Dates: 31st July – 5th August
We are based in Stromness and once you get there, you will find the accommodation, dive boat within 100 yards of the ferry port. Its not that big a place. That might affect whether you want to put your car on the ferry etc… However we will need a couple of vehicles for sightseeing as Orkney is spectacular assuming I can drag any of you out of the pub!!
The latest addition to the club’s roster of boats is a brand new Humber 16ft RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat), christened Naiad.
With a £10,000 grant awarded by Sport England to help the club advance snorkeling from the pool to open water, this boat promises exciting times ahead for snorkelers young and old.
Many thanks go to Debbie White, John Waterhouse and all those whose hard work means that the club’s snorkelers have such a bright future.
A year ago, Debbie White, who was the current snorkel officer together with John Waterhouse, now the club’s regional snorkel advisor and another couple of members, decided to further develop snorkelling within the branch, for existing and new members by expanding our instructor base and improving our open water snorkelling capabilities.
Have you ever thought about learning to dive but were unsure how or where to start? Now is your chance to take that first step by coming along to Hinksey Outdoor Pool Open Day on Saturday 30th April 2011.
I learnt to dive with PADI in Thailand in 2005 in crystal clear waters surrounded by tropical fish. It is exactly how the sport is painted by marketing men the world over – stunning and highly memorable.
I was travelling and the only option (I thought at the time*) was to train with PADI. I found this an enjoyable experience, and learned in just a few days. I used the qualification to complete around 40 dives while I was abroad.
Then I came back to the UK. Continuing diving here didn’t immediately occur to me. In fact it took a long while to sink in that there is a really active diving community in the UK. After being told by three or four different people that I should join a club and give UK diving a go I got in touch with the Oxford branch of the BSAC.
I had had a two year break, so my confidence wasn’t high and I was concerned about the water temperature (I’d learnt in 28+ degree C!!). Despite what anyone would tell me I wanted to find out for myself whether I was up to the challenge of UK waters. On my first visit to the Oxford club I was met by several of the most experienced divers I have ever met. They reassured me that the water temperature would probably not be a problem, and encouraged me to come and have a go. After a check-out pool dive I was invited to go for a shallow dive at Swanage, Dorset.
Newly kitted out (well, second-hand semi-dry suit plus borrowed club kit) I plunged into the unknown – and didn’t freeze! The water in October was a pleasant 18 degrees, which in a semi-dry is absolutely fine. I think around 20 club divers were there on the day, which meant there was always someone to talk to and no shortage of buddies.
After that I had no hesitation in joining the club, and as I write I’ve been a member around a year and half, and done about 50 dives with the club (plus another 40 on holidays abroad). I’ve learned new skills appropriate to UK diving which weren’t taught in Thailand, made lots of friends and done lots of diving. I’m now training to be a Dive Leader (equivalent in the PADI system is Divemaster) – training which would be fairly expensive outside the club.
The experience I’ve had as a PADI diver joining BSAC is that no-one cares about how I learned, they just care about how I dive. To prove a point, I recently joined the club committee – and I’m not the only ex-PADI diver and I’m really enjoying being involved).
As I see it there are several advantages to the club over the way I went diving before:
In summary: there is nothing wrong with learning with any diving agency and there is no stigma in the club however you’ve learned. What is important is an appreciation of what experience you have, and what you might need to learn to do if you are not familiar with UK diving. I found the club environment was an excellent place to do this.
* I learnt on Koh Tao, and I’ve since discovered that there are several BSAC operations there.
You could not have asked for better conditions: neap tides, sunshine, no wind and a perfectly flat Weymouth Bay – truely like glass.
Our plan was to have two dives on our project wreck – the Alex van Opstal – one on each day. To do this we had to leave the marina at an un-weekendly (think I’ve just invented a new word there…) 7.30am. Despite all predictions we actually left 5 minutes early and made good progress in the perfect conditions.
With a little early morning fog adding to the atmosphere we were starting sense this would be a good weekend. But with a sudden CRUNCH! that all looked a bit premature. We’d hit something. With lightning reactions the skipper shut off the engine, and we sent a diver in to investigate what had got tangled on the propellor.
So the first official dive of the 2011-12 calendar (from the dinner dance in late March onwards) was in 1m of water cutting a plastic mail sack from our boat’s propellor. Auspicious indeed.
Problem solved we made it to the Alex on slack. We shotted the wreck and two divers started off the weekend’s diving proper. It was looking so good, until we realised they hadn’t moved off the shotline after being down about 5 minutes. Surfacing shortly afterwards they informed us that they couldn’t even see their own fins at the bottom, and despite being on the wreck had decided there wasn’t really any point in diving.
So, the mood slightly more sombre we enacted Plan B…
Not as exciting as the Alex, but with 4-5m vis we weren’t complaining. After months of being confined to inland dive sites after the weather ruled out trips it was just nice to be back in the sea. There were fish, crabs, lobsters, a slight current and all the random bits of this and that which make the sea so much fun to dive in! Plus it is around 3 degrees C warmer than the quarries, making it a lot more comfortable.
