Steve Millard writes:
On a very COLD February weekend, Damien McNulty and Steve Millard travelled up to Eyemouth for the 1st sea diving of the year. On Friday lunchtime we arrived to find a snowy harbour and divecenter in Eyemouth. The weather conditions were calm and sunny ... but very COLD. However the sea conditions showed a very heavy swell, due to a large depression in the North Sea. Unfortunately there was no diving on that day.
Eyemouth Harbour in the snow
Across the road is the dive centre and accomodation
On Saturday the weather was crisp and clear. Sunny and no wind...but the swell remained and so we went looking for alternative inland dive sites just to get wet. Well, we found an excellent lake that would have suited our purposes, except that it was frozen solid !
Damien
Steve (an Ice Diving Instructor!)
We got a dive in on the wreck of the Glanmire on Saturday afternoon, in relatively poor sea conditions. Nothing to write home about.
Sunday was a better day. We were the only two on the boat. The air condition was -5°C. The sea temperature was +4°C. This is seriously hard-core diving ... not for the fainthearted !
The deck of our dive boat was iced up. The bucket of water for rinsing our masks was frozen solid. Nothing else to do ... but go diving.
How do I rinse my mask with this?
Damien on board the dive boat North Star
Here are a few underwater pictures. They are not my best. It was so cold ... I really didn't care. Just point and press and move on.
We went hunting for a wolfish on the 2nd dive. Either the wolfish was too cold to come out and be seen ... or we were too cold to see it.
Save it for another day. :-)
Here are three video clips which give a better impression of the diving quality. It actually wasn't that bad ... quite good in fact. Just very cold !