Hoborough Lake 7th November 2010

 We decided to visit Holborough Lake at Snodland in Kent on sunday, with a couple of goals, one was for George to test his drysuit after it's come back after repair and for myself to have another play with the Canon 500D dSLR and the Sea & Sea housing.

The weather was overcast and and slight wind blowing over the lake making it a little chilli. We signed in and left the cylinders to be filled.
We started to kit up it was then George noticed he'd left his BCD at home, not a great problem as you can hire them from Holborough at a reasonable price of £5 per day. The got the cylinders back and finished off kitting up and checking the equipment.

Next for me was the camera setup I'd done most of this at home so it was just a matter of doing the last few bits, checking the strobe was working making sure the lense was clean and clear of bits of dirt. A took a quick couple of photo's to make sure everything was working.

We planned to do 2 dives today, as George had never dived here before, Holborough is a great training with plenty of attractions for you to swim around and also lines run between all the items making it good for newly quialified divers to find there way around whilst having a good dive. For a inland lake the visability has always been a good 8-10m making it good for taking pictures.

 DIVE 1:For me dive 1 was all about taking some pictures making sure I could use the camera and get some good photos in the process. For George this was a checkout dive making sure his drysuit kept him dry. We headed out from the slipway following the lines to the platform , then onto the Sweet Mystery which is a large 30 foot wooden wreck in about 8meters of water. George decided to try hiding  however I found him.We left the wreck following another line this took us past a small tyre and onto a platform in 10meters of water. Onwards to the car half car in the side of the lake and then onto the old 100cc motorbike, we continued down the ropes and then turned back which brings you back onto a small rowing boat. Which we could see from at least 15+ meters. 

We started to head for the speedboat where the visability was still 10+ meters. Which made for some great photographs, one with George looking ratehr vertically challanged but nothing new there.

We then headed back out to the slip way and exited the water. on checking the dive computers we had just completed a 45 minute dive with a maximum depth of 10.1m
DIVE 2:This dive was only going to be a short one I was going to show George were the Gargoils was, I set the camera to video mode, and in we went to get them.

This was a simalar route out past the platform with the upside down bomb next to it onto the Sweet Mystery Wreck, but this time we went over it onto the raised platform and to another small speed boat. This fetched us to a large tractor tyre which always seems to have some large perch swiming around it. We then found ourself onto the mould where the Gargoils are the visability was amazing, shortly after the camera said memory card full. Somehow you can't change them under water. We followed the route back and exited via the slip way again. This dive was a maximum of 8 meters and only 25 minutes.

HSE Medical Passed for another Year

We'll got myself over to the HSE Doctor yesterday for the yearly medical that all diving professionals need within the UK.

Good news is that I'm clear for another year.

Vobster Quay 10th September

Well as I was off on holiday I thought we could have a dive at Vobster Quay on the way down to Brixham.

We'd arranged to meet James and Mark, with Sarah and myslef travelling down together, James somehow managed to have a car accident the night before so it was just left to the 3 of us.

The traffic was terrible and we arrived just before 11.00am, Mark had been sat there for a couple of hours waiting for us.

DIVE 1: Anyway finally made it into the water with Mark and myself our first dive was going to be the deepest of the day. I've been wanting to dive the Jacquin II wreck for a while, so we set off to it the bouy and started a free decent down the line, the visability was a good 10m, as we got down to 8m we could start to see the wreck beneath us, the Jacquin II is nearly 60 foot long and was lying on it's side. After swiming round it, Mark managed to get a few pictures I headed over to the PIT which bottoms out at 26m with a car sat in the bottom of it, we headed out of the pit as it was a warm 9C in there. We swam on the 13 meter ledge over to the plane wreck and the tempature came up to a nice 16C. The plane wreck is split into three sections and the first part was the tail section, then swimming through the middle section and finally through the side door of the cockpit and out throught the back.

We headed over to the Ford Escort as we was making our way up the road, I showed Mark where the tunnel starts as we started our ascent up from 12m when we got to 6m we had the usual 3 minute safety stop and then exited the water for a nice cup of coffee.

DIVE 2: Mark wanted to have a look at the Crushing works and Sarah was going to join us for this dive. So we all did a giant stride into the water, we all started to desend however Sarah had a problem with her ear which ment she couldn't equilize properly, which ended her dive.

Mark and myself waited for Sarah to safely get out the water so we could carry on as Mark wanted to have a look at the crushing works , so we swam round the side and descended down to 6m platform I led and swam over to a small boat wreck and then a drop off to 12 meters and over towards the plane wreck and onto the concrete swim through's as we came out of the last swim through we could see the top of the crushing works. Mark was snapping away , I thought it would be good to swap onto my deco cylinder of 50% as we was at 13m , after spending a few minutes looking at the steel work we headed towards the road to start our ascent to 6m for the usual 3minute safety stop at 6 meters.