Having realised that Weymouth Bay was pea soup (possibly to do with run-off from all the Olympics construction?) we ventured West and round Portland Bill. When we headed for the wreck of the James Fennel and saw all the charter boats there we knew we must have got it about right.
On dive one, Steve L and I actually found the notoriously difficult-to-locate James Fennel, and were able to pinpoint it for the others to have their second dive on. I’d say this was more by luck than judgement, certainly on my part, but I think Lichy knew what he was doing once we’d started to find bits of wreckage and led me on a tour of the highlights! It really was a fantastic dive – 10m+ vis, calm water and loads of life. Despite locating the stern, prop shaft, boiler and plenty of scattered wreck, we also saw lobsters, pipefishes, conger eels, a stonefish, wrasse and so much more.
On our second dive Lichy and I tried to find the SS Gertrude, hidden amongst the bus-size boulders littering the seabed. We weren’t so lucky this time, although having located the anchor I suspect we simply needed to turn towards land rather than out to sea and we would have found it. Never mind – still a pleasant drift dive amongst the boulders, and a nice end to a cracking weekend.
This year the DO is challenging the club to make 1000 dives before the next Dinner Dance (in early 2011).
Things got off to a good start in Weymouth at the beginning of the year with 71 dives and after the Anglesey trip we were over 10% of the way there at 121. Then we had three more great weekends in Weymouth on Gemini II taking us up to 174 thanks to the lots of work by skippers and divers. The week in Weymouth was a bit of a disaster weather wise, but still 83 dives got done and with the Pirate event river clearance a few more took us up once more to 301. After some more Weymouth diving and the Isle of Mann trip we were at 410 – over 1/3 of the way there!Three days later a training weekend in Weymouth added another 16 to the total taking it to 426.
The September training event at Burton Bradstock added 21 to the total and the sports sign off day on Gemini II another 15 taking us up to 462. The Alex project weekend added another 27 dives to raise it to a monster score of 490 – more than 3 of the previous 4 years. But…. this isn’t the end of the season! A dive expedition to Scapa Flow generated 67 more dives Raising the total to 557 – more even than the previous record year and the mass dive at Swanage Pier in October clocked up an impressive 33 dives to a total of 590. A trip to NDAC, a prop recovery dive in Weymouth and a last minute club trip to the Red Sea pushed us up to 616.
Come the New year 3 hardy soles dived in Hinksey lake getting us to 619 and then the Red Sea reef cleanup expedition clocked up 70 more bringing us up to 689. 4 bold souls risked the chilly depths of Vobster Quay to make 8 more taking us to 697 nearly up to 700…..
Finally in March a hardy bunch headed off to Cromhall Quarry to do some dive leader rescue exercises and racked up another 12 dives taking us over the barrier to 709. Not bad at all!
0————————————————709——————–1000
Breakdown so far:
| Date | Place | # dives | Total |
| 11th-12th April | Weymouth, Training | 44 dives | 44 |
| 3rd May | Weymouth | 23 dives | 67 |
| 16th May | Dive Fest (Pentewan) | 4 dives | 71 |
| 23rd-25th May | Anglesey | 50 dives | 121 |
| 31st May | Weymouth | 22 dives | 143 |
| 13th-14th June | Weymouth | 17 dives | 160 |
| 4th-5th July | Weymouth | 14 dives | 174 |
| 11th-12th July | Weymouth, Training | 34 dives | 208 |
| 19th July | NDAC Chepstow | 6 dives | 214 |
| 25th July | Pirate Event | 4 dives | 218 |
| 25th-31st July | Expedition Weymouth | 83 dives | 301 |
| 6th August | Stoney | 16 dives | 317 |
| 9th August | Stoney | 18 dives | 335 |
| 13th-14th August | Isle of Man | 75 dives | 410 |
| 22nd-23rd August | Training weekend | 16 dives | 426 |
| 12th-13th September | Burton Bradstock | 36 dives | 462 |
| 25th-26th September | Alex Project | 28 dives | 490 |
| 3rd-10th October | Scapa Expedition | 67 dives | 557 |
| 18th October | Swanage Pier | 33 dives | 590 |
| 28th November | Sharm el Sheikh | 10 dives | 600 |
| 5th December | NDAC Chepstow | 12 Dives | 612 |
| 12th December | Weymouth prop recovery | 4 dives | 616 |
| 1st January 2010 | New Year’s Day | 3 dives | 619 |
| 8th-15th January 2010 | Redsea Reef cleanup | 70 dives | 689 |
| 18th February 2010 | Vobster Quay | 8 dives | 697 |
| 7th March 2010 | Cromhall quarry | 12 dives | 709 |
A table showing ideal slack times on the Alex across a range of weekends
A hold full of statistics about the Alex van Opstal, from code letters to dimensions…
