DIR Diving Blog

Well my trip to Weymouth today was cancelled due to the snow. With a questionable amount of sanity we decided to dive in a quarry as an alternative. Bob was after sorting the weighting of his standard body scooter so he was dead keen! We met quite a few other people of YD today.

Dive 1 and we scootered most of the quarry. Tunnel, crushing works, 14m ledge, platforms, wheelhouse, boat and plane. I took three stages and got on fine. Bottom gas 32%.
Bob wasn’t too happy with his standard body as he reckoned it was too nose light.

Bob

We tried to warm up in the surface interval and Bob re-weighted his scooter. We also chatted to several YD members – Mark Chase, AndyP, Iani, Wilbo and Gloc. I also got to see a protec drysuit for the first time and it looked a pretty good TLS clone.

Al

Dive 2 and we set off as a group. Myself, Clare and Gareth as one team with Mark and Bob as a second team. Once out at the platforms we clipped off the scooters and did skills with Gareth – valve, s and multi stage switch. We then picked up the scooters again and headed back to the entry point. I just took the 7L and AL40 on this dive and found it sooo much easier than 3 stages!

Clare

Overall another good day out. I actually would have been keen to do a third dive despite the cold as I really feel I’m improving the stage drill at the moment. At the end of the day we lifted out the stages and scooters and did think it looked rather funny. Still practise makes perfect

Went for three dives at Vobster today. Dive 1 and 2 involved 3 stages and a scooter! Back gas as usual 32%.

Pic of me:

Clare on the left, me on the right

Me scootering:

Mark Scootering

After quite a blast and a load of drills (valve drills, s-drills and a stage drill) we then went for a third dive with just a bottom stage of 32% and swimming! Bliss it was so much easier.

After the last month of being stuck in quarries I was really looking forward to getting back in the ocean. Clare had booked the pair of us with Aquanauts and were due to be sharing the boat with a crowd on an E-Aquanauts course.

Arrived in Plymouth in plenty of time and set about unloading the car. Most of the stuff went on the boat including these two:

We set off on the centre’s boat to dive the Scylla. Zak Sherlock was running an OHE course so his group of divers were suffering the expected level of pre-dive teasing. There was also Graham (Mildog), Bardo, Dave, Paul (Turbantor) and Kirstie (who was doing her nitrox course).

Dive 1 and myself and Clare set off for a scooter round the Scylla. We both took a bottom stage to preserve the gas in the twinsets for the next dive! Vis was excellent about 10m so we were able to nip up and down at a fair rate. This was the first time I’d taken the Gavin in the sea since I got it in December. I’d not got the weighting quite right so it was a bit annoying – but useable.

Dive 2 and we set off with just AL40’s of 02 for deco. The plan this time was to lay some line and have a swim round inside the wreck. We had a good tour round the engine/gearbox room and when exiting were pleased to see that there was no sign we’d been inside. As we toured some of the upper decks we had to be careful where we went as we didn’t want to confuse the OHE course. This was a really fun dive – keeping the buoyancy spot on and no stirring up any silt was good practise for our up-coming cave class.

Dive 3 and we dropped in on the JEL. Took the AL40’s again. We had one minor issue at the start when Clare stopped Bardo to turn off his backup and we momentarily got confused about which direction we were heading off in. Once that was sorted we went for a brief swim around. Not a bad dive – we swam into the remains of some of the holds and did a valve drill just to keep hands warmer! Switched to 02 at 6m just for practise and did a slow ascent.

Second day and after a curry with Zak, Justin, Daz, Sam, Brian and Clare certain members of the boat were busy off-gasing before the dive. We were due to dive the wreck of the Maine but the vis looked bad so we aborted and ended up diving the Persier instead. This was a little shallower than planned so the mix planned from the previous dive ended up being used for a 30m dive. We did a good tour round the wreck making our way from around the middle near the boliers to the stern. We then came back along a different section of the wreck and did a couple of nice swim-throughs. We did a 45 minute bottom time so we had some deco to do on the way up but managed to lose my smb as I sent it up. Luckily it was retrieved at the surface.

Overall an excellent weekend. Good vis for a number of dives. The 8 degree water temperature was a bit chilly on deco – I’m looking forward to the water warming up a bit!