Great start to the week, but we had a bit of a disappointing
end!
On Monday afternoon, Gary went to Basildon Academy to teach
the BTEC Sport students their Confined Water Dive 2. They all did really well,
completing all the skills, including mask off for one minute and replace. This skill can be testing at times for
individuals, but everyone completed it on the first attempt!
Tuesday evening was a very busy night in the deep pool, with
multiple courses happening simultaneously. We had 5 students doing their self
rescue for the start of the new rescue divers course, 4 people on a new open
water course and several DSDs in the pool.
After a busy night Tuesday, there was a lot of work for
Janie on Wednesday at the dive centre, putting equipment away and pumping all
the cylinders! This is one of the many jobs people do not see, but very important
to how the dive centre runs smoothly!
Thursday afternoon was spent preparing for SWF pool that
evening. We had 14 open water students from Writtle College, who all completed
their Confined Water Dive 1, in addition to 6 SEAL Team students who were
completing their aquamission. Part of the aquamission was rescuing people from
the water, and we had Madeline and Frederick who volunteered to be the divers
in distress!
On Friday we had a special treat for Sarah! For her 25th
birthday, Sarah got in touch to arrange a DSD in the deep pool and was taken in
Friday afternoon. Sarah’s dad accompanied her so he could capture the moment!
Here are some of the photos below…
As well as running the pool on Thursday night at South
Woodham Ferrers, we also work with SWF pool on the holiday activity programme
running DSDs for 8-16 year olds and also for parent and child groups. This was
a great success, even though the fire alarm was accidentally set off 10 minutes
before the end of the DSDs. Gary came to the surface to make sure everything
was okay and was told that it was purely an accident and they were just waiting
for an engineer to turn it off; but we were allowed to carry on! This was fine
when we were underwater, but as soon as we got to the surface, we de-kitted,
gave a debrief and got out of there very quick with our ears still ringing for
a while after!
After a great week, on Sunday we headed with anticipation to
the London Dive Show, only to be disappointed. It was a lot smaller than
previous years, and subsequently there was less on show and everyone was disheartened.
Let’s hope that someone will make the decision to either close it down and just
have the Birmingham Dive Show and bring it forward to the beginning of the
year, or to revamp the London show so it’s worth the expense and maybe take a
hint at the outdoor show that was on at the same time!
Don’t forget that we are in the deep pool on Thursday this
week instead of Tuesday, as there is a film unit in again this week, although
the rescue theory will be on Tuesday night at the dive centre.
On Saturday we have an enriched air course. This course can
be very useful as a lot of dive boats now use enriched air on liveaboards and
it’s free of charge! Find out how and when to use it safely with this course.
We are also running a self reliant diver course at the
weekend, which enhances your skills and understanding of equipment and how to
use it properly.
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