Sunday Catch Up

As it was half term this week, Gary’s had the week off school too! (From his mentoring at Basildon Academies, the After School Club and the BTEC Sports class). However, of course Gary has used this free time productively to attend meetings and catch up with admin work in the office.

Tuesday and Thursday were both busy nights in the pools, as students were preparing for their weekend dives. Although on Wednesday, Carol and Steve went to Stoney Cove to complete Steve’s rescue course! Well done to Steve on completing and Carol for her first full certification!

On Thursday afternoon, Gary met with Jim Messenger, who is head of Essex County Council’s Sportivate programme. This is a programme that was born out of the Olympic legacy, with the idea of getting non-active people into sports. This was a very productive meeting, bringing Gary up to speed on new paperwork, but it was also lovely to see Jim again, as he has been a great supporter of Orca for many years!

On Friday, Dave Chapman and Gary travelled to Colchester to Bourne Mill, which follows on from a trip Dave made a few weeks ago. Dave previously spoke to the house manager on the subject of diving in the millpond to clear up the rubbish. The National Trust agreed this would be a good idea, and Dave then got in touch with Gary. So on Friday, Gary and Dave went to Bourne Mill for a preliminary meeting to discuss dates and exactly what the National Trust would like us to do. So on Sunday 21^st June, a team of divers from Orca will descend into the depths of the millpond to clear and survey the topography. This will commence at 11am and finish around 2pm, so anyone wishing to be a part of this or just want to have a look around, please do get in touch with the centre!

This weekend we have been down to Nemes, with the dive team headed by Rhonda over the two days, who was joined by Gill, Joe and Richard on Saturday and Carol and Steve joined on Sunday. After a successful weekend, congratulations to Brenna, Josh, Ben and Dan for completing their open water, and Dan who also completed his dry suit course! Carol also said it was a very warm 16°C in the water that weekend, so no hoods or gloves for the first time this year!

Sunday Catch Up

Basildon Academy’s Monday After School Club is always difficult when students don’t turn up or haven’t done knowledge reviews! So this week’s session was all about catch for some of the students, before their final exam after half term break!

Tuesday was very busy day for Orca! Gary started off at Basildon Academy mentoring and then got back to the dive centre for the Academy’s Sport BTEC group, who was in the deep pool for the first time. After this session, Gary then went back to Basildon Academy for a mentor meeting about working with some new students. In the afternoon, two students and two staff from the Jupiter Centre (a children’s support service), came to the deep pool for their first pool dive! They were working alongside Carol Vickers and Gary was leading the session. This was the start of a busy week for Carole, who also working Tuesday night and at the weekend! All the students completed Dive 1 on the platform, and then it was time to go down to the bottom of the pool! Following up from previous comments about our staff, we received a text from the staff at the Jupiter Centre to say that everyone had a great time and was very pleased with how patient Carole was with one of the students who was a bit nervous. It is always lovely to hear that our staff has exceeded expectations! The day was finished off with pool night in Basildon, where students were carrying on with open water, rescue, drysuit and DSD courses.

When Gary arrived at the dive centre on Thursday, the roof of the deep pool was just about to come off! Being a film studio, there are times when you need a birds eye view, and for this the roof needs to be removed. In the evening however, we were in South Woodham Ferrers pool and had three open water courses running with six students, as well as the SEAL Team completing Safety Aqua Mission.

Over the weekend, Ian S. went to Stoney Cove with Stew and Sam. Being over thirty metres deep, Stoney is an ideal location for Advanced Open Water and Deep Diver Speciality courses. Stew and Sam finished their advanced open water on Saturday by completing deep, wreck and navigation dives. They then completed three more dives on Sunday for their Deep Speciality course. Well done to you both and thank you to Ian S. for your hard work this weekend!

Whilst this was going on, Gary and the team were back at the centre for two days in the deep pool. Nick was running a rescue course (which is not easy when you only have one student!), but this gives members of staff time to get an Oscar by playing panicked divers! Rhonda was running a confined open water course over the two days, followed by an EFR course in the late afternoon on Sunday, whilst Carole was back with another open water student for confined water dives 1 and 2. As well as all of this, Gary was running dry suit courses in the pool, so it has been a great weekend for us!

Upcoming this week, we have the last Tuesday night deep pool at Basildon until July, as Fred has a film unit in for a month! So this will now be moved to a Monday night at Basildon Lower Academy’s pool at Timberlodge Lane. Later in the week, Gary and Dave will be going to have a look at a dive site in Essex for a possible clear up and underwater survey – more details in the upcoming weeks! Next weekend, we will be back to Nemes running open water courses – any staff that can help out or anyone wanting to join in, don’t hesitate to give the centre a call! 

Ben's Red Sea trip photos!

Courtesy of Ben Woodcock, here are his amazing photographs from the Red Sea trip!

