Tuesday 9 January 2018

The Instructor's Instruction - 06/01/2017

It's my first dive day of the year and I am resolved. Resolved to do more dives in more countries and more new places here in Scotland. I am also resolved to continue where I let off last year and work towards becoming a ScotSAC Branch Instructor, finish my Freediving course and do a Tri-Mix course.

So, as it happened, my first two dives of the year were as a trainee instructor at Loch Fyne's Seal Reef with my club. It was a funny arrangement working with a diver who has been described as our clubs "Scuba Diving Dark Horse", largely because of his pretty humble manner. Our first instruction dive was to be a dive lead and also a rescue skill. It  meant that we had to curiously do three dive briefings for one dive. We all chuckled at the anomaly. It seemed like overkill, but it what is.


My major take away was the SEEDS acronym.


  • Safety - what do you need to know to keep you safe?
  • Exercise - what is the skill we're looking to do?
  • Equipment - do we need any specific equipment for this drill?
  • Discipline - what's the plan and behaviours required?
  • Signals - what signals are required?


We had mixed success with the actual passing of skills but we did find a lovely little nudibranch and a very pretty macropodia rostrata. So all was not lost on the pleasure front either.


Thursday 4 January 2018

The Annual 100 - 29/12/2017


It's not every year I make it to 100 dives in a calendar year. To do so, I probably have to do a dedicated dive trip to rack up a few to complement my weekly activities. I hadn't even checked my log book when Jester and I decided to brave the snow and head over to Loch Fyne.


As a precaution we took the Jeep - not one of my usual diving vehicles, but as a 4x4 ideally suited to snow covered roads. In the end it probably didn't matter. The roads were pretty clear, and to get the dramatic snow shot to the right I had to take it off the main road and into a little car park at the top of the Rest & Be Thankful.

The dive site and the water temperature were slightly warmer than they were the day before, which made for a more conducive environment for kitting up.

As it was just the two of us we went deeper and explored for a little longer. We surfaced having enjoyed some nice life and an hour or so underwater. I got home, and filled out my logbook and there it was, dive 455 was my 100th and last dive of 2017.

Once again, I'll leave you with the underwater photography of Jester.

Catshark

Nudibranch

Me

The road we came

The beach

An All Time Low - 27/12/2017

When people talk about coldwater diving they have varying degrees (if you pardon the pun) of measurement. However, for me, proximity to the -2c freezing temperature of seawater is pretty much the defining measure.

So as myself, Jester, the Walkman and Freeflow Bob headed out for a couple of dives at St Catherine's it was with interest that I noted the lowest water temperature ever recorded by my computer, 0.6c. Thankfully it was only this cold for a few metres before it warmed up to a balmy 8c. 

We kitted up buddy checked and headed in for what were to be two pretty straight forward fluffy dives to a maximum of 30m. 

I'll share some of Jester's pictures, but for me the interesting thing was the cold.

Nudi

Feeling the cold