Sunday Catch Up

After any weekend, there is always the mundane job of putting kit away. This is just as important as prepping the kit before you dive: making everything is washed down, checking for any damages, etc. getting ready for the next dive. As an active dive centre, this takes a good portion of our working week, and as the season goes on we’ll have more to do each week!

The big film shoot at Basildon, which finished on Monday, ended up being a late night for the divers and film crew. They finally got home at around 4am Tuesday morning!

A few of the students that completed their rescue course at the weekend came in to the deep pool Tuesday evening, to practice their skills. This is something we do as staff on a regular basis to practice our own skills so that we are always prepared.  At the same time we had four students from South Essex working with Ian and Rhonda, completing their confined dive 1. Nick was working with two other South Essex students who had started their course earlier, and so have now completed their five confined dives and are ready to go to open water when the weather improves. At the same time as this, there was a final pool practice for the people on the Red Sea liveaboard, who all flew out yesterday.

Gary went to South Woodham Ferrers on Wednesday to run the Bubblemaker and DSD children’s holiday programme at the pool. We find this to be great fun, but as a company it also feeds onto the SEAL Team and Junior Open Water courses, because we give young people the opportunity to try diving for the first time. Gary then took all the equipment back to the dive centre, where both himself and Janie spent the afternoon cleaning, checking and hanging back up the kit.

Thursday night was a quiet night in SWF pool, with South Essex College having finished their confined water and the new SEAL Team will not be starting until the 16^th April. Having said that, Dave started an open water course with two students, both who are off overseas in the near future! Although they have signed up for the referral course, and originally wanted to do the qualifying dives overseas, after spending some time with Dave and finding more out about UK diving, both of the students are now going to complete their course in the UK!

Friday was spent checking out kit for the Red Sea trip, with students picking up BCDs, wetsuits, and other pieces of equipment. The students have all met each other over recent weeks in the pool, so there was a lot of excitement and anticipation about the trip! As well as this, Jamie was going through Calum’s knowledge review for his advanced open water, as these can be done retrospectively. And then in the afternoon, both Calum and Steve were working with Jamie going through the rescue course knowledge reviews and how to use the O2 equipment.

Janie opened the shop up on Saturday, which was a quiet event, but did get some photographs sent from Gill and Marcia who are on a two week trip diving in the Philippines. Check out some of the photos below! 

But at 11am at Gatwick Airport, everyone else was checking in for the outbound flight to Sharm El Sheik, and we will have a report on this in next week’s catch up! But follow our Instagram account for some pictures of the trip, as Gary will be attempting to master social media to upload some photos! @OrcaScubaDivingAcademy