This week saw the start of the Dive Centre Lodge refurbishment. As such the Lodge will be out of action for a while - but we are still able to accommodate divers in the Old Post Office on the West Pier.

Regular customers of the Dive Centre will be pleased to hear that, come the 2009 diving season, each room in the Lodge will have full ensuite facilities and underfloor heating, making their stay that much more comfortable. A new heating system & boiler is being installed to cope with the extra shower facilities and - at last - the temperamental industrial cookers in the kitchen are being replaced. Each room will be having new triple glazed windows & doors too.

The infamous ‘pot-hole of Lochaline’ on the entrance drive, deep enough to contemplate a cave dive, will also be going as the whole entrance & carpark gets resurfaced.

Some landscaping outside the Dive Centre is also on the cards - with the area at the rear being decked to provide a much larger area to relax in & have BBQ’s in the summer months.

Heres the caption competition….

Available 28 November 2008. Pre-order now at the special introductory price of only £59.00

WreckSight is the groundbreaking new wreck visualisation application from Advanced Underwater Surveys (ADUS). With WreckSight, for the first time, divers are able to view images of shipwrecks interactively and in an unprecedented level of detail. 

WreckSight Scapa Flow Edition

WreckSight Scapa Flow brings high resolution multibeam sonar images of Scapa wrecks to Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X Tiger/Leopard. Enjoy the startling clarity and unprecedented detail which this unique image processing and visualisation software offers.

Features:

• Eight high resolution data sets including the following vessels: Cöln, Bayern, Karlesruhe, Markgraf, Dresden, Konig, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Brummer
• Fully interactive point cloud imaging of survey data collected by ADUS
• High performance OpenGL rendering
• Six preset animation sequences per wreck
• Unique Dive Routes view providing dive planning and analysis tools:
• Eight fully customisable dive routes per wreck
• Multiple shotline placement
• Precision measurement between any two points on a wreck
• Accurate depth and swim distance readings
• 2D dive route plotting with full 3D visualisation

WreckSight Scapa Flow will be available as an electronic download from the ADUS store (www.wrecksight.com) from Friday 28 November 2008, priced £99.00.

However a special introductory price of £59.00 will be available to those who pre-order within the next two weeks.

Lochaline Dive Centre is the proud new owner of ‘Sound Diver‘, a spacious 42ft twin-engined Offshore 125, coded for 12 divers plus crew. The vessel is currently on the south coast undergoing some modifications and will be arriving in Lochaline ready for the 2009 diving season, complete with hydraulic diver lift, onboard compressor, and of course a kettle.

Please call if you are interested in chartering ‘Sound Diver‘ for trips in 2009 - spaces are being filled rapidly.

Boat spaces are currently available for 2009 onboard ‘Sound Diver‘, Lochaline Dive Centre’s new 12.5m Offshore 125 dive charter boat. Inclusive prices for diving in the Sound, accommodation at the Centre, air fills & food are as follows:

• Self-catering accommodation - 2 dives in the Sound -£62 per person per day;
• B&B accommodation - 2 air dives in the Sound - £67 per person per day;
• Full board accommodation - 2 air dives - £88 per person per day.

For 2 Nitrox dives (up to 32%) add an extra £10 per day on above prices. Prices based on party of 12. Boat is available for charter independently at £400 per day for diving within the Sound of Mull.

Call now on 01967 421627 for more information.

Lochaline Dive Centre has just launched a forum dedicated to the discussion of diving and wildlife in and around the Sound of Mull. If you have been diving with us here in Lochaline please register & tell us about your experiences so that others may benefit from your insight. In addition the forum will be very useful in letting others know that you have spaces available on your dive trip due to people dropping out, so that you can make up your numbers again. 

A number of forums (or is it Fora?) have been put up concerning individual wrecks and dive sites, technical diving and wildlife and more will follow. If you have any ideas or want any particular forums created then please let us know.

Of particular interest just now are the regular wildlife diary entries being made by Wildlife Guide Steve Hardy on the Wildlife forum.

