scubablue

Here is a blog from Vicky Hayes who organised the recent Scuba Blue PADI Women’s Dive Day 2019.

 

Those of you who know me, know that I don’t need any persuasion to jump off a boat and explore the underwater world but this day was particularly special as it was a celebration of the growing numbers of women that are getting into the sport of SCUBA diving. 

 

At Scuba Blue we are really proud of the high number of women that dive with us with many of our trips being a 50/50 male/female split. 

 

After the successful shore diving at Brixham last year, this year we decided to take a trip down to Swanage and head off to explore the Valentine Tanks with ‘Sinbad’ from Swanage Boat Charters. The tanks are WW2 amphibious vehicles that lie at 15m in Poole Bay, 30 minutes out from Swanage. 

 

With ropes off just after midday, the excitement built as we gathered on the pier ready to jump aboard ‘Viper’ and head out to sea. It was great to see so many ladies from last year’s dive day and this year we also had some new faces join us, which is always fantastic. 

 

For a few of the group, this would be their first trip on a dive boat and along with excitement, naturally came some apprehension. Scuba Blue Dive Masters Carla, Jo and myself were on hand to guide, explain the process and build confidence in those who hadn’t boat dived previously. 

 

I love diving on the tanks. It will always be a Swanage favourite for me, as it was my first boat dive 3 years ago when I learnt to dive. I’ve been lucky enough to revisit the dive site several times since, but once again it took my breath away as we descended down the shot line and found ourselves surrounded by vast quantities of shoaling Bib. 

 

The amount of marine life that the Valentine Tanks has to offer is amazing, especially given the limited size of the wrecks. Everywhere we looked we spotted life. Tompot Blennies, leopard-spotted gobies, large Wrasse, Edible Crabs, Velvet Crabs, Common Prawns and Conger Eels were all inhabiting the wrecks.

 

On the swim between the two tanks (roughly 70 metres – following a rope) we spotted a Dahlia Anemone and there was also a cuttlefish sighting by another buddy pair. We could tell that we were nearing the second tank because once again we found ourselves surrounded by fish. 

By the time we had finished the dive the swell had picked up rather a lot, which made for quite an eventful exit for some of us ladies… along with lots of giggles!!

 

After some light refreshments at the pier cafe, some of us then headed off for a second dive under the pier. 

 

We finished the day off nicely, with fish, chips and ice cream. It was a fabulous day, great company, brilliant diving and loads of laughter.

 

Last year we had 9 ladies join us on PADI Women’s Dive Day, this year 12… who knows what next year will bring as Scuba Blue has already certified over 25 new women divers this year!!  

 

If you would like to join the next Scuba Blue PADI Women’s Dive Day then get in touch with us; check out the Scuba Blue website. If you fancy organising your own trip to Swanage then we can offer advice, contacts and kit hire.  Thanks to the fantastic folk at Swanage Boat Charters for looking after us all so well.

We are very proud to present a very honest account from Carla, one of our first group of trainee PADI Divemasters.  When Scuba Blue began we were pleased have six friends and dive buddies who wanted (OK, we did have to persuade one or two!!) to become PADI Divemasters with us. We were determined that their experience would be second to none and we worked hard to plan and deliver a great course for them.

 

It has been an honour to work with these fabulous people and it is so rewarding to hear about the course from the other side.  The bar was set high; all standards had to be clearly met and assessments were rigorous throughout. Having a group of trainees worked really well; they supported, cajoled and helped each other but throughout the level of humour and banter never failed!

 

Scuba Blue is now planning for a new group of Trainee Divemasters “The Class of 2019/20”.  If you want to join them then get in touch with Midge at Scuba Blue and reserve your space quickly. You can find out more about the course on this site and on the PADI website

 

I am not going to lie, when Midge talked to me about training to become a PADI Divemaster for Scuba Blue I had my doubts, mostly due to my limited confidence in my abilities as a diver and what I perceived as my lack of patience when dealing with others. I think I decided to start the course because there was a group of us who dived regularly together all agreeing to undertake the training.

 

Brian, one of Scuba Blue’s instructors, delivered all of our PADI Divemaster training; he was hugely knowledgeable, supportive and patient. The Scuba Blue approach to delivering the course was great fun, we would all gather around the kitchen table at Brian’s and go through the theory, it was great to have the support of everyone else and there were many laughs. Big shout out to Janet (Mrs Brian) for providing excellent cake each time! (Note: Mrs B says you were all a nightmare to cater for with highly specialised cake preferences .. how can anyone not like lemon drizzle cake???)

