Black Torch Down - 04/11/2014

When Soul II Soul released Back to Life I'm not entirely sure they were singing about diving from an Egyptian live-aboard then returning to Scotland to dive in the cool winter waters. However, that is the reality that faced the Zookeeper and I tonight.

My regular Mares Abyss Navy  reg is in for servicing so I nabbed my wife's regulator and subbed on the 2nd stage of my pony (she has a fitted mouth piece). Of course, this meant ditching the pony and rebalancing my weight. All just a lot of hassle.

Diving at the A-Frames, I suggested a different dive at this site to the Zookeeper, Out usual plan is to dive north on to the big frame head down to the deeper frame before coming back along the other frames. However, today we were diving down to the big frame before heading off to the right where we'd hopefully find some conger eels, cuttlefish and lobster amongst the wreckage.

As we reached the big frame, I realised I'd droppped my backup torch, a Subgear SP30. This was not good news as my Mares EOS is rechargable and only had about 50 minutes of life on the current charge. We spent the rest of the dive retracing steps to find it until the juice ran out of my main torch. This was to no avail. Here's hoping one of my pals can find in the coming weeks. A case of Black Torch Down.

I reckon the dive has cost me about £1.50 for every minute we stayed down. However, I realised in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter, as on the way home a BMW driver nearly smashed into me in a fit of aggression with another driver. If it hadn't of been for my evasive action I'd have lost more than a torch.

Quite literally chillin'

Sea squirts

Macropodia rostrata

Let There Be a Back Up Light - 28/06/2014

With the end of the month rapidly approaching, I found myself with a little spare cash and a need for a new back up torch since my last back up died a few months back involving an incident with concrete and a clumsy fool.

I went into Aquatron last week and had a look at a few and decided to do a little research in between watching football matches throughout the week. The main protagonist in my search was a Subgear Prolight Sp30. 500 lumens, 9000 lux, sealed head with 50,000 hour led burn time, triple o ring and a 14-18ht battery life. 

A number of shop patrons and staff had used and loved the Prolight for sometime. It's always good when complete strangers highly endorse a torch. Not that I don't trust the views of staff, but let's not lie - they have a vested interest in selling you stuff.

To many people it would be a primary torch, but when you dive with a Mares EOS 10R - a torch that fuses life into stone - even the above impressive stats aren't that exciting. :)

A brief look at the shop today and a very decent price match and the deal was clinched.

I should be a hand model.