Diving - More Adventures underwater
Back to reality - Vobster, October 2024
A few weeks passed after returning from the Galapagos before I was back in the water.
A persistent cough lingered, but it didn't seem to affect my diving, so when Phil, a newly qualified member of the club asked if anyone wanted to go to Vobster for a Friday dive, I offered to go along.
In the end, it was just the two of us, but that was fine and we arrived at Vobster to, as expected, find it very quiet.
There was a group from the Army messing about in a boat, a group from South Wales Police arrived for a short while and there were a handful of other divers.
As Phil was such a newly qualified diver, I didn't take a camera, but his diving belied his inexperience and we had 3 good dives.
For the first dive, we dropped in from one of the platforms in the school area, but Phil initially couldn't descend, so we got out and added 4KG to his weights, which he felt was about right.
We descended and found ourselves by the Ford Escort, so headed on to the airplane, which we swam through.
From there we moved onto the Glider trailer and the NAS wreck training site, before swinging back, through the concrete tubes and onto the top of the crushing works.
Although it was probably too deep for Phil anyway, the crushing works was out of bounds due to a loose tarpaulin having been uncovered and risking entaglement for divers.
From there we headed onto the wheelhouse and finally the Jacquin II, but at this point Phil indicated he was low on air, so we went up to the 6M platform where we completed a safety stop, before exiting by the usual slipway.
Having seen most of the 20M sites on the first dive, Phil wanted to see the APC, so I said we could swim to it and pass over it, as the vis was pretty clear.
We jumped in in front of the shop and descended down over the platforms and then swam left under some of the lower ones and dropped down to see the 20M training platform.
From there we turned left and quickly found the APC below us, swam over it for a few moments, before turning along the edge of the dropoff and going to the Jacquin II.
We swam into that, as Phil's buoyancy was good and he seemed unworried by entering wrecks.
From there, we moved onto the wheelhouse and then turned down the route of the road, looking out for the Sea King helicopter on the left.
When we found it, we turned and swam over the top of it and then turned up the cliff to the road and ascended the usual slope and road up to the 6M safety stop area above the tunnel exit.
Unfortunately, Phil wasn't monitoring his buoyancy and started to float at this point and wasn't able to counter it and floated to the surface, but without any issue.
This seems a not uncommon problem amongst inexperienced diver as I think they don't realise they are ascending as they come up the slope and leave it too late to adjust their buoyancy.
It was still before noon, so I asked Phil if he wanted to do a 3rd dive and he was keen to, so we refilled our cylinders again, while we had another cup of tea and completed a surface interval.
For the final dive, we decided to go and have a good look at the helicopter.
This was, strictly speaking, too deep for Phil, but he'd been fine on previous dives, so I didn't think there was much of a risk to going a few metres deeper for a few minutes.
We dropped in in front of the shop and descended past the platforms and swam over the pit, passing the Jacquin II and following the road past the wheelhouse down tho the helicopter.
This dive was darker than the previous two and much colder, dropping to 9C at the deepest point.
We swam over to and through the Sea King and then up onto the top of it before turning back and ascending up the cliff.
This led us to the road, by the Ford Escort, so we turned down the road to the top of the crushing works, through the 'washing machine' and then back over the top of the crushing works.
On this dive, and the others, there were lots of Perch around here and on the platforms, in the plane and in open water. I don't think I've ever seen so many and many of the ones on the top of the crushing works were lying on the metal structure, seemingly taking a break!
We dropped down the outside of the crushing works and entered the tunnel, where light was visible from the top, but it was still quite dark in the tunnel.
We followed the tunnel up without incident and Phil carefully controlled his buoyancy this time as we completed our safety stop and exited, having had 3 enjoyable dives at Vobster.
A personal milestone, dive 750 - Vobster, October 2024
Many years ago, I had a conversation with former club-mate, Julian, about how many dives we reasonably thought we could reach, both being a similar age and having done a similar number of dives at that point (He has done far more now, taking on a lot of training responsibilites with BSAC in recent years).
We both thought 750 was quite a substantial number from where we were at the time.
For some reason, that conversation stuck in my mind and, for me, my 750th dive became something of a personal milestone.
I had hoped I could achieve it in the Galapagos, but it wasn't to be and a rather mundane training dive turned out to be my 750th logged dive!
It was the SMB dive for Justyna's Sports Diver training and we dropped in near the school parking area.
At first things went OK, we started on the Ford Escort and swam to the plane, past that and then onto the NAS wrecksite, where we turned around and swam past the glider trailer and small boat.
However, Justyna became focussed on the SMB reel (her reel was jamming a bit too) and lost control of her buoyancy. I tried to pull her back down, but it was too late and we both ended up back on the surface.
