Today I went to dive Stoney for the first time this century
After my Farnes dives, Mal offered to dive with me to try and get my weighting right, he thought I could be overweight. I have been diving the same shot belt for several years and as 99% of my dives are in the sea I have never taken the opportunity to do a proper weight check. A couple of emails yesterday and after the shock of weighing my weight belt I was surprised it was 10kg
Mal said we should get there at 9 - 9.30am, there goes my lie in, so I got up at the usual time and headed off for Stoney at 6.45am arriving at 9. As I will be doing another couple of dives there this year I decided to register and take advantage of the reduced entrance fee. I parked the car and headed off for the loo only to find there was a light bulb missing in one and no light in the other, this is a bloody place.
I headed off to the shop to register and while I was in the shop Mal arrived. Mal parked up and we went for a cuppa - not open
who the heck was moaning about Capernwray the other day, at least they have the café open when the place opens and nice loos.
We have a chat and Mal goes through the dive we are going to do, he thinks 5kg should be about right, I am not convinced as this is half what I have at the moment, OK he knows what he is doing but we decide to take down another block just in case.
We enter the water and I am still convinced I will be too light so I do a little duck dive down and head for the 6m platform. Strange I need a little air in the wing and I add a bit to the suit for comfort. The plan was to fin along the 6m shelf and have a look at a small sub (hope that's right for all you Stoney buffs) we end back at the spot where Mal has left the other weight, surprise - surprise it is still there. I still have 80 bar left having started with just over 100, so Mal tells me to hit the purge button on the back up reg, I am a little too gentle with the purge and I think Mal was getting fed up so take the reg off me and gives it some welly. I wonder what the other divers thought about it
empty the air out of the wing and hopefully out of the suit and I am still hitting the bottom, so Mal takes 1kg off the belt and we try again, strange still sinking so off comes another one, that only leaves me with 3kg.
So I am left with 3kg that's a whopping 7kg off the belt - shit no wonder I was a bit overweighted. We exit the water and head off for fills while we go for a chat and a hot chocolate. 3 hours after the light bulb reporting and still no light.
I went in the shop to pay for gas and mention the bulbs again, hurrah someone takes some notice. Let there be light and lo there was light
During our interval we meet a guy wearing a YD polo, introductions over and it's Mala.
Back in for the second dive this doubles my fresh water dives for this year
Mal's plan is for a steady decent to the 6m shelf, past the sub and I think this is where the personnel carrier was - I wasn't narked just old. We then head off down the cliff face and come across an anchor chain, we follow the chain and at least I get to see what the Staingarth looks like, it's bigger than I thought it would be, we fin around the bottom past the last pop and up along the other side, we go round the bow. Mal asked me before the dive if I want to go inside and I said I would see when we got there, Mal headed inside forgetting he had his stage on so a bit of the wriggle, I followed him in and we had a look inside then exited the wreck and headed back along the anchor chain.
Mal called the dive and deployed his smb, my ascent could have been better but that was more to do with getting used to my new wing. I think a few more practice dives and it will be fine.
So that's how you loose 7kg
off to order a v-weight for seadiving tomorrow.
Motorway was chaos coming home - 3 and a quarter hours