Hello! well today I got my BSAC Ocean Diver qualification!! (so did my OH) we went to Swanage and did a dive under the pier and then did a wreck dive - the Fleur de Lys - which is 13 metres down. 13 metres is nothing for experienced divers but it was out first wreck dive so that was far enough for me!! There have been so many challenges during the training - the first being the theory weekend that we did in March. I thought to myself, a whole weekend for the theory is overkill - surely we'll whizz through it and leave early. Ha! we only just fit it into a full weekend! Then we had 5 pool sessions which were fun and easy and the time flew by, but this time I didn't want it to. The difficult bit was lugging the air cylinder, the BCD (jacket) and your boots, fins, snorkle and mask - as well as towels etc. Its really hard to carry everything as the cylinder alone weights a ton!
Last weekend we went to Wraysbury for our first open water dive. Its a lake with camper vans and helicopters and stuff in the water. The first challenge here was getting kitted up! A wetsuit is sooooo difficult to get on as it is so tight fitting and thick - then I had a short wetsuit over the top and then hood, gloves, mask, boots and fins - it is so restrictive - by the time you have half of it on its really difficult to get the rest on and if I'm honest I was trying to get stuff on like the fins and having a mini tantrum about it, and swearing that I was NOT going to do this again!! It all felt okay once in the water though...
On the Saturday we failed as my ears were massively painful and the OH couldn't breathe...so the group went ahead without us. We were pretty gutted - but we went back on the Sunday and Jon (my boss and the trainer) took us separately from the rest of the group and we overcame our problems and we did 3 dives down to about 7 metres and it felt brilliant! The visibility was really bad but just getting under the water and not dying was ace! getting kitted up also got easier each time as we were getting used to it.
We decided to go to Swanage last night and stay over as our enthusiastic trainer wanted to be there by 7.30am, so we went last night and stayed in a really nice place called Clare House and we went out for a meal and had too much to drink! When I woke up this morning I felt a bit rough, but soon recovered when I had to think about getting all my kit and stuff on!
So all in all it was a very cool experience today! The first dive under the pier was only about 2.5 metres deep but we saw massive spider crabs - as my OH was examining a spider crab I could see that there was another one right underneath him standing on it back legs with it claws opening and closing about an inch away from his erm...sensitive bits shall we say. It looked very comical. We also saw other fish - one was really unusual - I thought it was a snake - it was black and white and I realised it was a fish when I saw it had a long nose, apparently it was a relative of the seahorse.
The dive to the wreck was good - I saw a massive fish and Jon and the OH saw a massive shoal of bib fish which somehow I missed!
ANYWAY....
I have now finished in my current department at work and on Monday I start a week of shadowing people in Guildford - then I have next weekend and then we go to Egypt!! AArrgghhhh....scary!! I always get nervous going abroad - until I get there and know everything is okay it just stresses me out. We are also going to go diving and I cant wait!! (but that's scary as well)
On Monday I met my sister in London and we went to the London Bridge experience which was fun - not as scary and fun as I expected but still fun and really good to spend some time with her. She then came back to Sunbury and we went out for drinkies and a Chinese meal and again it was great to spend some time with her and catch up. I just hope I didn't waffle too much....
so - if anybody actually reads this I am sure you must be bored by now...
until next time...