 

Not long after starting my course, my confidence took a huge knock when I had a bad dive at Swanage. I am the sort who is really hard on themselves and I remember getting back on to the boat and demanding a course refund! We still had another dive to go that day so I put ‘my big girl pants on’ and got back in and had a fantastic drift dive with no issues. Nevertheless, I  still had doubts about my ability to be a good divemaster and not let Scuba Blue down.

 

Shortly after this adventure/disaster, it was time for one of my PADI Divemaster assessments in the pool. As part of the course, I have to demonstrate one of the skills that a diver on their open water course needs to be able to complete. I was working with Midge on this occasion and he had briefed me beforehand on what skill he would like me to demonstrate, so I was all prepared. Unfortunately, Midge’s regulators malfunctioned and he was not able to effectively demonstrate the skills to the students so as the DM it fell on me to work through the skills with the students. This is the best thing that could have happened to me, I had not prepared for this but I had to come across as confident and professional to the students. They all paid close attention to me and successfully completed all of the skills. I was hooked from that moment on!

 

One student in particular, who I was lucky enough to work with closely throughout their open water course, only helped me further to realise that deciding to become a DM was the best decision I ever made. If I didn’t have a mortgage to pay, I would love to do this all the time! The student struggled at first with mastering one of the skills needed to qualify as an open water diver, I got the opportunity to work with them one-on-one and give them the confidence and a couple of tips to help them nail the skill. I think it helped that I had struggled with some of my learning so I understood how they felt.

 

That is one of the things I love about being part of Scuba Blue, they never rush you or make you feel silly, they do all they can to support you through any difficultly.

 

If anyone were thinking of undertaking a PADI Divemaster course, I would highly recommend doing it with Scuba Blue. We got to work with real students, had fantastic support from the rest of the team, who are highly professional but most importantly love to dive. I completed the course within 8 months, building up constant experience in this period. The Scuba Blue family has a passion for diving and teaching diving well and this passion is infectious.

 

Scuba Blue totally believes in their ethos of ‘start diving, keep diving’ and this is clear throughout everything they do and I will make sure I help support this in my time as a Scuba Blue Divemaster!  Scuba Blue is not all about how many courses you can do; Scuba Blue is about going diving, supporting each other, socialising and having fun.

Tony Reed is a passionate and highly experienced diver. We are so fortunate to have Tony associated with Scuba Blue; many of the photographs on the site are Tony’s and he is always willing to come along and help record the varied events and activities that go on at Scuba Blue.   Check out his brilliant website at https://cheapandcheerful.blog/ to see what brilliant photographs can be taken underwater using quite basic equipment.  Here Tony writes about a real bucket list dive destination – Truk Lagoon.

 

Chuuk lagoon, also known as Truk lagoon’ is on many diver’s bucket list, and rightfully so. The lagoon is home to a vast number of wrecks that were sunk in 1914 from Operation Hailstone. Hailstone was an operation that lasted 2 days and saw the destruction of the Japanese fleet by the US in retaliation from the attacks on Pearl harbour.

 

Chuuk Lagoon is one of a small group of islands which form the federated states of Micronesia. Located in the Pacific the distance from the UK makes it a task to get there!  My trip there was broken up into 2 days. From Gatwick to Istanbul – Japan where I stayed overnight, then from Japan to Guam and then on to Chuuk.

 

I travelled as light as I could and with different baggage allowances throughout the journey it worked out quite well with a quick swap over of a couple of items in Japan. I flew Turkish airlines from UK to Japan with a 40-kilo allowance. From Japan to Chuuk I flew United Airlines with a 23-kilo allowance but the hand luggage was only restricted to size not weight. So the Olympus TG4 was perfect to take with me! I also took a couple of GoPros for footage and wide shots! Along with a small but powerful video light I had what I needed. This is the setup I now use for my photography!

 

I arrived at midnight and got shown to my room where I quickly found my bed. I woke in the morning to a view that took my breath away..it was paradise..clear turquoise sea, blue sky, green grass and palm trees. I was excited about the day ahead. I made my way to the restaurant for breakfast walking through the lush green trees. There were lots to choose from on the menu which was nice. I also noticed all the information needed for new arrivals on the reverse of the menu so I had everything I needed.

 

After breakfast I got my dive kit sorted and headed over to the dive centre. The set up was really good with a guide and skipper allocated too a small group of divers. For most of the week, I was on the boat with 3 other divers Dean, Sue and Paul.

