Low Vis But Good Dive

Dived again yesterday, my first in a while! Which I nearly missed due to my being thick and failing to comprehend that we were meeting at the stop at 7.30 in the AM not the PM.

The phone call at 7.45am was a bit of a surprise.

Luckily, I a) had my phone on, b) had the car's petrol tank half full, c) always keep my dive gear stacked and ready to go and d) we were going to Beadnell.

I threw myself plus dive bag and some hastily-made toast into the Toyota, and beat my personal speed record from my house to Beadnell to arrive in time to dive.

I suspect that even if I make it all the way to Divemaster, I'll never be allowed to forget this. It's a funny thing about life. They tell you you'll need to work hard and be determined, but they never tell you that one of the most important qualities you'll need is the ability to rescue yourself from your own fuck-ups.

Other than that, it was a good dive - two dives actually. First was me plus four other divers, just a fun dive around the bay. Unfortunately the visibility was really, really low. (The photo here wasn't actually taken yesterday, but it gives you a good idea of what it was like!) It was hard to see a diver even two metres behind you, and seeing fish or any other life was even more tricky. Good practise of the old compass navigation skills. I think I'm going to do the Underwater Navigator course next! and also buy a couple of torch and a shoulder strobe. I had a minor problem when my right ear wouldn't clear, but managed to get it equalised in the end.

I hadn't been expecting to go back in - I was de-kitting at the van - when one of the instructors hurried past and asked if I was going back in. Never one to pass up an opportuity to dive, I immediately said yes! Luckily I hadn't taken the tank off my jacket. (MY jacket. My new, shiny - well, secondhand - buoyancy jacket. It worked perfectly and may well be the best £45 I've spent in ages.) I went in on what was the first pleasure dive of a very newly-qualified Open Water diver. She had literally just passed her final qualifying Open Water 4 dive, and this was her first dive! We buddied up, with an instructor leading the way, and swam around Beadnell Bay for half an hour.

It was kind of humbling when the instructor remarked that, unlike the new diver, I didn't need to change my tank for a full one, because "[CyclingDiver] has been diving for a year". I'm really not that great a diver, yet, despite how much I go on about it. My air consumption is definitely getting better; I managed both a 50-minute and 33-minute (quite shallow) dive on on tank of 230bar, and still had 50bar left yesterday. But it was a reminder of how far I've come, and how far I still have to go.

Incidentally, the new diver was - to my still quite inexperienced eyes - really good. Good buoyancy control, checked instruments regularly, gave and understood clear hand signals, didn't freak out in the low vis... I'm sure it won't be long before she's taking her Advanced Open Water in Bute!

Here's to the next dive!

Good Dive at Beadnell Point

Yes, I know, I haven't posted up any blogging on Glastonbury. I will do soon. Thought I'd recap a dive I did at Beadnell Bay last month... I dive there a lot, as it's very popular with my dive centre and lots of other local divers. Lots to see at a relatively shallow depth, and few nasty currents / sharp rocks / things to get entangled in, hence it's popular for taking newbie divers out.

This time around we dived off Beadnell Point; me, two instructors and two Open Water* students. I was buddying with one of the instructors, the OW students were buddying each other, the final instructor was buddying with all of us.

Beadnell Point is new to me. There are several dives available at Beadnell Bay, and previously I'd dived Knacker Hole and Lady Hole (yes, I know, interesting names!). The Point dive has the advantage that you can see the wreck of the Yewglen, which sunk there in 1960 after it accidentally ran aground. No lives were lost, but the ship is pretty badly broken up, as bits of it were salvaged after it sank.

It still makes for an interesting dive with lots of life, albeit with the slight disadvantage that the dive begins with a 20-minute walk from the car park. No laughing matter when you're in a 7mm thick semidry suit with rubber diving boots, carrying all your gear. I wear 8kg of weight when I dive in my semidry suit, plus the buoyancy jacket, tank, fins, mask and snorkel. After we got to the jumping-in point, we sat for a few minutes to catch our breath whilst the divemasters donned their masks and fins and jumped in to have a nosy around at the conditions. One commented that it was surprisingly cold. I commented that a little-known advantage of being a female diver is the absence of shrinkage problems.

Visibility was pronounced "good", we strapped on and checked our gear, jacket full of air, regulator in mouth, stand on side of rock, look straight ahead, hold bottom of tank, GIANT stride into the sea, hit water, bob back up again, signal OK, fin over to meet buddies, dive commences when everyone's ready. I took a quick peek through my mask into the water below, and saw a small shoal of fish beneath, always a good sign for an interesting dive.

Though the water was cold, it wasn't too bad. I often find I can feel more cold on the surface, where you're bobbing about not exerting yourself and the wind is slapping you in the face, than beneath the waves, where the neoprene can do its thing and keep me warm. This time around it was fine. We buddied up and submerged together.