We descended again and swam around for a while until I indicated it was time to surface. We carried out a 3 minute safety stop at 'around' 6M and then surfaced, exiting via a ladder, as the lesson required.
Justyna opted not to do a second dive, so I joined Caroline and Phil to act as the 'casualty' for the Rescue drill for Sports Diver for Phil.
I managed to lose my mask on the surface tow, presumably it slid off my arm as I was rolled over for 'rescue breaths', which was really annoying.
After the drills and a quick and unproductive look for my mask, we headed to the Jacquin II, past the wheelhouse and then up to the 6m safety stop area above the tunnel exit. While I was completing my safety stop, a pair of divers came past, seemingly aiming for 5M for a PADI safety stop.
One of them then proceeded to stop just ahead of me and then back into me, as if I wasn't there, a bright yellow drysuit and fins obviously not enough for him to have spotted me as he came past!
Clearly his need to be at exactly 5M took priority over everyone and everything else - You do wonder about the kind of thinking, if any, of some people.
The temptation to cut his air hose, Bond style, was tempered by only having a tiny knife on my inflator hose! It would have taken a while...
Group photo after diving, where I completed my 750th dive - Kim, Andy, Phil, Justyna, Caroline and myself
Overall, not the most enjoyable of dives, especially after the 3 good dives Phil and I had had the previous Friday, but the sun was out most of the time (after a drive down in torrential rain at times), so it wasn't awful.
More training - Vobster, November 2024
We were back at Vobster in mid-November, for what was supposed to be a nice gentle, end of season get together, but Caroline decided to turn it into a Buoyancy and Trim workshop...
Unfortunately, due to one unremittingly unreliable instructor, I was roped into delivering the training, which I'd never undertaken or given before!
The idea is that divers undertake a couple of dives, the first with their 'normal' weighting, checked initially, and then the second, possibly with adjusted weights, to see if they came maintain a stationery, un-aided (no line to hang onto, no finning) stop at 12, 9, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 metres for 2 minutes and then a 30 second 1 metre stop, adding in a few tasks to increase task loading and making things a bit more of a challenge.
We dropped in and both Dave and Claire (a married couple and both pretty inexperienced divers) initially had troubled descending or maintaining their buoyancy, but they overcame this and as we swam level around 1-1.5 metres off the stoney 12 metre level, they looked ok.
I was aiming to reach the boat to find a shot line to carry out the stop tests, but somehow found us at 23M at the crushed caravan, probably because the vis seemed so good at that level that it was hard to believe this was so deep.
We worked out back up to the boat and started the tests.
Tomek was absolutely fine, holding a horizontal stop at every level. Dave and Claire, however, constantly seemed to be metres off the depth we were stopping at and were both a long way away from the shot.
I struggled myself on the shallower stops as by then I was down to a nearly empty tank (exiting with only 20 bar showing, having started with just 130 bar, thinking this would be a low effort, shallow dive), but we managed, despite finding Caroline's group on the same line at the shallower stops!
Overall, it wasn't a very enjoyable experience.
Dave realised he'd over weighted himself for the first dive and so dropped a fair amount of weight for the second.
To start the dive, we all descended as one big group to try and get a celebratory photograph for Caroline's 1000th dive that had happened earlier in the season.
With 14 of us (a guest diver, Diedrick, tried to get some photos and Justyna wasn't diving as her suit had suffered a massive flood on the first dive) it was a bit chaotic and as everyone moved off, Dave and Claire vanished!
After waiting a few minutes, Tomek and I decided to carry on with the dive, asssuming the others had mistakenly joined another group.
After a few minutes, I spotted Dave following us, so we stopped and then surfaced to see if we could see Claire, but there was no sign of her on the surface.
We alerted a couple of our group who were acting as shore cover and descended the shot that is attached to the car in the pit.
We carried out our stops (I got them to carry out a reg recovery and roll over onto their back at various stops, too), all even managing a 1 minute plus 1 metre stop, and Dave was much better on this dive (as was I with more air to the end!) and so he was awarded a Gold rating and Tomek a Black.
Claire, it turned out had surfaced at some point and exited, so was back onshore when we returned.
I have to say, though, although quite a successful day and good to see so many member out (18 were there, including a couple who came along, but didn't dive), I hadn't enjoyed giving the training and will certainly not voluntarily do it again.
Group photo after diving to celebrate Caroline's 1000th dive - L to R Tom, Phil, Chris, Claire, Dave, Seadnagh, Caroline, Konrad, Andy, Izzy, Justyna, me, in front, Fran, Diedrick,John, Saby, Tomek
I felt it was a shame we couldn't just have had a couple of dives as the vis was amongst the best I'd seen at Vobster!
At this stage, I definitely felt I had delivered enough training and it was no longer enjoyable.
