Although it started all far more adventurous: some of you may be aware of the troubles of almost all participants booked on the trip: one moving to land of dreams, another getting married, the rest of us getting the week of the trip wrong and at the end the heroic effort of Steve getting hold of the skipper and saving the trip. Well in the end – good news: on Friday morning Steve rang at my door and off we go to the north and beyond – with weather forecast for Orkney to be “severe gale force winds” – the tail of the hurricane Katia hitting UK. The foggy weather in Highlands and over-active police officers did not added to the mood – so my feeling was: “what the …. I’m doing here”. But the diving was great – with all aspects of UK dream dives – the weather changing, the visibility ranging from “good vis” where underwater photo would be almost possible to a day-time “night dive”; but despite forecasts we dived every day, dived all the light cruisers, the battle ship Kronprinz Wilhelm, F2, Barge, …, with animal sightings (well not just sightings unlucky for some of the edible species) ranging from scallops, crabs, lobsters through scorpion fish, lings, conger-eels up to seals; only the Block ships with promised “Caribbean visibility” remained banned due to the wind conditions.
