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BLOWN OUT WITH THE LADS
THREE LITTLE WORDS PUT MY HEART INTO COMPLETE TURMOIL: Gale Force Westerlies.
Believe me, these are the last words you want to hear if you're on a liveaboard boat trying to dive wrecks off the west coast of Ireland. The sea is so rough that Salutay can't get out of the harbour; day one of the trip passes and we haven't managed to leave Scotland yet.
So, what do divers do when they can't go diving?
Remarkably there are diving publications out there - clearly written by people who don't dive in the UK - which believe that divers will get on the phone to find the nearest dry-ski slope or military museum. Yeah, right; about as likely as encountering a whale shark at Swanage pier.
So what do you think? Did we a) Sulk? b) Fettle our equipment and grease every O-ring in sight? c) Go to the pub? d) Retreat to our bunks? e) Get out the porn? You guessed, it was f) All of the above!
That, of course, was when we weren't eating. Life on a liveaboard does revolve around meal-times, even in the best of conditions. But when you're unable to dive, the only significant event in your day becomes the next meal - and how many of Freda's excellent roast spuds you can stuff down your face without provoking a bitch-slapping incident. Hell hath no fury like a disappointed diver deprived of his fair share of scoff.
Fortunately, there is enough on board to feed a small army of armies, and the sight of divers forced to lie horizontal by over-stuffing is putting a whole new spin on the term "blown out".
Everybody tries to remain upbeat, but the unspoken reality is that even if the wind drops, the post-gale Atlantic swell has ruled out all our planned diving. The added twist is that another dive boat is out here, full of rufty-tufty divers trying to dive the same wrecks. The boys exchange a stream of semi-competitive texts about our hopes and frustrations.
Salutay sticks to the more sheltered east coast, and life takes on a familiar pattern. We get up, peer outside and announce our belief that conditions are improving. Kit is prepared, ambitious dives are planned, undersuits donned and the skipper takes the boat out of the harbour to head towards the dive site, at which point it becomes horribly obvious that we're not going to be diving where we'd hoped.
It's a routine of endless foreplay, wishful anticipation and cruelly dashed hopes of satisfaction. No wonder we've all reverted to the mentality of teenagers. Obsessed, frustrated, forced to find distractions.
A major distraction seems to be the mag with a well-thumbed photoshoot featuring Mariah Carey. There she is, in saucy cheerleader-style poses, showing off her Atlantic swell.
A couple of the boys are so bored that they're reduced to wondering how many Bacardi Breezers it would take for me to get my pom-poms out. But, gazing at Mariah, I realise that I would only be a disappointment to them with the surprisingly small quantities on both fronts.
By the end of the week a bit of mutual corruption has taken place: the blokes have persuaded me of the delights of lad-mags Maxim and Front, and I've seduced them into the dark ways of Pop Idol. Who could claim that the British diving experience is lacking in culture?
So what happened to the other boat? Being a blokes-only hardcore bunch, the occupants were determined to brave the mountainous seas and battle their way round to the west coast, where they got stuck in the bay at Lochswilly, being battered to buggery.
Which does have a kind of poetic justice about it, as their favourite onboard entertainment was rumoured to be a highly tasteful video called Weapons of Ass Destruction.
Well, it's nice to know that someone's got hard evidence.
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