Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
More club diving
My next dives, at the end of May, were training dives for a Sports Diver trainee.
Sports Diver is the 'mid-tier' of BSAC diving (I almost typed second, but they introduced a new grade, Advanced Ocean Diver, on a par with PADI's AOW grade), which provides the diver with the skills to dive independently in UK waters or similar and makes them an extremely proficient diver in warm water, assuming, of course, that the standards of training are adhered to.
I took in Claire, a diver who, with her husband, does quite a lot of independent diving, in the UK and elsewhere, but she understood her limitations, so wanted further training.
The first dive, at Vobster Quay, in somewhat murky conditions (probably the end of the bloom) was SO3, which includes planning a deco dive, using a distance line effectively and carrying out a simulated decompression stop.
We dropped in, in front of the shop and swam out to a buoy which the map indicated should take us to some railings at 20M, the limit of the depth for this dive.
As we descended, I looked down and could see the shotline descended all the way to the roof of a car, which I knew lay at the bottom of a pit, a good 5M deeper. Luckily, I spotted this before we breached 20M, so we swam over to the edge of the pit and found the uprights of the railings.
I decided these were actually pretty good for the distance line training exercises, so tied a line from one, around some other and finishing at the last one, before reeling the line back in to go back.
Claire completed this task without too much trouble, although soon after she indicated that she was getting low on air, so the task loading had obviously had an effect on her.
We swam from the Jacquin II wreck, to the wheel house where we ascended to the roof and began our ascent up the shot line to 6M, where we carried out our simulated deco stop (our plan, conveniently, required a 3 minute stop here, so we did a regular safety stop).
Claire was obviously having trouble with her trim her, with her feet almost directly above her at times, but managed to stay on the line and complete the stop.
When we exited, she realised she had forgotten some trim weights she usually carried on the cylinder, so was hopeful this was the cause of the issue.
Other pairings had carried out the same drills and we gathered to chat the dives over and to compare notes on the vis and cold; only 8C at 20 Metres felt quite chilly!
After a prolonged surface interval, we did a dry run on using a compass and launching a DSMB.
Then we dropped in and I demonstrated the use of a compass on the surface, swimming to a nearby buoy and back to our entry point, which Claire completed with no issue.
We then took a bearing back to the Jacquin, quite some distance away and descended.
Vis was really quite poor, so there was little chance of cheating this drill.
I demonstrated the method again, underwater, for a while and then let Claire take over.
I could see she was doing well and then the railing uprights by the pit appeared, which meant we were doing well.
A few moments later, I tapped her arm and pointed to my right. She was so focussed on the compass, that she'd missed the boat alongside us, a metre or two away!
We started heading back on a reciprocal course and once I was happy she was doing that well, we swam up to shallower water to carry out the DSMB launch.
These days I mostly use a 'crack bottle' DSMB, which has a small cylinder of air attached to it for filling. However, for the drill we used a traditional, open ended DSMB, which is filled from the diver's octopus 2nd stage.
I demonstrated a launch with the DSMB bungeyed to restrict the amount of air it took in and Claire successfully mimiced the the drill.
I then noticed my reel was going to jam if I used it, which meant we only had one between us, so I did another short launch and then asked Claire to launch the DSMB fully.
She did fine, getting the DSMB away safely, releasing the reel initially to let the line unspool, but then she released the catch and started to be lifted by the ascending DSMB.
I had a finger looped through a D-ring on her BCD, in case this happened, so was able to stop her shooting up and I released the catch again to ensure the line fully unspooled to the point the DSMB reached the surface.
Overall, though, both dives had gone well enough - We would get her to repeat the DSMB launch one more time on a future dive, to ensure she was comfortable with the process.
It had been a chilly, slight dull and murky couple of dives, but such is the way, especially when training other divers, so you accept some days will be like that.
Following the training dives at Vobster, a few of us headed to Wraysbury in early June.
Chris Connett had had a bad experience at Vobster, so we were keen to get him back in the water.
John Shead took him in, but we all went in together as Phil had had some issues with his ears and we weren't certain he'd be OK.
We entered via the slip behind the shop.
As it turned out Phil's ears were sorted out, so while John and Chris headed one way, Phil and I went another.