Sunday Catch Up

All to often people complain about things throughout life, but forget to mention the good things. So it is always great to have a student come back after a day diving and say that not only did they qualify, but their instructor was brilliant and so was the rest of the team! Ian Herbert went to Stoney Cove last weekend with Andy Harris and David Herbert (no relation!) to finish Kevin Nichol’s Advanced Open Water Course. When Kevin brought the equipment back on Tuesday, the first thing he said to Gary was that Ian and the team were superb. Kevin had never worked with Ian before and was not sure being a bit nervous, but he said that after two minutes he felt safe in Ian’s hands and that nothing was too much trouble! Kevin completed deep, navigation and wreck dives to finish off his Advanced Open Water Course. Going down to 20 metres for the first time is always daunting, but with when you trust your instructor, you can feel safe at all times. Whenever Kevin looked at Ian, he was watching him make sure all was okay. This not only makes the student feel safe, but makes for a better diver. If the student can concentrate on diving feeling that they are being watched at all times, it can help to relax.

Gary says:

“As the owner of Orca, it is always a lovely moment when someone comes back saying the staff are great and have made them feel good.”

As for the rest of the week, on Monday Gary was at the After School club at Basildon Academies, on Tuesday everyone was back in Basildon deep pool and on Thursday evening in SWF pool, with all the usual courses running!

On Friday, Gary went to Heybridge Primary School. This was a bit of a last minute trip for Gary, as he got a call at 6:30pm the night before asking if he was available to teach a year 5/6 class in the morning, as a special treat after the children’s hard work in their SATs exams this week! Always one for a challenge, Gary said yes, and so at 9:00am Friday, Gary walked into the class. Firstly he explained what he does and how the equipment works, as well as telling the children what he sees underwater, answering many questions as he goes! He then went on to explain the problems divers see underwater, from oil to plastic bags and other rubbish, to the death of coral and fish in the sea. The class then went on to work in smaller groups to produce posters about the conservation of our oceans and how we can help. This must have been a success, as most of the class wanted to miss break time and carry on with the posters!

The teacher later said:

“The children were inspired and engaged from the moment Gary entered the classroom. They enjoyed an educational and productive morning, and we are very grateful to Gary for sharing his enthusiasm and passion with us.”

It is always good working with young people, getting to teach them what is under the surface and how this affects us, but most importantly how we can help protect it.

This upcoming week we are in the Basildon deep pool Tuesday night and South Woodham Ferrers pool on Thursday night. Gary will be working with Basildon Academy all week mentoring young pupils, as well as running the After School Diving club on Monday. And he will also be going to the Jupiter House to teach the students to dive on Tuesday afternoon!

Next weekend we are busy in the deep pool with rescue, dry suit and confined open water courses, whilst Ian will be at Stoney Cove teaching advanced open water courses. If there is any other course you would like to do at Stoney or in the pool, or would just like to join in, please don’t hesitate to give the centre a call!

Update on upcoming events:

We are away almost every weekend until November training or diving!

July 11th	Working with the Scouts at Gilwell 24 (24 hours of non-stop activity including DSDs, which we are running from 7pm until the early morning!)
August 22nd-23rd	Swanage for 2 days diving off the Pier, with Divers Down

Guest Blogger: Kanina Harty

After becoming a Divemaster with Orca Scuba Diving Academy a couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to spend as much time as possible working in and protecting the sea. At the moment I'm working as Project Manager for The Manta Trust and a marine conservation charity, Planeta Océano, in a little town in northern Peru. It only takes 20 hours by bus, on a good day, to travel from the capital Lima.

I'm in such a place to help educate the local community of fishermen, families and children about the marine animals in their sea. So many animals can be found from turtles to manta rays! Last week we went into three schools in one day. They were so enthusiastic! In the beginning they said that they were scared of everything in the sea. Half of their fathers were fishermen and they have stories about these great "monsters". We also told them about the whales, dolphins and sharks, and that I've been diving with sharks and mantas for years and I still have all my limbs!! When we had finished with each group, we asked if they would get in the water with mantas now - everyone put their hands up!

Feels good that we are making progress even though it's slow. Hopefully we can teach this generation to protect what they have on their doorstep. One presentation at a time.

Sunday Catch Up

This year’s dive calendar is beginning to fill up! We have the following booked for the rest of this year:

May 23rd-24th:	Express Weekend, where we will be running rescue, open water, dry suit, DSDs and anyone who wants to jump in at Basildon deep pool
June:	Training at Nemes or Gildenburgh every weekend
July 3rd-10th:	Marsa Alam (Red Sea) trip with Writtle College, to carry on the conservation work we started last year with previous students
July 11th:	Gillwell 24 – 5pm till 5am!
July 25th-26th:	Deep Diver and Search and Recovery Specialities in Chepstow
July/August:	Weekend trip to Swanage TBC
August 5th-12th:	Red Sea trip at Fury & Friends on a liveaboard
October 24th-25th:	Farnes Island weekend trip

We have a few places left for the Farnes Island and August Red Sea trips, so if you’re interested, please get in touch with the centre! As well as all these events, we will be training every weekend until November, but there will be other events added to the list throughout the year!

