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!