There are parts of the Scottish coastline that I know better than the back of my hand, both above and below water. The myriad days at sea were the greatest privilege and the wildest gifts experienced during those crazy diving days. The North Sea and the Atlantic in all their moods, serene, frenzied, flattened by the peculiar horizontal Scottish rain, howling and swirling, every journey an adventure. I was a land lubber, a city girl, the sea a late discovery, a vivid shifting backdrop to my changing growing years. The boats that piloted me through those turbulent times are like the chapters of that life.
First, the Clockwork Orange, St Andrews University Sub Aqua Club’s fibreglass dory. So foolishly named by some vain intellectual with no thought for the poor coastguard or the hapless soul who would have to make the weekly call, announcing plans, spelling the name in phonetics, ad nauseum, the chuckle of disbelief never far from the surface despite the formality of radio speak, impatience crackling over the air waves on the VHF. We seemed to talk to the coastguard pretty regularly those days, at the beginning and the end of the day, and occasionally half way through! The university minibus could barely tow her, the tiny trailer winch was worn out and retrieval was always a comic epic. She had a hull full of waterlogged foam, the least reliable outboard in the civilised world, and gung-ho inexperienced students flogging her out to May Island or the Breda in all the weather. She took a dozen divers and her kit easily, for space was never a problem in the huge hollow expanse gaping between the high fibreglass gunwales. She wouldn’t go up on the plane with more than four though, so chugging was usually the order of the day. There was no spare power to get you out of trouble and someone had to bail constantly. The engine broke down regularly, at which point everyone would have to paddle like demented neoprene Eskimos. She was a pig to get back into; I always had to hand everything in before finning like mad to clamber over the side and then still often needed landing like a fish, gasping for breath and safety, often easier when the sea was rough for the waves would just throw you in. Trying to retrieve the petrified novices out of the Falls of Lora was always a two person job, doing 3 point turns in Crail harbour for the boat handling exam more like taking an HGV test. She did us proud for many years though- I have one lovely photo taken from the Creran Bridge of the Orange flying through the Narrows, planing proud, a squad of grinning youth blowing in the breeze.
Through the Southport connection via RA and JM and a few kisses along the way, we got access to Southport Diver 1 and 2. Proper Offshore rigid hulled inflatables, the dogs cajones, the power ratio in our favour, engines that roared at the flick of switch, (a novelty in those days in cars and boats alike) and pushed the streamlined hulls along on their tails and both were light enough to retrieval with only a small army. I haven’t yet calculated how much petrol we burned in those days, how many trees I would have to plant to redress the balance, but those two boats took us all over the West Coasts of Scotland and Ireland, in good style. Southport Diver 2 was my favourite, the little boat, she turned on a sixpence, perfect for four divers and full adventure rigs, you could tow her with a car, then once on the water she was the perfect lady, a fast planing boat that even I could crawl back into wearing all my kit and then drive across the world.
JM’s own Sorcha was another fine RHIB, bought once he started work, a few years before the rest of us medics and scientists- ever the pragmatist, JM chose law and now has the biggest debts of us all, and will be the richest one day. Sorcha came secondhand, but looked neat and fair, the high Delta nose kept off the worst of the weather although it made the waves a bit harder to read- I dropped her off the top of a wave so sharply once that I broke DM’s nose, anaemic with his Crohn’s he could barely afford to lose a single red cell and there we were swimming in the stuff. And then of course the yellow pram, GB’s spring loaded little Avon with the genius canvas hood stretched over the bows for his son and wife to hide from the weather. Some days we were a small Armada, the interwoven wakes slicing through the navy green waves, each boat appearing and disappearing in turn as we dipped in and out of the swell.
I used to love the RHIB days. Often the dive was incidental. The whole perfect process of dropping your boat into the water, loading up and setting off on a bearing into the great wide ocean, roaring out into the wild unknown. I could drop you on any particular part of the wreck of the Liberty ship Breda on transits, show you the congars out on Dunstaffnage, take you to play with the seals off May Island, drop you into the Falls of Lora on flood tide and know where to wait for you to surface, bug eyed and spluttering, an instant away from oblivion. The best runs, the wildest days, surfing the Atlantic swells, learning life and tide and moon and memory; the patterns are etched in my brainstem.
I cherish sharp cinematic memories of the day AJ and I collected the monster loan RHIB from Uist. We left the slip at 7pm on a midsummer Scottish evening and drove up the West Coast, poking in and out of the islands to Oban, AJ and I taking turns throwing the boat around and laughing manically, standing the boat on its tail for fun, chucking buoys “man overboard” to catch each other out, as the mercury sea changed from caerulean to navy to jet and the sky never quite got dark. Skimming over the waves in the semi light, the phosphorescence lighting up our wake, was pure magic. The other best run was in Sorcha, from an isolated slip on the edge of Skye, a slip that I could find by road although the name is forgotten, out into the Little Minch, looking for a rock that broke the surface at low tide. GPS really is remarkable technology; we drove for 12 miles, to find a foot high iron spike marking a rock the size of a dining table that dropped off to 40m on all sides. The seals were already in residence but very friendly really, nosey and nibbling fins as we all dropped in to join them, the squidgies were amazing and the scallops huge. I boat-handled for second wave at complete peace with the world, dozing on the tubes in the sun, listening to bubbles and seal song.
There were other boats we knew and loved, DA’s Porpoise, PT’s fishing boat, another stout workhorse, no fancy toys but a monster inboard that pulled like a tractor, Captain Jim’s variety of live-aboard sheds that would only escape the clutches of the Falls of Lora on the right tide, leaving you on the pier at Oban at midnight after the pub had closed with no sign of him, shivering and cursing and resigned to sleeping in the car. There was the selection of wooden fishing Dories at Ridgways, each fitted with a pair of oars and a Seagull engine, no planing or roaring or racing there but you could fix the thing with a penknife and an elastic band, and often had to. I can’t think back to the last time I drove a boat now, though surely you never forget. I like to think that one day in my dotage I will fetch up on the shore of Loch Erribol, in the low-slung gas-lit crofthouse that the last of the ancient bachelor brothers died in, (the three of them having left a million in the bank with no surviving relative to gift it to). I will have a wooden Dory on a running mooring with a Seagull engine to pull my creels and fish for mackerel and dive for those enormous dinner plate scallops that AC and I lived on once for a week, and I will potter in and out of the enormously complicated inlets and skerries until I can’t remember any names any more….