 

The boat journey to the dive sites is usually no longer than 25 minutes so it’s not long before you are descending down the buoy line. The first wreck was the Fujikawa maru which is a favourite to start with. The viz was pretty good and it wasn’t long before the dark shape below resembled the bow of a wreck. The excitement from the start of the holiday only got more intense as we explored the magnificent wrecks one by one. Trying to take in all the different artefacts that remain on each wreck is a challenge so having a couple of cameras helped a lot with that! Between the 2 dives in the morning, we made our way to Etton island for a surface interval where the locals climbed the trees and cut down coconuts for us all to drink from! it was a lovely way to spend the interval.

 

Etton island was a landing strip which resembled the shape of an aircraft carrier which confused the Americans as they kept bombing the island and reporting back stating it still had not sunk! There are a number of aircraft scattered around the end of the island. The betty bomber, the Emily seaplane, a Zero fighter and some wings of fighters. The betty bomber and Emily seaplane were great dives with quite a bit of life on them. The Zero fighter is in 6 meters of water so was a good surface interval snorkel.

 

Over the 8 days diving, I managed to do 18 different wrecks, some were done twice as a new group came through. A wreck playground for the metal fans but also plenty of life around the wrecks! Sharks, hundreds of fish shoals and a fair bit of macro! A great combination for the photographer. On the last day after diving, the guide took us to another island for a farewell BBQ! It was an amazing end to a fantastic 8 days diving! On the tiniest island miles from anywhere else sipping beer, eating good food sitting in a hammock watching the clouds go by! Perfect!

Scuba Blue concentrates on training recreational divers but that’s not to say that we don’t also take an interest in more technical diving and equipment.  Tim Clements of Vobster Quay Dive Centre provided a day introducing Scuba Blue Divemasters, Andy Braithwaite and Jonathan Madeley to Rebreather Diving.  An arm of the Vobster operation both manufactures and offers training on the VMS RedBare Closed Circuit (CCR) Rebreather.

 

Both Andy and I are used to the early morning start for a trip to Vobster Quay, but this morning was different; today we were going back to being the students. The night before we had both packed all our kit and had exchanged suitably excited messages about meeting up in the morning. We had been looking forward to this since a brief conversation with Tim at the Dive Show last year. While I was waiting for Andy I was thinking how lucky we are to live where we do, we have fantastic sea dives that can fill anyone’s needs, wrecks off the south coast, blue sharks out of Plymouth, seals at Lundy but also facilities like Vobster Quay all on our doorstep.

 

We arrived at Vobster nice and early and after getting the obligatory cup of tea, we met Tim, went upstairs to learn about the RedBare rebreather, have a general look at rebreather technology and some of the unique features on the RedBare. It was an interesting couple of hours and Tim spent time not only explaining the technology but also the reasoning behind it and how things had moved on in the last few years. Although there is no denying that there is a lot of “science” in rebreathers the morning passed quickly, both Andy and I came out of it with a much better understanding and we had a few laughs along the way.

 

Now it was the bit we had both been waiting for, our chance to dive with the RedBare rebreather. Tim spent some time adjusting the harness to try and place the counterlung on the rebreather in the correct position, as getting this wrong can lead to it needing an increased effort to either breath out or in. Once he was happy with the position, we were ready to go. The plan was to start in the enclosed water area to check that we had the correct weight and to practice some drills, mainly switching from the rebreather to the open circuit stage cylinder that we were carrying. The issue with switching is that you cannot just remove the rebreather mouthpiece as unlike a normal regulator it is not sealed so it will flood the whole system and will turn the sofnolime that is used to remove the carbon dioxide into oven cleaner, which is not a good thing. Therefore, before you remove the mouthpiece you need to turn the switch on the front so that it is closed and sealed. Once we had run through this drill and were happy that we could switch from the rebreather to the stage cylinder and back again, we were ready to go and explore.

 

Both Andy and I have done many dives at Vobster so we knew the planned route. What I was not ready for was the silence. The biggest change for me was buoyancy; the way a rebreather works means that breathing in or out does not change your buoyancy. (Tim had already warned us to go around the escort rather than just take a deep breath and rise over it as we normally would. I think his exact words were we would just run into the door!) The exhaled gas is not expelled as bubbles but is held in a counterlung (bladder) and then “cleaned” and reused. This meant that if you were swimming at a set depth then once your buoyancy was right it would stay perfect until you changed depth. Whilst this is great when you are not changing depth, it does cause an issue when you start to reduce your depth. As the gas in the counterlung will start to expand as the pressure on it reduces. This causes your buoyancy to become positive and means that there is no spare volume for your exhaled breath. To counteract this you breathe out through your nose thus removing gas from the system. In reality, this sounded much more complicated than it was in practice and both Andy and I soon got the hang of balancing the amount of gas in the system. I suppose the big question now is do I want one. Well that is easy. Yes!!! However, the current diving I do does not warrant that investment. Now if Vobster brought out a cheaper version that was aimed more at a recreational diver to a max of 40m with upgrade options then I think I may be tempted

