Diving in February whos idea was that!
It was up to Charlotte to plan this trip as part of her Dp2. Plans were all in place for a great days diving in west Wales on the clubs little rib Indy. Unfortunately being that we live in Britain and it was February a heavy week of rain and strong winds meant that visibility would of been poor, so Charlotte made the decision to move the trip to her favourite quarry Vobster. ( I for one was very grateful as this now meant no sea sickness, a cheeky burger between dives and a nice warm shower after.
We met at the lock up to discuss diving plans and drop of kit on the Saturday morning, making sure everything we needed for our day of diving was ready.
Diving always means an early start, and almost everyone arrived at the lock up at 6.50! Unfortunately we were missing the equipment officer and the very important lock up keys. Once these BOTH arrived we were able to pack up the 3 cars and get underway. Only the roadwork’s on the M4 could hold us up now, and after seeing the sites of Newport ( tunnels were closed) we crossed the bridge to England and continued the convoy to Vobster.
The brief was brief and with 40 mins of arriving the first divers were in the water, excellent work guys. There was both sports diver and dive leader training going on, working with DSMBs and shot bags as well as the all important rescue skills. Andy’s first training dive was SO1, which required me to pretend to be an unconscious casualty, after a quick refresher on rescue breaths, towing and landing a casualty Andy successful rescued me from a 6 m platform under the watchful eye of Jez. Whilst this was going on Dave and bryony were learning how to retrieve a shot weight or anchor for the sea floor using shot bags (taught by bob). This is an important skill to learn, and practically useful if you need to put your anchor down on a wreak or want to collect shellfish for dinner. Matt and G were the third diving pair to jump in and practice mid water deployment of a DSMB, a very tricky skill to master. 3 very successful dives completed with all trainees passing, overall consensus on the quarry was that the water was very very cold.
The surface interval was brief, after everyone had warmed up a little with some soup and a burger, we were getting ready to jump back into the Quarry. Andy had one more sports diver assessment to complete and jumped in the water with Jez as instructor and Matt as a body (as Andy had to practice diver out of air scenarios). Me and Bob went on our second dive into the Pit of Doom, this is a 25m dive with a car at the bottom to add some entertainment. The Pit is renowned for being colder than the rest of the Quarry, darker and very silty so visibility can be extremely poor, all these things lived up to expectations and when you rise out of the pit at 18m conditions become 100% better. Dave and Bryony had to complete DO7 a challenging full rescue from 15m including towing, rescue breaths and oxygen administration using Anny on the shore. The in water section of this training went very well, whilst the pair of them were working on Anny the weather turned and a very heavy hail storm hit us! G tried to shelter the pair and Anny who shouldn’t get wet whilst other club members scrambled to get the kit back into the cars. I did manage to avoid all the hail stones by hiding in the lovely warm changing rooms.
After this excitement we all got warm and dry and packed back up ready to head home. The day was made complete by some very nice cakes and cookies provided by Charlotte, Dave and Myself. The journey home was a lot more straight forward then it had been this morning and we made it back to the lock up by 5pm. Thank you very much Charlotte for organising the day, all in all a good days diving, even if it was only 5 degrees! (good luck to the novices on 20th March)
Happy diving in the future, temperatures can only get better!