Naiad and the Sport England Story

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.

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2009 – 10 Annual Report

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!

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 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

 

Graph showing number of sives done through the year

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Dive Oxon 2012 – Back to Weymouth

19th-20th May 2012dive_oxon

Once again we have our annual get-together with clubs from across Oxfordshire to dive from Weymouth

After last years partially successful (despite the weather) weekend, we are at it again! This year we are going back to Weymouth, camping at the popular East Fleet Campsite where we have a great relationship with the owners and we hope to have lots of you attending for some great diving from many different platforms (including our new hard boat) and some excellent socialising.

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Diving the Garvellachs and Slate Isles 2011

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Scotland, 10th-17th September

**26/8/11: THIS TRIP IS NOW OPEN TO NON-MEMBERS**

4/5 places available for qualified divers (BSAC Sports Diver or equilvalent)

Trip is advertised elsewhere – please contact Chris Stevens ASAP if you would like to come: 07808 774271

Fin the late summer dive season the seas around the west coast of Scotland boast some of the best diving conditions in the UK. Visibility is rarely less than 12m and marine life abounds. Basking sharks, Dolphin, Minke Wales and Seals are visitors at this time of year – spend a surface interval snorkelling with seals and porpoise and the time flies by.

The Garvellachs are a small group of Islands to the SW of Oban and are an area of outstanding natural beauty both above and below the water with exceptional water clarity. They experience some of the strongest tides in the UK making for very exciting drift diving and the wall dives have some amazing jewel anemone beds. They also have several large intact steamship era wrecks within a short distance (the Meldon, the SS Breda, the Shuna, the Benghazi, the Thesis, and even the Hispania may all be dived from here).

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