Location:
Jennycliff Bay – Type: Reef – Max Depth: 8.9m – Length: 48 mins – Surface:
Clear
It
was a rather chilly morning for the navigation adventure dive a week or so into
November; 2c when I left home first thing but the blue skies and sunshine made
the early start worth it and I’ve come to learn that if you’re a little nippy
on the surface, once you get under the water you’ll be feeling toasty (okay,
minor exaggeration, but definitely not freezing).
The first
thing to do was refresh my memory on how to use a compass. We touched on it
briefly in the open water course, but the last time I actually used a compass
for navigation skills (you may wonder what else a compass can be used for) was
around 12 years ago in a school PE lesson when, in orienteering, we were taught
how to ‘move your body round the map’. Well I’ll tell you something; that ain’t
a lot of help underwater! It’s a bit like when they said maths would come in
useful one day…still waiting! School lesson inadequacies aside, we practiced on
dry land and I made a half decent attempt to navigate a square. Somehow I kept
ending up walking into a bollard in the car park when I didn’t start at that
point but it was on the same line so it was close enough for me.
Once out on
the boat and into the water (12c temp, certainly can’t complain), the real
skills tests began. Jennycliff Bay is a reef, but for the purposes of this dive
we lurked (no, not in that way) on the outer edges on the sandy bottom (again,
it’s not how it sounds) so we had a level playing field to practice. As it was,
the visibility wasn’t particularly good so it was a case of staying close
together and next to the shot line and take it in turns (there were four of us
doing the skills) with our instructor instructing (strangely enough) on what
task was next. As well as using a compass, we had to use natural navigation,
for example taking note of lines in the sand and following the channel along,
or using a particular rock (where we were there weren’t many) to recognise
where you started. I chose a reasonably sized starfish along the way using the
theory that if he was on the left of me on the way out and the right of me on
the way back I was going the right way. It seemed to do the trick (though in
retrospect, he could have moved)! While one of us was doing that skill, your
buddy had to count kick cycles (one cycle = every time you kick with a
particular leg) and stop you when you’d done a pre-determined number. This went
relatively well, though we hadn’t quite grasped that we had to stay really
close to each other for this to work so by the time the person counting had let
the other one go and started counting behind, buddy number one was left
wondering why they hadn’t been stopped yet while buddy number two was
frantically trying to catch up to let number one know they could stop! I’d
imagine if we’d been filmed I’d have had to add the music that accompanies this
video (stick with it, my point is made around 10 seconds in)…
(Please
note, I don’t condone the idea of a shrimp on a treadmill, I actually feel
sorry for the little fella, but who knew you’d get this result on YouTube when
searching for the Benny Hill theme tune?)
The compass
work didn’t go quite as well in the water as it did on land. Both myself and my
buddy had difficulty getting the compass to work. We’d get to turn three and
completely lose track of where we were because the needle wouldn’t move. Given
that we both had the same problem we blamed the compass (naturally) despite our
instructor proving that it worked a bit later. You win some, you lose some;
we’re sticking to our story!
Advanced
dive three complete, it was back to the dive centre in somewhat warmer
conditions. The air temperature had crept up to around 11c by late morning but
despite that, I’d come prepared and I was therefore going to wear my penguin
hat to keep me warm! I possibly should have reassessed keeping it on after I’d
changed. I got some funny looks in Sainsbury’s.
Location:
Waterfront – Type: Shore – Max Depth: 10m – Length: 27 mins – Surface: Clear
The
next course dive to check off the list was the night adventure, even though I’ve
done a night dive before, albeit by accident (see below for that story). This
time we started in the dark, as opposed to it gradually getting dark, so it was
a case of kitting up on the side of the road and walking cautiously down the stairs
to the edge of the water. It was a reasonable 11c air temp – considering it was
7.30pm in mid-November that’s pretty good going and meant there was no shivering
this time round!
As
the tide was in, it made entry pretty easy. It was a case of one step, two
step, hello sea. One of the instructors had the job of putting four pairs of fins
on us students; I’m sorry to say none of us have yet mastered putting these on
in the water by ourselves! By that point my usually highly efficient torch was
behaving inefficiently so the instructor switched it with his, reassuringly calling
it the ‘sun’. I was reassured for all of five minutes when the ‘sun’ set. Not
to worry; my instructor who was leading the group and buddying me had more than
enough torch for the both of us, though I still carried on gripping mine in the
hope that it might perk up again…it didn’t! I think someone needs to check the charger!
There
wasn’t much by way of skills tests on this dive. It was more about
acclimatisation to only being able to see by torchlight, but as this was the
second time I’d found myself in this scenario it made for a relaxed evening. We
practiced hand signals by torchlight (shadow puppets spring to mind) taking
care not to blind anyone whilst doing so. We also had to really be aware of
staying close together. One of the guy’s behind me in a different buddy pair said
afterwards that all he could see was yellow fins and sand. I recommended not
swimming quite so close to me in future!
Just the one dive left to become an advanced diver. As
ever, plans are never fixed when it comes to timetabling dives, so it was to be
another two weeks before I managed my deep dive, with a fun shore dive
interlude in between. More on that next time!
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