It's hard to convey the transition from the air world to the diving world in words. If I were to try, I'd say that we slip from the white realm of the sky over our heads into the pale green world of the water, from weight into weightlessness. A truly skilled diver will hover effortlessly in the water column with barely a thought, and even a novice diver experiences the joy of being free to move in all three dimensions, a sensation that cannot be replicated anywhere else (swim, and you must come up to breathe, fly, and you must keep moving or fall down). It's magical enough even before you begin to see the fish and crabs in their natural environment.

We explored what remains of the Yewglen, spotting small silver fish, small orange fish, what I think was a plaice, several crabs and a large lobster. As the dive progressed, we worked our way along the reefs, pausing to admire the marine life on the way. I noticed with a certain amount of smug joy that buoyancy control is becoming just a little more natural for me now; on swimming up slightly to go over a rock, I reach for the jacket's inflator hose to let out a little air without having to think about it. I'm a long way off the skill of the instructors, who can hover cross-legged in the water with no effort at all, but I'm getting there. Slowly.

The dive in total was 43 minutes beneath the waves, maximum depth 10m, with excellent visibility (I'm guessing 10-15m). The only slight fly in the ointment was the buoyancy problems experienced by the OW students; one couldn't sink easily, one couldn't rise easily... perhaps we should just have let them hold hands! Due to this, some of us ran a little low on air, and we surfaced to swim back to the shore. Interestingly, we encountered another group of divers on their way out. (Interesting because the sea is quite big, and bumping into other divers is relatively rare even at a popular site, unless you're actually at the entry or exit point for the dive.) As dives go, it was a good 'un.

I'm also happy to report that I've now bought my own buoyancy jacket. Yay! Next stop on the equipment list: my own regulators...

Glasto review coming soon.


* Open Water = basic diving certificate awarded by PADI. The minimum required to be able to rent diving gear or get an air tank filled.

The Carbon Footprint of Cycling

I thought this was rather interesting:

I'm Back!

Back from cycling in Scotland, back from the Glastonbury Festival, and generally back in the swing of things.

I'll soon be blogging on my experiences of cycling and drinking in Scotland, serving beer at Glastonbury and eyeballs in trees. For now, here's a nice picture to look at:

Enjoy!

The Spirit Of Glastonbury...

Consists of many things. It involves...


... embracing the concept of "Festival Time" aka "Stuff will happen when it is ready to happen, so chill out and eat an ice cream"


...living in the moment



...talking to people you've never met before



...realising that the proper approach to standing in a queue is to mellow out and think about nice stuff, rather than shifting from foot to foot impatiently fretting pointlessly


...understanding that bedtime is a fluid concept when you don't have to work 9-5, and it's perfectly reasonable to stay up til 5am to watch the sun rise if you want to


...drinking hot spiced cider


...realising that people and music, not things or lists, are important


...realising that things not going quite according to plan can be the prelude to something totally new, unexpected and fun


...being cheerful rather than being grumpy


...sticking with your mates


...making new mates


...realising that when people are freed from the daily boundaries of their lives, they become fascinating


...drinking some more hot spiced cider

I'm aiming to carry a little of the spirit of Glastonbury into the other 51 weeks of the year. Blog coming soon.

Half a Page of Whining

Would make for a remarkably awful blogging experience for both the author and the reader, which is why I haven't been blogging much recently. Things haven't been too easy for me lately.

A lot of people who know me know that I suffer from intermittent depression. Not, thank God, the really awful type where the world is black and the only answer seems to be jumping off the Tyne Bridge. Just the sort where the world is grey and there seems no way forward.

When I get like that, I tend to avoid people I know. It's not personal. But it's not the job of my friends to be my counsellors; it's my counsellor's job to be my counsellor, and I don't want to inflict myself on them.

A horrible aspect of being depressed, for me, is that part of me, on the inside, knows I'm ill, but the Depressed Me is standing in front of that part and speaking for me. I have cringed at some of the words coming out of my mouth when I'm depressed, because part of me is yelling "That's not me! That's not the real me!". But it's a strong illness, and hard to fight.

I'm happy to say that I'm now feeling much better, if still not 100%. I've decided in future to live my life less by the principle of "What should I do?" and more by the principle "What will make me happy?" On that note, I'm off diving tomorrow.

See you all around, and much love.

Verdict on the Election (Have We Got a Government Yet?)

The best possible one-paragraph summary of the UK election from the incomparable Armando Iannucci:

"Nnnyaaaaaghwooohaaooooororarararararghhhhhhh. That's the message the electorate gave on Thursday. A long, angry, discordant noise that eventually became silly. Hence the result."

Full article here.

And from my office, the following email exchange, names changed to protect the guilty:

LINDSAY: "The proceeds of the office election sweepstake have gone to Matthew, for guessing a hung parliament with the majority of seats going to the Conservatives."

OLIVER: "What, you mean you're not offering double or nothing at the next election in autumn?"

More reflections on my experiences as Wielder of the Mighty 30cm Plastic Ruler of Democracy last Thursday (yes, I was a Presiding Officer again) as and when I get time.