“Anyone fancy a night dive?”
All sound in the chalet stopped at that. A night dive was something only ever rarely done on our native east coast because of the distance of getting to the coast combined with the difficulties of getting access to the sea. There were often difficult rocks to clamber over in the darkness, fully laden with tanks and weights - as well as the difficulty of finding an exit point and getting back ashore. That coupled with strong local currents, which could sweep divers a long way away, very quickly, all prevailed against local night diving.
“Look,” the voice continued “Ok – so we’re all cold and wet - but we are all here – as is our kit. The slip at the pier would be a great entry point for a shore dive. We could then swim round to the left following the built up side of the roadway towards the harbour. There will be light around from street lamps and we’d know to keep the land on our left side as we go out. Then to come back, we turn around, until everything is on our right hand side - and just come back. Easy enough.” the omniscient voice said brightly.
The prospect of pulling on a cold, wet, wet suit for the third time that day didn’t appeal to many of the divers but three of them thought it was a good idea. Intrigued, I’d never done a night dive before, I volunteered to go as well.
By about 8pm that night we had finished a DIY dinner and cleared up. The four of us loaded our kit into a couple of cars and headed down to Kyle once again. A couple of others came for the life experience and to give shore cover. If we got into trouble or got carried away we could signal them with our torches and they would know to put a rescue into effect.
Back down at the slip at Kyle, with every brick and nuance of which I was now intimately familiar, we once again parked in the darkness of the car park, half lit by the orange glow of a solitary streetlamp. The afternoon wind and rain squall had given way to the stillness of a west coast evening, with a steady drizzle, that fell vertically from the darkness above.
Outwith the cocoon of light from the street lamp it was black all around. Across Loch Alsh we could see the orange lights of the small village of Kyleakin, the other side of the ferry route.
I walked down the slip to the water’s edge and looked in. The water was still, the oily surface dappled almost mesmerically by the light drizzle. The water was black as the darkest night but still seemed as though it would be clear enough once we were in. We committed to the dive and went and started getting kitted up again.
Once the four of us were rigged, we all walked down to the end of the slip along with the two non-divers doing surface cover. I looked at my newly acquired Suunto wrist compass and took a bearing along the heavily built up embankment that ran off towards the distant harbour. I wanted to know which way I was heading out so that if we got disorientated in the darkness I’d know which way it was to return. We would dive in two buddy pairs, but keep together in a loose foursome grouping.
We ran through a few underwater torch signals. Divers normally communicate by hand signals during daylight. At night there are signals that can be made to each other with torches. The easiest way for example of giving another diver the OK signal is by sweeping your torch round in a large ‘O’.
Once we had agreed our signals, fins held in hand by their straps we marched into a few feet of water and sat down on the slip and wriggled our boots into our fins and snapped the straps over our heels.
Standing up, I turned backwards and shuffled backwards down into some deeper water and then flopped into the water. The shocking cold trickle of water that comes with wet suit diving, invaded the small of my back and sent a shiver through my body.
One by one the other divers flopped into the water beside me. I rolled over onto my front and looked down, not knowing what to expect. Of course, the water was pitch black and I couldn’t even see my own feet. I pulled up my dive torch and switched on the beam. The powerful light sabre shattered the darkness, glaringly lighting up everything in the foreground and stretching away more dimly for about 15 feet. Outside this ghostly ribbon of light was a seemingly impenetrable barrier of darkness.
The others switched on their torches and three more light sabres danced around. I was still head down on the surface of the water at this time - so I lifted my head and had one last look at the lie of the land to orientate myself. Dropping my face back down in the water I kicked my fins to propel me along towards the end of the slip.
Once I got there, the slip stopped abruptly and dropped straight down for another six feet or so. We all duck-dived here and made our way down to the bottom. It was a novel sensation for me to be diving in this complete darkness, not able to see my companions - only their torch beams dancing around, seemingly originating from nowhere.
I reached the bottom at about 5 metres and we swam along keeping the embankment on our left. The water got deeper and deeper shelving off slowly until we got into about 15 metres.
As we moved along, we came across a point that obviously was or had been used as an unofficial dumping ground. All sorts of debris lay around, including a selection of emblazoned crockery plates from one of the local hotels. We tried using these as underwater Frisbees for a while until the novelty wore off.
We moved on along the embankment and about 10 minutes into the dive the embankment gave way to a proper harbour wall. My torch lit up large square sandstone blocks roughly cemented together aeons ago - with most of the cement having fallen out or turned to dust long ago.
At one point I swept my torch upwards along the harbour wall that was passing by on my left hand side. Two enormous conger eels were sticking half out of their holes in between the blocks. These eels are about 3-6 feet long on average and as wide as the circle formed by a grown man’s two hands held apart with fingers and thumbs touching. They are a foreboding blue-black colour with the most cold, lifeless, jet black eyes imaginable. Thankfully these seeming monsters didn’t come out of their holes to investigate us.
We swam along beneath these congers - and as we continued to swim more of them appeared – the whole place was well stocked with congers.
About 20 minutes into the dive and the harbour wall made a sharp right-angled turn to seaward. As we continued along I swept my torch upwards and was surprised to see the steel hull and large non-ferrous propeller of some sort of merchant ship about 10 feet away directly above us. There was no sound of any engine – only the stillness and quiet that you get used to as a diver – broken only by the mechanical sounds of your aqualung and the gurgle of your exhaust bubbles as you exhale.
We collected and closed in on one another. Once we were close enough we had a silent underwater conversation using light signals and agreed to turn the dive here. We made an about turn until the harbour wall was on our right hand side and the hull of the large vessel overhead was pointing in the opposite direction. After that we kicked off the bottom and headed back towards the slip retracing our steps.
After 10 minutes or so, the harbour wall yielded to the steep embankment. 45 minutes into the dive, we arrived back at the slip and broke the water, rising up like silent predators from a swamp. We touched our feet down and stood up in about 4-5 feet of water. Slowly we pulled our fins off and walked from the water.
Once on the safety of the slip I turned and looked across the water towards the harbour and managed to make out an orange freighter tied up against the harbour wall. I was staggered at the distance it was away from us and at how great a distance we had covered in that time. I was shivering again from the cold and dashed to the car to change into warm clothes before heading back to Duirinish.
Once warmed and showered we all piled into a car and headed down the couple of miles to The Plockton Hotel where we met the rest of our expedition and drank far more beer than was good for us.
Sunday morning welcomed us without the mist of the preceding day. Conditions looked better and by 9am we were back down at the Kyle slip launching the two boats. The Admiralty Chart of the area had shown