Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

28 страница из 133

Sundays consisted of an early wake up to an alarm clock followed by a scrambled breakfast, before hitching my orange Aberglen onto my orange Renault 14, now rusting fast and covered in brown filler spots. In an orange blaze of polka dot car and boat, I would drive up to Ellon, arriving an hour later at Richard Cook’s house. Richard was a strong, fair-haired and bearded old hand at the club. Somewhat older than me, he was an active and very capable diver with a great technical knowledge gleaned from working in the diving side of the oil industry for a long time. He knew his stuff and often helped me with my kit when things went wrong.

We would have tea and toast before a 40 minute drive up to one of our regular dive sites such as Sandhaven, Rosehearty or Gardenstown. It was this year that I had my first encounter with the somewhat strained relationships between fishermen and divers at that time. I’m pleased to say that things are a lot better nowadays.

Some fishermen at that time had a mindset that divers were diving with the sole purpose of taking their lobsters and crabs from the sea - and were robbing from their creels. I was new to the sport and had never taken on the fast claws of a lobster or edible crab. But that didn’t matter - I was a diver and that was enough. Some of them barely concealed their animosity.