 

If you want to take part in a similar experience then you can check out the details of the Vobster Rebreather Training. You can also chat with Jonathan and Andy at a Tuesday Scuba Blue pool session or via the Scuba Blue Club Members Facebook Group.  Find out about the club here

Here is a blog written by Scuba Blue’s first homegrown Divemaster (and soon to be Instructor), Andy Bluffield.

 

Well just as I thought the 2018 diving season was over I got a call from Scuba Blue’s ace photographer and videographer Tony Reed asking if I was up for a dive out of Falmouth with Atlantic Scuba. Well of course I was, I couldn’t think of a better way to help work off the Christmas mince pies and finish off the year in style.

 

A 5:30 am alarm call lead to a bleary-eyed meeting with Tony for our lift share down to Cornwall.  After a quick Costa coffee, we made good time on the quiet post-Christmas roads and arrived in good time for a pre-10:00 am ropes off fry up in the Mylor Cafe (so much for working off the mince pies!).

 

We met up with skipper, Mark Milburn, owner of Atlantic Scuba on the jetty.  He was wearing shorts (brrrrr), a smile and carrying a jerry can of two stroke.  Mark’s knowledge of the local area is outstanding; there are few who can match his intimate knowledge of Cornish diving.  Nothing was too much trouble when it came to making sure we had a great day – a freshly filled cylinder awaited Tony, who had been diving the previous day and been unable to get a fill beforehand (there are those who say he spends more time below water than above it!).

 

After a smooth trip out to the Manacles reef, Mark shot the wreck directly over the boilers enabling us to drop straight onto the SS Mohegan.  This ship sank in tragic circumstances in 1898 with the loss of 106 passengers and crew after making a navigational error which drove her onto the Manacles. As we descended onto the wreck, three huge boilers came into view. Visibility was over 5 metres and surface conditions screamed: “jump in, the waters lovely”. Swimming above the boilers you could see breaks in the skin and also notice that the middle boiler is, in fact, two smaller boilers back-to-back. These were covered in the life typically found on a UK dive. Most of the wreck is well broken up and cross sections are covered with an abundance of pink sea fans which hold out their arms perpendicular to the current to catch their current-borne food.

 

It was then back to Falmouth for a cylinder swap. Mark runs a rib which, although very comfortable, means that space is at a premium. After a quick turnaround, albeit with plenty of time for a hot chocolate, we were back on our way out to dive the Maerl beds.

 

This was my first experience of these beds and “Wow, just Wow”. Tony had told me to expect a floor of red twiglets that just went on and on and filled with life.  His description was spot on. Mearl is a term for a seabed densely covered by several species of red, hard skeletoned, seaweed, It is rock hard and, like most red seaweeds, needs lots of light to thrive so tend to be found in well lit, shallow waters. The beds at Falmouth are huge and the conditions are perfect due to a tidal flow that removes fine sediment but isn’t strong enough to break up the brittle maerl branches. Within these beds, layers of dead maerl build up with a thin layer of pink, living maerl on the top.  Mark explained how Mearl beds are such an important habitat for many different types of marine life that live amongst it and told us how it can be of importance to sustainable fisheries, providing nursery grounds for commercial species of fish and shellfish. It’s clear to see how the beds could be easily damaged and have declined substantially in some areas. Pressures on maerl beds include scallop dredging, bottom trawling, aquaculture and pollution. They are very slow to develop and are unlikely to return if removed or lost. The site is one of the largest maerl beds in south-west Britain and it was a privilege to dive them.

 

Despite being an experienced UK diver I know there are always new places to go, wrecks to explore, and underwater environments which are globally rare to investigate.  This was a great day but not untypical of what we lucky UK divers get to explore. If you are inspired to go on a similar trip, advance your training or even learn how to dive, get in touch with Scuba Blue. We love meeting other divers, training people to become divers and helping them to keep diving.  Check out our dive club.

 

Check out more of Tony Reed’s pictures at Cheap and Cheerful Photography and Videography and Mark Milburn’s dive centre in Falmouth, Atlantic Scuba.