Weekly Catch Up!

This week has been very busy. We've had James in from Scubapro showing us the newest products and revealing some big changes! As well as taking our order, James was teaching Janie the difference between diaphragm regulators and piston regulators and how they work. It was very educational for her as she often fixes small regulator problems but hadn't got a solid knowledge on first stages.  We have now reduced the Seawing Nova fins to £125! In black, blue, white, pink and purple.

Today, we want to take the opportunity to tell you about the dangers of storing kit carelessly over the winter period. We're going to show you some TRUE stories from divers we know.

"I was water often so I never got my BCD serviced. It had always worked perfectly and I didn't see a reason to pay somebody to tell me that my BCD was fine. Little did I know that not spending £25 on a service, could've killed me. For the sake of £25, I endangered the lives of my friends and myself. We were diving a wreck, entering negatively buoyant. It wasn't my first time, I had years of experience doing this so I didn't think anything of it. As we jumped in off of the boat, I started to inflate my BCD but no air was going in. I thought then that I was dead. I was terrified. I kicked and kicked, trying to get somewhere, anywhere. It wasn't working. I got further down, 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters.... I saw my buddy struggling to help me and I could tell what he was thinking, he was going to leave me. I shouted NO in my head, he couldn't leave me. At 56 meters, my buddy caught me and helped me get to the surface SAFELY. Only when we got onto the boat did I realize, he put his own life at risk, to save mine. Tears started flooding. He opened my dump valve and it was clogged with dirt and gunk. It turn out that leaving your BCD in a box in the garage for 4 months over winter each year, doesn't class as storing it. I had nearly died and potentially killed my buddy because I couldn't be bothered to clean it, service it or store it properly"

"My dry suit fitted me perfectly, Except the boots were a bit too big. I couldn't dive last year for about 6 months because of a medical problem and then it got to cold. So after getting the Christmas decorations down, I'd decided to store my dive kit in the loft. Including my dry suit that was still wet in the bag. It was fairly cold in the loft so I guessed it would dry eventually and put it to the back of my mind. Then my first dive of this year was at Stoney Cove, I got my kit down, threw it in the car and left. Then whilst diving at 35m, my inflator valve on the dry suit jammed. It was inflating more and more. Then the cuff release got partially jammed. So I grabbed the dump valve on my BCD and emptied the tiniest bit of air that was in there. I rigorously shook my arm in an attempt to get the air out. One of my buddies grabbed my fins and held me down whilst I was doing this. After the panic wore off slightly, I disconnected the inflator valve from my dry suit and kept shaking my arm. I eventually managed to get back down to my buddies who looked worried. Locking arms with the other buddy, we ascended slowly, did our safety stop then we reached the surface slowly. I was probably lectured for about an hour on how to look after kit. I never tempt fate again anymore. My kit is in immaculate condition. But that dive could have been a lot worse and would have been if it wasn't for my buddies and a bit of quick thinking."