Who Framed Fast Ed? - 03/04/2014

Fast Ed has been travelling the globe as part of his role as an International Weegie* of Mystery. So, when he thought that Laura's van trouble was going to scupper his chances of a first dive in a few weeks he was gutted. However, like a sexy scuba diving Jessica Rabbit, I stepped forward and went with Ed to the A-Frames.

By the time I arrived Ed had mostly kitted up, so I raced to catch up. At one stage I realised I'd left my 3Kg pony counter weight at home, but Ed had two spare 2Kg shot pouches that I stuffed into a BCD pocket. It was strange though, it just wasn't what I'm used to. As such, by the time we entered the choppy water I was feeling a bit uneasy and unbalanced.

Dropping down to about 10m I took a few moments to adjust my straps and let myself get comfortable, before heading out to the A-Frames. We did three of the Frames, at one point (23.4m) disturbing a small group of scallops, some of whom leapt for joy at our presence.

The return swim was very pleasant spotting a couple of butterfish, a small flat fish and a big pinkish fish that I never snapped and have yet to identify.

Colour clusters

Square go

Worms

Butterfish

Flat fish

* Weegie is a derogatory term used by some people to describe the inhabitants of Glasgow. An abbreviation of Glaswegian, it has now been somewhat taken to our hearts and is used as a term of endearment.

My Little Pony - 24/02/2014

My little pony

As you know I've tried out a few pony configurations over the last few months. I can confirm that I've settled for now on left-hand-side-upside-down-side-mount.

However, my current pony reg set up has the 2nd stage and a pressure gauge coming up to clip at my left hand shoulder. I've found this annoying as the gauge and the reg combine to restrict my head movement in the water. So after a little thought I went into Aquatron yesterday and bought a little button pressure gauge (£20) for the pony 1st stage.

My thinking is that in the emergency when I'm using the pony, I probably won't need immediate access to how much air it has in it as, if I'm using it, I'm out of air anyway. Therefore other than pre-dive check do I need a full sized pressure gauge. Probably not.

So, I've made the switch and added my Mares Mission One to my main reg and ditched my old Mares Mission 3 with lost compass, so that saves even more space. On the downside I've lost my mechanical depth gauge. That's sure to ire the DIRers amongst my diving buds, but I'll rectify that soon.

Current Set up - Scubapro R395 2nd stage plus Mares Mission 1

Set up with mini gauge