It's taken me a few days to get around to blogging about the diving last weekend. I was back at Stoney Cove to do my advanced open water, dry suit and nitrox specialities. That meant five dives (all in a dry suit), one of which was deep, one navigation and the other nitrox (although we actually dived two on nitrox)....
Saturday's dive one was a disaaaaassssster dahhhhhrling! (anyone watch Strictly?).... despite 8k on my belt and 2k on each ankle, and an initial weight check that seemed fine I really struggled to get down. Once down there, I was all over the place. I did a passable fin pivot and hover but the rest of the dive saw me up and down like a yo-yo. I couldn't get the hang of the shoulder dump, which wasn't venting automatically as well as it could have, and it was almost a relief to surface.
Once at surface the scuba unit removal went ok, but the weight belt removal (my favourite.... not) went only marginally better than during the open water. I passed becouse my technique was spot on, but once again the weights slipped along the belt making it impossible to get the thing redone up.
I almost gave up there and then, but the instructors were so supportive and when it came to the second dive of the day I took all their advice in, used air in the dry suit to prevent squeeze and modified my buoyancy slightly with the BCD. And I put some extra weight on. Success!! It was fantastic, and I managed to almost look like a real diver! LOL
The third dive of the day saw three very cold students (one fell out due to mild hypothermia) - and in my case, one student with feet as wet as an otter's pocket - get back in for the navigation dive. I'd been diligently practising my square in the car park with right hand turns, and the buggers made me do left hand turns under water! I'm sure it was more luck than judgement that I got back to where I started, and I spent the rest of the dive practising fin pivots while waiting for the others to do their bit.
After a great curry and final adventure playground assault course at the pub, I headed to bed shattered but looking forward to getting Sunday out of the way.
Sunday morning arrived cold and damp. There were definitely moments of "what am I doing here?" as we kitted up, but I'd looked forward to the deep dive for ages and I wasn't disappointed! We took a nice swim down to 25 metres, and the only issue was sitting on my knees doing the tasks in the cold for so long (I was just getting twinges of cramp when we set off again). But it was fascinating to see the loss of colour from the charts, the affects of the cold and depth on the timed task, the water bottle trick and the cracked egg.
After a safety stop we surfaced, and that's when it all got a bit distressing. The rescue boat was out to a diver who had got into trouble by the far side of the lake, and police and emergency services (including an air ambulance were swiftly at the scene). They were doing CPR for 90 minutes, and to be honest it looked pretty serious. I still don't know the outcome, but my thoughts and prayers are still with that diver and their family today.
With one dive left to do, it was with some trepidation that me and my buddy went back in for the nitrox dive. But once in I was so glad I'd overcome that nagging doubt about going back in. Yes I was cold. Yes I was wet (despite some last minute repairs, the dry suit was still leaking at the boots) and yes I was tired after the surface swim to the buoy. But descending down the line was so much less stressful with a computer to track the depth we were at. By this time there was just the two of us, as the other two students didn't make the descent.
A familiar swim around the Staingarth, and then we headed out to Defiant, the sunken tug boat, before finding our way in the dark and poor vis to the Wessex (awesome DM and his navigation skills!). We kept swimming and before I knew it we popped up at the surface right by the slipway!
It's been an awesome couple of months - and I am sad it's the end of the season. But I've got Costa Rica next month, where I will finally be able to write something other than "Location: Stoney Cove" in my logbook, and I'm already thinking about the courses and trips I can do next year...
Just one note to self, might need a second job to help pay for it all! Hope you've enjoyed following my journey so far.
:-)
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