We will shortly be posting an events calendar as part of the blog, as well as through Facebook events!

Over the last week we have again been very busy, Gary working with Basildon Academies After School Club on Monday, Tuesday night in Basildon deep pool with various courses running and Thursday night at South Woodham Ferrers pool.

This week we have had numerous deliveries from different suppliers, and Gary has spent most of the week trying to find space for the new stock, whilst also sorting out the current equipment!

We have had a diverse weekend with Dave at Nemes on Saturday completing Open Water Dives 1 and 2 on his course, whilst Ian H. and Andy Harris travelled to Stoney Cove on Sunday to complete Advanced Open Water course. Back at he centre however, it was an early start on Saturday to meet the compressor engineer to change the filters and conducting an air purification test. This is one of the many hidden costs of running a dive centre and as the old adage “How do you end up with a million pound in diving? Start with two!” The rest of the day was spent with Nick pumping sixty cylinders, whilst Rhonda Richer and Mark Prior sorted both storage containers! A colossal effort from Rhonda and Mark - thank you both so much, we can now actually walk in and out of the containers!

Next week we will have a photo gallery from Ben's trip to the Red Sea - sorry for the delay, it's Gary's fault!

Sunday Catch Up

Sorry again for the late blog last week, and we’re one day late again this week because of Scuba Fest!

Although Monday was supposed to be spent pumping lots of tanks after the previous weekend, Gary was late getting out of Basildon Academies that morning after mentoring some of the students! As well as this, Janie had the day off and Gary had to return to the school in the afternoon for the After School Diving Club, so by the time Gary arrived back at the dive centre, he had a very busy evening sorting paperwork!

On Tuesday, Gary was able to put all the kit away from the weekend before a great night in the deep pool in Basildon. That evening we had DSDs, Open Water courses and Dry Suit courses all taking place at the same time, as well as four new students from Anglia Ruskin University, who were all having their first taster of scuba diving! All four enjoyed their time with us in the pool and we are looking forward to starting their Open Water Courses soon! We also had Fernando join the dry suit courses, as he was testing out his new dry suit ready for the weekend!

By Wednesday, there was time to start pumping the tanks from the weekend, but now also with the tanks from Tuesday’s pool night! However in the afternoon, James from Scubapro came into the dive centre to discuss new scuba gear and we bought fifteen new regulator sets for the dive school, as well as a few other pieces of equipment for the shop! Up until now we have used Cressi regulators and have had a very good experience with them, but we felt it was time to change, as we are no longer a Cressi dealer and we therefore cannot service the regulators in-house.

South Woodham Ferrers pool night on Thursday saw Gary back in the pool with the SEAL team, who are improving brilliantly! Rhonda, Dave and Gill were all with their open water students, whilst Jamie was with a DSD student, who he also worked with on Tuesday night. Although the student got to the bottom of the deep pool on Tuesday, they were not comfortable in such depth and so we suggested trying out SWF pool to see if they still liked scuba diving. This seemed to work much better and they will be retuning next week for another try dive!

Friday was spent getting everything sorted for Scuba Fest in Cornwall, which included kit checks and tank filling. After a nine-hour journey that night and arriving at 1am, everyone enjoyed some sleep before waking at 6:30am for the first weekend dive! We were diving at Porthkerris, but as easterly winds were coming in, we ended up meeting the boat at Falmouth. Gary watched everyone board the boat in mist and rain, as he stayed behind due to suffering a migraine. Everyone retuned an hour and half later after a great dive seeing three types of rays, Gurnards and some very big barrel jellyfish! There was then a two hour wait for the second dive to a small wreck, which was in the bay as the weather beyond there was still rough. Everyone then went to The Shark Fin Restaurant on Mevagissey harbour front on Saturday night, where we all enjoyed great food and service!

On Sunday we went down to Porthkerris for a couple of dives: a drift just off shore and a pinnacle called Penwen! Both were great dives and we saw lots of life under the sea including Barrel Jellyfish, Ling, Cod, Dead Men’s Fingers, Jewelled Anemones and one thing that was great to see was lots of Pink Sea Fans! Back at Scuba Fest, Gary popped in to see PADI, Fourth Element, Suunto Atomics and the other companies who were attending, and it was great to catch up with old friends! In the evening everyone spent the night at Gary’s van for an indoor BBQ, as it was raining, but all had a great night with friends and a few drinks.

Gary would also like to say a big thank you to everyone who made the long journey down this weekend, especially Richard, Tony, Fernando, Joe, Gill, Rhonda, Sharon, Holly, Russell, Paul, Graham and their families!

Next week we are in the deep pool on Tuesday night, South Woodham Ferrers on Thursday evening. If there are also any staff who are able to come to the centre on Saturday, we would very much appreciate your help sorting the rest of the open water kit in the containers!