I was looking for. The carpark attendant for Martin’s Haven said they always got here for an early start when they do. Perhaps they were over at Dale the bad weather diving spot in Milford Haven. No one was there either. I’d spotted the UBUC trailer on the beach of Martin’s Haven when I cycled to it in the morning, so they had to be somewhere.

During the day I implemented my own version of the Directionless by phoning up and bothering a friend at his computer on the internet and getting him to check out the dreadful, misinformative, and utterly useless UBUC calender website containing times but No Precise Locations, and he confirmed it was that bad. There were email contacts but no phone numbers. Great. No email reply was forthcoming during the day.

Now, the reason why I urgently needed to see UBUC was that they had their dive kayaks down on site, and it might have been the first time in 6 years of kayak diving that I would get the chance to kayak dive with another pair, apart from me and Becka. Why do I always get hooked on such astonishingly unpopular sports!

Between Marloes and Broad Haven there’s about a dozen campsites on the OS Landranger map. I checked them all.

It’s worth pointing out that the weather was also pretty windy, with a howling southerly gale and belts of rain the day before. Just so we got something done during the day, Becka and I paddled out of St Bride’s Haven round Nabbs Head and into the full force of a localized rain storm. This woke us up a bit and made us appreciate how small our problems really could be made if something went wrong. Especially when we turned around and it got much more difficult to ride on the downwind leg.

Back in Dale we had a cup of coffee in the cafe and the woman said, Yeah, that group of students were in here yesterday, wringing wet from the rain. I closed up at five and they all moved into the pub and sat there drinking pints of water all night trying to keep warm without spending any money. She thought they could be up at a farm called Hillside, which was not signed on the OS map as a campsite. Windmill Farm next door was not signed as a campsite either, yet I found a lovely laid out field with level plots and all. The farmer had seen UBUC on the beach when he took fuel down to the boat that carries tourists to Skomer Island, but didn’t know where they could be.

After dinner back at the campsite of West Hook Farm I cycled across the abandoned air field in the fog to Dale, double checking the fields around Hillside farm. The owner of West Hook Farm was convinced they’d be there, because that’s where he recommended they go after turning them down for his campsite. I had half a pint in the pub in case anybody showed up. To complete my perfect timing, Mr. West Hook Farm decided to phone Mr. Hillside Farm on our behalf and found out that the UBUC had f***ed off from Pembrokeshire that morning. He told Becka this news minutes after I had set off.

Bollocks!

The weather was apparently really good on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It must have been the sudden shock of a day of rain that drove them away. Had it been drizzly for all that time, they’d have probably suffered it, because evidence suggests it was a very snap decision, possibly taken after I got there, but couldn’t find them.

Why do we bother trying coming out diving when the weather is so bad? Becka asked. Well, I would have preferred to have got out on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Anyway, we got on the kayaks on Saturday (without diving gear) and paddled around Wooltack Point and down the length Jack Sound. No I didn’t understand any of the tides, I just pretended I did to give Becka the confidence I knew what I was doing. I was sure it was going to be flowing north — against us — but I didn’t have any idea how strong it would be. Nor could I predict how far we were going to get. Or that Becka’s greatest whinge was that her kayak’s knee straps were the wrong length. There’s always got to be something wrong; at least it wasn’t: Oh my god we’re going to die out here!

We ran into Robert Bailey as we carried our kayaks back up the beach.

Then we headed over to Abercastle for another bit of paddling. Becka had been reading the thoroughly excellent Welsh Sea Kayaking guidebook and decided we should aim for Abereiddy, a mere 8kms along the rugged coast.

Once again I faked it with the currents, but we were going into the howling wind, so I was sure we could just be blown back. It was wind against tide, as they say, so it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride and we got about a kilometre along and decided to turn back at the first corner. The waves are always worst at the corners. Going round the corner further meant we’d be up-wind of some rather rocky cliffs, and anyway I was beginning to appraise the rather brisk current going with us. More concerning to me was the two fully kitted out sea kayakers whom we passed in Abercastle Harbour after they had turned back owing to the weather on their trip to Strumble Head. I was absolutely sure they were going to call out the life-boat having just seen two clowns on sit-on-top kayaks disappear to sea and not come back.

In my experience, sit-on-tops are a lot more seaworthy and robust than anything else. They are the mountain bikes of the kayaking world — not suitable for racing long distances across flat seas, but better for the bumps. We surfed back briskly against the current to the harbour. Becka said she preferred Jack Sound. The sun was out. We camped in Trefin for the night.

We went back to Abercastle in the morning to complete one dive on the Leysian to prove a point. This is a huge silty wreck in 10m and we carried the anchor the whole way. My suit leaks so bad around the wrists I have to do something about it soon. (Un)luckily we won’t do any diving for the next two months because time has run out and we’re now into the caving expedition season.

Oh well.

We cased out a few likely kayaking journeys on the north Pembrokeshire coast from the sea kayak guidebook before declaring the weekend done and heading for home. Becka observed that not one of the photos in the book was of weather as nasty as what we’d been out in. We’ll have to come back at a better time. With whom? I wish.

This blog posting has been marked up with links to geographical articles in Wikipedia. This means that it contains a form of unique-ids common across the world, and could insert this post into a cross-sectional blog sliced up from everybody else’s and recreated timesorted per location as a common heritage. It’s all going to work well unless those stupid students carry on balkanizing the web with their useless Facebook log-in shite pages, and it’s eventually not possible to access anything useful on the internet unless it is produced by (a) a corporation, or (b) a “friend”.

I had to write the Jack Sound article, which someone out there can expand, put some pictures onto and describe other stuff to make it nice. I realized it was legitimate when I discovered an article for an insignificant rocklet south of Ramsey Island. Keener people could try and revive Wikiscuba with some content.

I’ve done a full photographic write-up for last weekend receiving intromediate instruction over in Anglesey.

Below is a video of my failed attempt at rolling.