FANTASY ISLAND ONE

When a group of experienced divers and diving journalists accept an invitation, things may not be as originally promised.

It was an invitation to stay at a millionaire's resort, a luxury hideaway for divers set on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. The invitation included a copy of the menu from the resort's restaurant. It looked too good to be true and it was.

Five people accepted the invitation. Who wouldn't? All they had to do was to make their own way to Castlebay on the island of Barra and it was going to be luxurious pampering from then on. Two came from Holland, two from England and George Brown, himself a Highlander, represented the British Sub-Aqua Club.

Alarm bells started to ring after they met up with the proprietor, Ben Dodd, on the jetty at Castlebay. Their transport from then on was to be a retired Atlantic 21 inshore lifeboat. Now, this was a very fast and seaworthy small boat designed to make retrieval of people from the water easy. It did this by having no transom and a flooding hull. Once it came to rest, it settled down in the water on its inflatable sponsons or tubes to allow the lifeboat men to easily drag a person from the water onboard. At this time they would themselves be a couple of feet deep in water but they were dressed for that.

Observing the boat, the visitors wisely decided to don their diving drysuits for the journey of about 30 km (19 miles) to the resort that was based on the island of Berneray, the most southern and remotest in the island chain. They then planned to load the bags with their diving equipment into the boat, while keeping all their dry clothes in one bag perched at the top of the pile and hopefully out of the water.

They were somewhat surprised when Ben Dodd turned up with a pile of old mattresses. He intended to ship them over at the same time, until it was pointed out that it would take months to dry them out afterwards. At this point Trevor Woodfine strolled by. He was a Geordie working as a diver doing boat repairs in the harbour.

He quietly offered the opinion to one of the visitors that they would be crazy to go out to sea with Mr Dodd because he patently didn't know what he was doing. Trevor was persuaded to come with them and take the helm.

The Atlantic 21 was very fast if wet, and they soon arrived at Berneray. The last item on the menu they had received with the invitation had been “fresh fish caught at the jetty”, but they were surprised to find that the jetty, built by Robert Stevenson in 1833, had been washed away about a hundred years before they got there. More alarm bells rang when two young people came down to meet them and asked if they had any food because they hadn't eaten for two days. One was Mr Dodd's sister, Pippa.

Luckily, the canny Highlander George Brown had suspected things might not be as promised and had the foresight to visit a grocery store before they had set off from Castlebay. The carrier bag's contents proved to be a lifesaver.

Everything had to be swum ashore in a rough sea, including the all-important bag of dry clothes. It was at this point that Mr Dodd revealed that he had no way of filling the scuba tanks that the five had brought with them, so Trevor headed back to Castlebay to do it. That left them all without a radio and in the days before mobile phone coverage, no means of communication to the outside world. They had to trust that Trevor would make it back all right the next morning.

They made their way up the steep hill to the abandoned lighthouse keeper's accommodation at its top. The lighthouse had been automatic for some years and it turned out that Mr Dodd had done little more than break in to the disused buildings. There was no sign of the luxury promised.

It was getting quite chilly as night set in, so they busied themselves chopping up some floorboards to feed an ancient kitchen range on which they hoped to heat some of the precious food they had brought with them. Others chopped up floorboards to feed to open grates that were the only source of heat for the bedrooms. There was no danger of carbon monoxide poisoning thanks to a good flow of air through the broken windows.

So there were no diving facilities, no compressor, no luxury accommodation, only the food they had bought with them by chance and no functioning bathrooms. When one of the ladies asked for the facilities, she was presented with a spade and it was suggested that she went outside in the cool autumn breeze and attempt to dig a suitable hole in the hard granite surface.

Electricity was supplied by one tiny generator. Well, that was the intention but it seemed that fuel for this was scarce, so the meagre light from a handful of candles was all they could see by.

When accused of being misleading, Mr Dodd retorted that everyone was being very negative. Somehow, he was living a fantasy. When it was suggested that there was no food, he disagreed and said there was plenty, produced a shotgun and suggested someone went outside and shot one of the many sheep grazing on the island.

The group spent a cold and uncomfortably dark night, sleeping in their diving undersuits in beds with legs now balanced on the exposed joists where there were once floorboards. They were relieved to see Trevor Woodfine return at first light in the Atlantic 21 with their tanks filled ready for diving.

The Atlantic 21 is arguably, the finest small rescue boat of its type ever built. Strong, self-righting and with fully submersible outboards, it took the unkind seas around the islands in its long stride. But as a dive boat it wasn't ideal. With no transom, the interior flooded when stationary and left them wading around looking for the smaller items of their kit, hoping they hadn't been swept out the aft when the boat took off, which it did, when asked, without hesitation.

Barrahead lighthouse on Berneray is set atop a stupendously high granite cliff. Ben Dodd had promised they could be the first to dive the Barrahead Wall, but it transpired that the water beneath the cliff was a mere 12 m (39 ft) deep and strewn with nothing more interesting than a few boulders.

Trevor proved to be the hero of the trip, travelling back to Castlebay each night and returning the next day with the diving tanks filled. However, this rather limited the number of dives they could do and by the third day they abandoned the whole project.

As a postscript to the story, Pippa, Mr Dodd's sister, later became a lawyer and found herself working in London with the sister of one of the ladies of the group. When the subject of diving came up and the connection became apparent, she revealed that she too had been taken in by her brother and was still under the illusion that, as she walked across the cobbled yard of the disused lighthouse keeper's cottages, there would be a warm meal and a hot shower awaiting her inside. Evidently, she had not spoken to her brother since getting off his Fantasy Island.