We got out the water and had anoth cup of coffee, and completed our log books, the first dive had been Mark's 100th dive. Thanks to Mark for the pic's

On with the PADi IDC

I've now started my PADi IDC (Instructor Development Course) with Blue Ocean Diving , the first 2 days are all classroom based, going through all the PADi standards and understanding how modules and courses are taught.

Tonight is the first pool session watching a presentation to get the feeling and know how it's done.

4th/5th September was a full on more classrom room presentations with my second classroom presentation of the "5 pieces of specialized equipment used for deep diving. After 6 -7 minutes of my talk I was told that I'd achieved the pass rate however I'd managed to get a 4.0, a 3.6 being the minimum pass mark.

The evening session (saturday) was to confined water presentation the first being partial mask flood, and fin pivot using low pressure inflator. Sunday's session was regulator recovery, the second skill was remove and replace scuba unit in water to deep to reach the surface.

Well another pool session last night thought I'd got away without doing another demo from the confined open water, wrong as Justin had man flew I ended up doing "Air from an alternate source I happy with the result I managed a 4.6 even that I got a couple of things wrong. So overall a great result and the marks are going in the right direction upwards.

The IDC is a massive learning curve and you have to be committed to it as you could get anything from any of the padi courses, meaning lots of reading, more revision and more practice.

Passed the EFR Instructor Course

Managed to pass the EFR Instructor course, and it wasn't as bad as what I believed it was going to be. Top marks have got to go to Ryby (Blue Ocean Diving) for keeping it entertaining and fun as it's not the best subject in the world.

The road ahead

As my journey to become a PADi Scuba Instructor the time is fast arriving for me to complete my EFR Instructor course.

I can remember falling asleep to the EFR dvd over a year ago, so it's going to be an early night on the thursday and then some large vodka's when I've completed it.

Completion I'll have to pay them £80 for a shinny new EFR Instructor card.

1st Real Boat Dive

It seemed to take ages for wednesday to arrive, ever to slowly did that clock turn, then at 12.00 o'clock we set off to Keri and the boat.

When we arrived at the dive center only a few had turned up so we had a drink and waited , then we started getting the kit ready to be packed into the van for a short trip to the quayside and then unloaded onto the boat.

We walked down the quayside to the boat in the baking heat, I then found out that everyone mucks into get the equipment unloaded onto the boat. After about 15 minutes this was completed and the boat headed out from the quay. The water was clear blue and you could see down to the bottom.

The boat moved up a gear and headed over to Keri Caves, I'd been there a few years ago on sight seeing tour, but never in the water. About 40 minutes later we slowed down and anchored the boat, as I was the least experienced diver onboard we was going off last letting all the other divers go off first,Sabina told everyone that this was a 45 minute dive. I watched as they went off the back of the boat one at a time then disappeared into the blue depths, then it was my time to step off the boat, I placed some air in my BCD and then stepped off, coming up with a mouthful of water, the regulator seemed to be on the small side, however after a couple of minutes we was right to descend, slowly we began to go under, it was amazing it looked to be around 60 feet deep or maybe deeper.

It started with Trial Dive in Greece........!

Well managed to get over to Zante for a summer holiday, not intending on going diving while we was there, on the moday we drove through Keri and stopped for a drink. The diver Center was located in the back of it. We got chatting to a couple of there instructors and it turned out that Andy was from Eastbourne just a few miles from where we live.

Well we ended booking a trial dive each the next day, Sarah hadn't done anything like this before but I knew she'd be fine with it.

The next day arrived we had to be at the dive center by 2.00pm so there was no rush to get to the other side of the island. When we arrived at the dive center we were greeted by Steve and Andy and was told they were our instructors for the day, as Tuesday is there turn round day meaning they nadn't much to do, however all the better for us an instructor each.

We got kitted up and walked across the road onto the beach and then into the sea, it was a cool 21 degs. We got to waist deep placed on the mask and regulator in the mouthand took a few breathes of air whilst putting my head under the water, just like I remembered. Sarah had some difficulties doing this as she had never even snorkeled before after about 10 minutes of trying she was going to give up however with a bit more practise she was fine, we split up with and instrustor each . Andy and myself headed out toward the sea, with the seabed slowly dropping awaywe then started to desend to around 5meters. We swam around for around 40 minutes before heading back to the shore to meet up with Sarah and her instructor Steve.


When we got back to the scuba center we had a chat and I asked about the drive trips from the boat, theyt said I'd be ok , Sarah said she was happy just to come to watch. I was soon handing over 50euros for a boat dive the next day.