[DanE]

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This one's been done time and time again, no doubt, so I won't bore you all with the gory details.

32 members of Dacorum Sub Aqua Club (28 divers, I think - the rest being significant others) made the trip to Sharm, staying at the Ocean Club and diving with Ocean College.  The hotel was perfect for our requirements and very friendly.

We got one dive in on the first day, the guide deciding to cancel the afternoon due to the weather.  "but it's like this all the time in England", we said.  Well, the ones that weren't throwing up said it.

For most of the week, we had two boats to ourselves, although they did squeeze us all onto one boat to dive the Dunraven, which we weren't happy about and the dive guides were very embarrased about.

The highlight of the trip for me was the Thistlegorm.  Despite having to get up at 3:45am...  Seeing the wreck as we descended the shot line was an awesome sight.  There's so much to see on the site, plus all the history and the intrigue about the empty hold.  I think i'll be visiting it again.

Overall a good weeks diving, with the weather improving all the time  

dan.

 

[gblades2]

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Do you remember which guides you had?

When I went last month the guide we had virtually all week was Freddie. There was also a tall gentleman with short black hair which we had for a couple of days. He was ok but did not socialise on the boat much and tended to rush everyone to get in the water quick. On the Thistlegorm we had Fredd and 'curley' which were a good laugh together.

 

[DanE]

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We had a guide called Walid, with a somewhat manic trainie DM called Shenoba.  The other boat had a guy called Mark and a Mermaid in purple swimwear called Petra.

Mark, Walid and Shenoba were on the Thistlegorm trip.  Mark lost his cool a bit when a number of us built up deco time, despite being told not too.  I'm not sure what we were supposed to have done - those of us affected all had deco time before we exited the holds.  Oddly, those affected all had newish Suunto Vypers.

I can't say that they really socialised with us, but since we were a big group who all knew each other, I guess it was kinda hard to break into it.

 

[gblades2]

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I went into deco by a couple of minutes on the last thistlegorm dive aswell. I have a vyper and they are more conservative. I think when my vyper was showing 2 minutes of no deco the alladin someone else was wearing was showing 7 minutes.

With the guides going down first to tie the lines on the first dive and by the time we went down and came up after needing a few minutes of deco on the second dive freddie ended up having to do deco for 15 minutes. Luckily curley was ok so he went down again to untie the lines.
With having ti tie and untie the lines and always being the first one down and last one up I can understand them not wanting people to go into deco as they will have to do long deco stops themselves even if they are on nitrox the whole time.