Some photos from our recent club trip to Glen Uig. Thanks to Maggie, our trip photographer. Full story to follow soon!

Happy New Year from Montrose Sub Aqua Club!

The 2008/2009 Winter Training Session is proving to be a busy one for BSAC500’s diving instructors. This year the club has no less than 10 new members who are all busy learning and practicing the skills they’ll require when they leave behind the confines of the Montrose Swimming Pool and venture out into the open water for their first taste of what scuba diving is really about. It may be the quietest time of year in the club diving calendar but thoughts are turning to where we’ll be heading for 2009’s club dive trips. Places are already filling up on recently announced expeditions to club favourites Glen Uig and Oban in May and there will be plenty more to come in the months ahead.

2009 is shaping up to be an exciting one for BSAC500 with lots of new members joining the familiar faces and sharing dives at new locations as well as old favourites. We’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to dives sites that are highly regarded not only in national diving circles but by divers around the globe (there are mutterings of an expedition to Scapa Flow this year!).

Whatever 2009 brings make sure you check up on bsac500.co.uk from time to time and find out the latest on where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.

Cheers!

On our (not so) recent club trip to Kyle of Lochalsh we were treated to some of the wildest weather that Scotland has to offer. Given our track record over recent years you’d have to question our decision to make Kyle the location for our last club dive trip of the year and this year was certainly no exception! It was wild, wild, wild. So much so that on the Saturday it just wasn’t safe to set to sea and we had to make do with a day trip onto Skye for a bit of sight-seeing. Unlike a previous rather embarrassing episode in the history of the club where we were weathered out in Oban, we didn’t resort to stopping somewhere for a nice cup of tea and a chat. Instead, we watched Alan get all Japanese tourist (photographic evidence below) with the spectacular weather and then had a pint in Portree.

It came as a bit of a shock to realise that it had been over two years since the club had last dived at St Abbs, in addition there was a growing number of members who had never dived off a hard boat. Time to sort!

We all headed down on the Saturday morning and for the first time in a very long time we actually got a weekend with great weather – what a difference it makes.

We were diving with Paul O’Callaghan off the Lazy G’diver. First dive was one called Anemone Reef which certainly lived up to its name with a huge number of large dahlia anemones of a wide range of colours from white through to dark purples. One yellow one stood out as a colour I had never seen as bright as that before (see photos). There were also some lovely walls covered in life and a good range of fish, including the ever present Ballan wrasse looking for a free meal! Most people also saw the wolfish that St Abbs is famous for. At the end of a gentle drift along this lovely site, Paul was waiting to pick us up and supply the very welcome coffee and biscuits!

After a leisurely lunch back on shore at the newer of the two cafes that are there - great freshly made soup - there was just time for a short nap in the sun before heading off for our second dive. This one was slightly nearer the harbour but provided a lovely dive with lots of gullies and overhangs to explore, with probably even more fish around and on a different terrain to the morning dive without the anemones.

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