I can't really remember where we went, but we took in the Bus, the Pit, the Portakabin and the cave complex on our dive.
In places the vis was excellent (near the Portakabin we saw 10-12M around a small boat), but in others it was virtually zero.
We managed a full hour on this dive and Phil's ears were fine down to 15M in the pit.
We circled around and exited via the slip behind the shop where we'd entered.
Chris said he'd enjoyed his first dive, but elected not to do a second, so John, Phil and I headed to the pier in the car park for a second dive.
We quickly found a few of the cabin cruisers and then found ourselves, in good vis, by the corrugated iron tubes which we swam through after looking at the minibus beside it (Someone commented they didn't know what the Aqua Bus was and we all realised none of us did!).
After swimming through the tubes we found the vis pretty poor, but eventually found ourselves at the plane which we all swam through and we then swam onto the lifeboat which we also swam through, after checking there was no big Pike lurking inside!
We couldn't find the wreck site in the poor vis, but did find the traffic lights.
Eventually we turned and headed for the nearside of the lake, exiting at the slip behind the shop.
A couple of pleasant enough dives for a murky tuesday morning.
The next couple of outings were pretty mundane affairs, as much of 2025's diving seemed to be.
Long time club member (and veteran diver) Geoff had been away from diving for over 6 months, but was keen to get back in the water, so we made a mid-week trip to Wraysbury again.
He said he felt quite nervous going in, but it didn't show under the water (Geoff has dived for over 50 years, so it's hard to tell!), but felt comfortable once we got on a platform and he had a bit of a hover.
We swam around the lake, taking in the cave complex and the bus.
Vis was mixed, in places it was very clear, but in others near zero due to silt.
This was my first dive in a £70 drysuit I bought from eBay to act as a backup as I had decided I needed to resolve the issue with my Seaskin suit that had resulted in a wet right knee for the last 2+ years.
Remarkably I emerged from the half hour dive bone dry! I had expected I'd need to replace the seals, at least!
For the second dive, we went in as a 4, but Tim and Saby had more air than Geoff and I.
We did a bit of a swim around and found the wrecksite and then made our way back to the slip where we left Geoff.
Tim, Saby and I set off looking for the plane, but suddenly I realised neither was near me.
Apparently Saby had ear problems and they surfaced.
As I came up to look for them I saw them go back down again, but as they were some way off and together and had more air than I did, I left them to it and swam back to the slipway and joined Geoff.
Once again , I was completely dry after the dive in my new (to me, but very old) Hunter drysuit.
A few days later I was back at Vobster to assist with training of Sports Divers again.
I had opted out of this training and seemingly that wasn't a problem until one of the other instructors was unable to attend at short notice and, as the club's diving officer, I felt obliged to go along when asked to help out.
Not only was the session a morning one (starting at 7:30) at Vobster (a good 1.5 hour drive away on a good day), but it was also booked for the Summer Solstice and we needed to drive past Stonehenge to get there! Waze re-routed me via Salisbury (supposedly only a few more miles, but considerably slower and it took a full 2 hours to get there).
As it turned out, one student hadn't turned up (without warning), so I wasn't actually needed!
Still, I did do some training, taking in Dave and Claire for their final Sports Diver open water lesson, SO5.
Claire completed her drills without issue but Dave struggled with the mask clearing drills and was very short on gas afterwards, so we couldn't complete his Dive Leading element of the lesson.
I dived in the Hunter drysuit again. Result? Dry!
For the second dive, another instructor took Dave and Claire in to complete his Dive Leading exercise, while I joined Caroline and Justyna to complete the latter's SO5 lesson.
I acted as the 'buddy', while Caroline instructed.
All went well and Justyna was qualified, althoug, the vis was very poor on this trip to Vobster mostly, I think due to algae due to very warm temperatures in the week leading up to it.
The journey home was a pain as well, as an accident near Longleat saw me diverted down small and clogged country lanes.
Overall, a day's diving I hadn't looked forward to, turned out to be just a disappointing as I feared, but at least I wouldn't be doing anymore training dives for a while!
Perhaps, I could finally get some decent sea dives done!
