Home - Diving
A proper boat dive, out of Poole, on the UK South coast. I don't often wear thick gloves when diving, but the ones I dug out a thick pair this time. The combination of the cold weather and the tightness of the gloves, meant I lost feeling in my fingers before I even got in the water!
Just a few minutes into the shallow drift dive, I realised that I had lost the SMB. I couldn't feel my hands on the reel when I had it, and couldn't feel when I had lost it. The lack of feeling was obviously not good so the dive was terminated after less than 10 minutes.
Littleton Lake is owned by a sailing club which also allows fishing and, in the corner indicated in the link, diving. It is a tolerable place for dive training and, on this occasion, Ice Diving!
No, that's not me in the picture. The ice was about 2cm thick round the entry hole and got thicker further out. Although a few people tried to break through from below, no-one managed it.
The maximum allowed dive time was set at just 10 minutes as we were unfamiliar with diving under ice and hadn't tried our equipment out in these conditions before.
Wraysbury was a return to old haunts for me, but unfamiliar territory for my buddies. Visibility was poor but I managed to find the targets by compass (and maybe a little luck!)
A wreck dive with visibility less than 1m. Usually, I would abort a dive with visibility this poor. Fortunately, my buddy and I manage to stay together and have a relatively enjoyable dive. The drift dive just a couple of miles away had very good visibility (for the UK) - about 6-8m.
First multi-day trip of the year. This was all about building up depth experience for this year with dives of about 20m, 27m, and 34m on successive days. The weather above the water was excellent, but visibility was universally poor in the water, so it wasn't much fun.
Home - Diving
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Page last updated 18 May, 2009