The SS Nar was on route from Sunderland for Burghead on the shores of the Moray Firth carrying a cargo of coal when it foundered off Garmouth on the 13th December 1904. It is well broken up now, lying in 12 metres of water on a sandy bottom where its boiler, various plates, capstans, winches and other rusting remains have become home to a large variety of marine life. This was my first opportunity to dive the Nar during a weekend of wreck diving out of Lossiemouth with North East Dive. We also dived the San Tiburcio and the Unity, both of which I hadn’t dived in 6 or 7 years at least.
Continue reading “The Wreck of the Nar, Moray Firth – June 2014”
‘Unknown Wreck’, Moray Firth – July 2013
Yet another of this years dives that was a first for me, on a wreck this time and one whose identity is unknown. This is fairly unusual as most of the wrecks dived by recreational divers have been identified and it is usually possible with a bit of Googling to find out how the vessel met its fate. Not so for this particular wreck which consists of a good sized boiler and a collection of other wreckage strewn across the bottom at a depth of approximately 26m not far from Cullen.
The Port Napier – June 2013
Despite the lack of updates to the blog I have in fact been doing a lot of diving in the past six months, honest! It was only after returning from a weekend on Skye that I downloaded my dive computer and discovered that a very enjoyable dive on the wreck of The Port Napier had actually been my 50th dive of 2013!
The Port Napier has to be one of the most well dived wrecks in Scotland and justifiably so. There isn’t much I can write about it that hasn’t already been covered several times over, but if you don’t know what sort of vessel The Port Napier was and the dramatic manner in which it came to be be where it is, you can find out more here, here and here for starters. Continue reading “The Port Napier – June 2013”