Club Trip – Eyemouth

Eyemouth Harbour

This month’s club trip was to Eyemouth. We used Marine Quest (http://www.marinequest.co.uk/welcome.htm) as we have done over the past few years. Marine Quest is run by father and son team Jim and Iain Easingwood with 45 years sea-going experience between them.

All arrangements were made and travel plans sorted. We made our way over the Border with a nice trip up, good weather not much traffic and at a civilized hour.
We all met in the local car park by the harbour for a natter and a wander about, we were due to rope off at 1300. We got a message saying the boat was a bit behind schedule so sat by the harbour swapping stories.

 Chilling out, waiting to go.

We saw a nice new boat, the Jacob George pulled alongside and after some tech divers had offloaded their gear (this took them quite some time as they decided to see how slow they could be!!) we headed off for our first dives of the weekend.

We stayed close to Eyemouth and had 2 good dives the first at Chevron rock, this was to a depth of up to 25 metres, lots of life great viz and not much tide.
Our second was a similar dive on the Hurkur rock area again lots of life, including a few strings of squid eggs on a lobster pot, the 14 degree water temperature helps. Hurkur Rock is the largest rock, which forms the natural breakwater protecting Eyemouth bay and rated as the best boat dive in the south of the marine reserve. The sides of the rock descend steeply and are fringed with kelp forest. Beneath the kelp, there is a profusion of soft corals, anemones and sponges. The lower reef is home to brittlestars, sunstars and heart urchins. Wolfish are often found here, usually in mating pairs. To the north of this site is Buss Craig where you can find the boiler from the wreck of the S.S. Mauritania, a wooden steam driven fishing boat.

On the return trip to Eyemeouth, Jim put his foot down after the diving just to show us what his boat can do, very impressive, makes the hair on your neck stand up.

On landing we transferred kit and set about planning our evening entertainment. After a wash and brush up we all met in the Ship pub for a few beers and a bite to eat. The food in the restaurant was good and when they realised the order was incorrect threw in these meals for free. Certainly pleased some of our members!!!

Sunday

This dive was first thing in the morning on board the North Star. Julie Dave and Nigel having gone home left only 7 on the boat, we do love having plenty of room. The North Star is a fast Offshore 105 with divers lift. She is a very stable dive platform, with large deck area, clean toilet, and a license to carry 12 passengers. Oxygen is carried on-board. And they still do the famous homemade shortbread!

The first dive was at Fast Castle. Fast Castle and its remote and wild setting is a highly unexplored dive site. Reportedly there is a fortune in Spanish gold hidden in a cave beneath the castle!! Eyemouth and District SAC explored the site in 1967 and 1969 in an attempt to find the treasure, the second time with a BBC film crew. There is much good diving to be had here along the numerous offshore reefs and headlands.  Marks comment on this dive“ what can I say, this is definitely one of my top 10 ever dives, every crack, crevice and hole had some creature at home. There were lots of wolf fish, crabs, lobsters, large shrimps, flatfish, codling, pouting whiting, ballan wrasse and Pollack to name a few”. Again the viz was great and the tide was slack.