Portland long weekend.

[Paul Oliver]

Ok this weekend was Canterbury Divers start to the season, so i took 30 divers to Portland to get some training done and get everyone into the water for some shallow stuff before we start off of Dover again.

The main aim was fun followed by training. Well we started with a hardy few traveling down on Thursday with 2 Rhibs to dive all day on Friday. We had some fair but overcast weather and did the Countess of Erne twice and the Landing craft and Bombardoon Unit. We had very few divers out and good viz of about 4-5m and 10 deg water. After many years of diving her in crap viz this was the first time i had realised you could do almost the whole length inside her, and i made good use of this over the weekend. The overhead area below the bow is outstanding with the little dink to the port side before exiting up.

After a call on Wed i had waited with baited breath on Thursday for my new drysuit which had turned up a week early Unfortunately at the end of 3 dives i ended up tipping about 1 and 1/2 pints of sea water out of each boot So i was not very happy.

Friday night the rest turned up and so on sat we did the Countess again followed by the Spaniard, The Landing Craft and Bombardoon Unit and then an evening dive on the Countess again, we had mixed viz but an average of about 4m, the water had not warmed up at all. During this all of our Ocean Diver trainees had a great time and got lots of experience and we got several SD and DL lessons out of the way. I only had a pint of water in each boot after this day of diving That night the pubs guest Comedy Singer then spent most of the night taking the piss out of the Club Diving Officer in the bar.

On Sunday we took the boats along the coast and dived out of Lulworth Cove, where we had some great sunshine, a mild swell and some great diving and viz. We did 3 dives on the Worrbarrow Bay nature trail and the area of the Black hawk, with some 5-7m of viz. Also some compass work in the cove so a very successful day even though we had to tow one boat back to Portland. I used my Semi-dry suit this day and had far less water in it than my dry-suit at the end of the day. I am a big fan of the seafood shop at Lulworth Cove and had 2 very large rounds of Whelks and Prawns as usual. These were particularly welcome as i was Cox'n for the second dive and they kept me busy till the divers came back.

There were several other clubs in the area and i was very impressed with the Billingshurst Club Rhib, a real big muther.

That evening we had a Club Dinner Night in the Breakwater Hotel which was a great laugh with some good food, although the Dwarf throwing never got started.

Mon morning saw us diving the landing Craft and Countess again in 4m of Viz before getting the 3 Rhibs out and heading back to Sunny Kent. Lots of training had been achieved, we had a very good laugh. So all of this diving, gas and training for £45? who says club diving is dead?

As an aside i will hopefully be signing off 5 Ocean Divers in the next couple of weeks who will have done 4-5 shore/lake dives and 5-6 Sea dives off of Rhibs down to 18m including at least 3 wreck dives during their training. This i feel is about the right amount to get someone started into Uk diving and an appropriate experience progression.

[onthetrain]

nice report paul. As you say club diving has a whole lot to offer (but then we BSAC types know that dont we?) :-0