Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
Amy, I think the word you are looking for is oops!!
Children and Their Building Blocks
Click on here to see what somebody
had built the next day!
The Obligatory Fish Picture
I thought you said we were nearly back!!
Oh Shit! That's some surface swim back!
Thursday 19th October at Stoney Cove With Amy Ward
What a start to the day leaving home at 06:45 for a hourish drive to Stoney turned into a 2 1/4 hour slog through torential rain all the way from Yorkshire to Derby then just rain right up to Sapcote. I thought this is really going to be a wet dive in all the wrong ways!! I was wrong somehow the rain must have circumnavigated Stoney Cove as it was nice and Sunny, and the Sun stayed with us all day long, things were looking up!!
Parked up waiting for Amy to arrive as she had found the "sleep" button on her alarm very appealing today!! Nice to bump into Marcus and Dawn and meet Stephen yet another YD'er. After a chat with Amy to sort out what we both knew and where we were going to go. I was also curious as to what the BSAC way is compared to the PADI way, very enlightening some things were so alike and others miles apart, think I will be sticking with the "Spend lots of money" PADI for the moment!!.
Down to the diving as Amy had done a few more dive than me she took the lead for a trip down the road, over the edge and down to find the old anchor chain, follow that through the naff viz to the old boat and then have run through the whole length, getting much better at this wreck lark now didn't smash my tank into anything this time!! Headed over to the Wessex for a gentle bimble round and back up the rockface for a little deco on the 6m shelf. And that first attempt at sending up an SMB, what a disaster. I had been going over it in my head what to do and then when it came to it I screw it at the first hurdle, I left it clipped to my BCD, fortunatly Amy noticed before I sent myself rocketing to the surface in a cloud of bubbles!! Everything set where it should be hit the purge button and off she goes, well yes off she went but on inspection at the surface not quite the rocket it should have been, more like a limp biscuit!! I see this as an "area for improvement" to put it mildly. Never mind better luck next time.
Out for a bit of tea and fill in log books for the first dive and a bit more gossip on BSAC and PADI "differences" then plan for the next dive. We agreed a swim clockwise round at about 6-7m to the opposite side and then swim straight across the middle back to the shore, sounded simple enough take a few pictures on the way and have a relaxing swim round.
Off we went having a nosey in all the little indents and overhangs. I was amazed at the amount of fish shoaling around in the sun, I even managed to get a few snaps of them swimming around the Elodea as the sun beamed through the water, almost looked tropical (ok maybe slight exageration. We pottered round the edge keeping an eye on the old compass till we were heading west for a bit, we must be on the other side time to start heading north homeward. Well that was the idea so both of us following our compasses and computers we headed north at 7m, after 10minutes or so and a lot of bobbing up and down between 3m and 10m we are both starting to get a bit disorientated and concerned as we didn't seem to be going anywhere. We both agreed now was the time to call the dive and go up and see what we had done.
Oh dear we both agreed as looked round and laughed in the 12minutes we had been heading back we had travelled a grand total of 10m from the edge and had a massive surface swim back (see the picture above). We laughed all the way back agreeing the compasses were no good and that was the story we were sticking to. Needless to say the next day I bought a new Suunto Compass.
Thanks to Amy for a really good days diving, I can recommend getting a good compass if you want to get home!! Look forward to diving with you again.
