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LIDS - March 2012
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The London International Dive Show was held on on 31st March 2012, as always, Putney BSAC had a great showing there and our training officer Steve Gibbons won a BSAC 2011 Branch Volunteer of the Year award for the phenomenal amount of time and effort he puts into training and running of the club in general. Congratulations to Steve, the club wouldn't be the same without you.
 
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Farne Islands - October 2011
This year's trip to the Farnes Islands didn't get off to the greatest start. The forecast earlier in the week was for winds of up to 55mph and after the captain cancelled our first day of diving things weren't looking good. Was this to be yet another trip cancelled in 2011 due to high winds? Thankfully by Saturday the wind had dropped and the West side of the islands provided near perfect diving conditions. What followed was three days of the best diving many of us have done in the UK. Diving in the Farnes Islands is all about the seals and this year they were at their most curious and playful. Every dive they'd follow us around biting at our fins. The more curious amongst them would sniff our drysuits, bite are masks and allow us to stroke them. Often once one had deemed we were safe to play with we'd have three or four more seals doing the same. There was also a large array smaller life, crabs, lobusts, shrimp; not that most of us noticed, we were too busy enjoying the seals. Those of you with a taste for adult entertainment will soon have the opportunity to watch Alex's video of his intimate and passionate encounter with a very special lady seal he befriended on the last day. ;-)
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Scapa Flow - September 2011
Although it started all far more adventurous: some of you may be aware of the troubles of almost all participants booked on the trip: one moving to land of dreams, another getting married, the rest of us getting the week of the trip wrong and at the end the heroic effort of Steve getting hold of the skipper and saving the trip. Well in the end – good news: on Friday morning Steve rang at my door and off we go to the north and beyond – with weather forecast for Orkney to be “severe gale force winds” - the tail of the hurricane Katia hitting UK. The foggy weather in Highlands and over-active police officers did not added to the mood – so my feeling was: “what the .... I’m doing here”. But the diving was great – with all aspects of UK dream dives - the weather changing, the visibility ranging from “good vis” where underwater photo would be almost possible to a day-time “night dive”; but despite forecasts we dived every day, dived all the light cruisers, the battle ship Kronprinz Wilhelm, F2, Barge, ..., with animal sightings (well not just sightings unlucky for some of the edible species) ranging from scallops, crabs, lobsters through scorpion fish, lings, conger-eels up to seals; only the Block ships with promised “Caribbean visibility” remained banned due to the wind conditions.
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Truk, Micronesia - August 2011
Our first dive on to the wreck of the Shinkoku Maru, was truly something of an epiphany, with gin clear water (31 degrees), on to a totally intact wreck! It was breathtakingly beautiful, festooned in soft corals and fish life. We went inside the wreck, and was given a fantastic tour of the interior by our dive guide, who was strangely named "McKenzie" Among other things, we were shown the operating theatre, washing and living quarters and even some human remains, which I believe were either shin or forearm bones. As we left the inside of the wreck, I was immediately greeted with a sight of something brilliance, a shark and three eagle rays were heading straight for me........"wow"....but no camera!......bollocks!
The next ten days saw us dive a total of 20 or so wrecks, only repeating a previously dived wreck once! We even dived a Japanese bomber aircraft, which if we had done it in English waters, you would have given your eye teeth for, but "there".......it was just an o.k. dive!
These were just some of the items we saw on our dives.........
Tanks, Bombs, Japanese Zero aircraft, Torpedoes, Telegraphs, Field guns, Machine guns, ammunition, Periscopes, Saki bottles, China & Kitchen items, Bicycle's, lanterns, medicine materials, gas masks, engine rooms, radio equipment, bathrooms, operating theatres, toilets.....and so much more! My final dive was Shark Island; it was a small island no bigger that the penalty box on a football pitch. Our guides chummed the waters, and within minutes, we were surrounded by dozens of Grey and Black tip reef sharks...loads of photos. At the end of the dive, and when we were on board the boat, the guides through the rest of the chum in to the water........FRENZY! I got some photo's from the boat, as I put my camera over the side and my camera got bumped a few times......what an end to a brilliant trip.......you must go there!
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