The Dive Centre Lodge now has Wi-Fi Internet access via a Hotspot. Visitors can now just log onto the ‘Dive Centre Gateway’ with any wireless enabled laptop or phone and reach a splash page with free access to the Dive Centre website, other local business sites, such as the Whitehouse Restaurant, weather, and tidal information.  Access to other sites will be chargeable.

As many of our customers will know the Sound of Mull is not just a fantastic place to come diving, the landscape and scenery around Morvern is spectacular and adds a great deal to the sense of place and escapism from every day life that you get when you come here. With this in mind we have put together some wonderful wildlife holidays that you can enjoy throughout the year, either as an addition to a diving trip, something for a non-diving partner or your family to do whilst you’re out diving, or just as a wildlife holiday in itself. Dates for the holidays are: 

October 12th-16th; October 19th-23rd; October 26th-30th; October 31st- November 4th; November 9th-13th; November 16th-18th; November 21st-25th; November 26th-30th; December 1st-3rd; December 8th-12th; December 13th-17th; January 7th-11th; January 12th-16th; January 22nd-26th; January 27th-31st leaving February 1st; February 6th-10th; February 11th-13th; February 19th-23rd; February 24th-28th.

More details can be seen by clicking on the Wildlife page in the menu - don’t forget to have a look at the pictures in the Gallery too. Hope to see you soon here in Morvern!

The Dive Centre now offers catering for its guests, with full cooked breakfasts and evening meals. Avoid the hassle of bringing all your own food with you, get out of bed just that little bit later to enjoy a cooked breakfast and return from a days diving safe in the knowledge you don’t have spend time cooking (for yourself or everyone else). The arrangements are flexible though to allow you to self cater if you wish to and also enjoy a night out at the Lochaline Hotel or the wonderful Whitehouse Restaurant next door to the Centre.

Prices are £30 Dinner Bed and Breakfast, or £18 Bed & Breakfast. We do require warning for the larger groups, so please call 01967 421627 in advance if you require catering. Sample menus can be provided.

In addition to running the Dive Centre with his partner Annabel, Mark is also a co-director of research group called ADUS, jointly based at the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews, and specialising in high resolution sonar surveys of shipwrecks. ADUS has just become a ’spin-out’ company with both Universities retaining a stake in ADUS Ltd. In July last year ADUS surveyed a sunken Russian nuclear submarine for the Salvage and Marine Operations team of the Ministry of Defence, with whom the ADUS surveyed the Royal Oak in 2006. The submarine, K159, lies at a depth of 250m in the Barents Sea. ADUS’ most recent work has included the survey of a large cargo vessel lying at the bottom of the Malacca Straits, south of Melaka, Malaysia, which is presently a hazard to shipping. The vessel, MV California, is about to be salvaged by Mammoet, a large Dutch salvage company, with whom ADUS hopes to undertake more ‘pre-salvage’ wreck surveys in the future. In February ADUS, in association with Salvage & Marine Operations, surveyed the protected wreck of the Campania in the Firth of Forth. Campania is an example of the very small number of vessels converted to interim aircraft carriers to support seaborne flying operations before the construction of the first purpose designed aircraft carrier. On 5th November 1918 she sank after collisions with the anchored Glorious and Royal Oak when her moorings broke in a gale during fleet exercises in the Forth.

More details of the work undertaken by ADUS and more images can be seen at www.adus.org.uk and www.wrecksight.com where you can download 3D viewing software and a dataset of the Brummer, one of the German wrecks at Scapa Flow. At some point very soon many more images and datasets will be available to download, including that of the Hispania (below). The Hispania, one of the most popular wreck dives in Scotland, was surveyed in March last year. ADUS image specialist Chris Rowland is currently working on the final visualisations at Dundee University’s Centre for Digital Imaging.

Mark and Annabel are the 2008 Licensees for the three Designated Historic Wrecks in the Sound of Mull - the 5th rate frigate Dartmouth, and the 17th Century wrecks off Duart Castle and Mingary Castle. The Dive Centre runs a visitor scheme whereby divers can visit these protected wrecks themselves.

For further information and details about the historic wreck visits please Email or call 01967 421627.