Castle Sween June 2011

Castle Sween Trip – June 2011

Club Boat flying Jolly Roger and Allys Boat at Loch Caolisport

This year’s trip took place from 10th to 14th June. As in previous years we hire a static caravan and made use of Debbie & Ally’s caravan. The trip filled up within 3 hours of being advertised round the club so the first 11 [Debbie & Ally, Lorna & Gavin, Kirsty & Nathan, Hilary & Tom, Babs, Warren and Al] made the trip. Ally & Debbie towed the SQSAC boat through to Castle Sween on the Thursday and set it and their own boat into moorings on the Friday in preparation for Saturday diving. People started arriving late on Friday afternoon after finishing work, most having had tea at Mr Pia’s in Inveraray, and the evening was spent discussing the planned weekend’s diving.

An early start on Saturday morning saw everyone assembled on the beach to shore dive the reef off Castle Sween. This had been shotted the day before with 2 separate shots to allow some Dive Leader training to take place. We had DSMB’s popping up everywhere. The reef runs parallel to the shoreline and is an interesting starter dive at 10 – 13 metres with a rocky ridge and boulder slope to the west. The viz was not great but everyone had a nice relaxing dive.

Loading Boats at the Jetty at Castle Sween

The forecast was for winds to increase the following day so the plan was changed to dive the “Christine Rose” at the Point of Knap sooner rather than later due to its exposed location. After feasting on packed lunches prepared by Lorna and Debbie ashore on Eilean Mor we made the 2.5n mile journey to this small wreck. There was a bit of too-ing and fro-ing due to lag on the GPS but a shot line was eventually put down to within 5 metres of the wreck. The tides in the area are notoriously difficult to predict and more by luck than by judgement the first wave went in on slack water. As usual this is one of the highlight dives in the area with the wreck [a small steam trawler carrying out scientific research work which struck the rocks in 1942] and a spectacular garden of plumrose anemones close by. What was noticeable was how much the wreck has broken up since last year. There was a big storm in May which probably did the damage.

Warren and Nathan loaded their cars to go with Al to Tarbert, Loch Fyne for air fills while the boats were moored up for the night. We enjoyed a really nice dinner at Rafters, the restaurant on the site after which some of us went to have a look at the 12th century Castle Sween. It must have been a tiring day as everyone crashed out without so much as a nightcap!

  Setting off for Sundays Dives Jolly Roger Flying again - a SQSAC tradition

Sunday saw another calm start to the day and we took the boats round into the Sound of Jura to dive a site close to the shore 1 mile north of Keilmore House. This is a sloping site with kelp beds close in to the shore where we dropped in going down to a rocky slope before going down to around 32metres and a sandy bottom. The currents here varied throughout the 2 waves of divers with Gavin and Lorna deciding to go with a good flow and coming up 2/300 metres north of the entry point. Most of the others maintained their position as they experienced very little current. This site is well swept by currents and the life reflected this with several dogfish being seen and loads of other critters that eagle eyed Nathan saw. The highlight for Babs, Debbie and Ally diving as a 3 was spotting a small John Dory.

 A leisurly Lunch in the Sun...and no thats NOT Allys Caravan!

Next was a 7 mile journey round to Loch Caolisport to have lunch in the sun on the beach at Stronfield Bay. Again these were made up in individual bags for everyone. An stiff SE breeze had got up by now as forecast but the next choice of site was not too exposed. The site was chosen from looking at the charts which showed a raised rocky area just 0.5 miles off shore. Gavin was tasked with locating the site and dropping a shot onto the top of the rock at 7 metres. This was done without fuss. The site consisted of a fairly large circular raised flat rock which went down through a bouldered fringe to around 15 metres on a sandy bottom. There wa a lot of ambient light and viz was very good on the top of the rock. When we got down to the lower sandy area things got very murky and it was only later that we discovered that Gavin had been dragging a large bag of scallops along the sea bed and stirring things up! There was plenty of interest in this area with a large ling and sea hares being seen. With everyone safely back in the boats and the shot recovered it was back to castle Sween. The boats were unloaded at the pontoon and with help from everyone the boats were quickly recovered and washed down. We are definitely getting better at this!

  Gavin playing with Plotter while Warren supervises!   Boats heading to Dive the 'Evelyn Rose'

My thanks to Gavin for so ably taking charge of the club boat, to Warren, Al and Nathan for doing the cylinder run, to Lorna and Debbie for doing the breakfasts and lunches for their respective caravans and to everyone else for their part in making the weekend a success. Everyone had a go at driving the boats. It was good to see the club boat running so well with 6 divers and double kit. Diving with 2 boats makes it much more enjoyable as everyone mentioned. Ally MacGregor

Cheery SQSAC Divers at Ally's Caravan, Castle Sween, June 2011
L-R Babs, Ally, Debbie, Al, Warren, Tom, Hilary, Nathan, Kirsty, Gav, Lorna