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 16th 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
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