Bunaken Island – Sulawesi, Indonesia – July 2013

Click on image to view the photo gallery
Click on image to view the photo gallery

 
Without a shadow of a doubt 2013 has been one of the best years for diving I have had since I took up the sport seven or so years ago. I quickly totalled up the number of dives I have done since the start of the year and discovered that I have just completed number 88 with a third of it still to go! The vast majority of these have been around Scotland and I already have a sizeable backlog of blog posts to sort for these. The backlog has however just become significantly larger as I have been lucky enough to spend the past few weeks enjoying some amazing diving in the much warmer waters around the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and Bali.
 
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Skelly Hole, St. Abbs – July 2013

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Click on image to view the photo gallery

 
The St. Abbs VMR is a dependable spot for some nice, easy scenic diving and since Summer seemed to finally arrive at the start of July, seven of us decided to make the most of the great weather and booked spaces for the weekend on Paul Crowe’s boat the Tiger Lilly.
We dived West Hurker and Tye’s Tunnel (which I haven’t dived in years) on the Saturday and then started Sunday’s diving with a dive at Skelly Hole.
 
This isn’t a dive to be attempted on a day where there is any swell as the boat has to be maneuvered into a fairly tight spot to drop you off. It’s reasonably shallow too so any wave action would turn it into a fairly good approximation of a dive in a washing machine. Fortunately we had two warm days with reasonably light offshore winds and conditions were ideally suited to attempt this site.

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Rosehearty and Millshore – June 2013

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Click on the image to view the photo gallery

A dull, drizzling morning developed into an afternoon of blue sky and blazing sunshine when we dived Rosehearty and Millshore recently. Contrary to the report we received from a surfacing diver, the visibility was actually very good (as can be seen from some of the photos). All the usual life was present and I even met my first Duck underwater whilst leading the group round the corner of one of the rocks at Millshore. I’m not sure which of the two of us got the bigger fright but the Duck decided to end his dive shortly afterwards! A Duck was preferable to the dead Badger that we met there last year, which has to be the oddest thing I’ve ever encountered on a dive. Having commented recently about how I didn’t think I had seen a Lumpsucker before, I saw the third one in as many weeks.

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