Brighton – 31st March 2019

Despite the windy weather, 12 keen members of Putney SAC headed out for some diving just off the coast of Brighton on the 31st March 2019. A nice late start for a change and a quick stop off at Newhaven Scuba to pick up some rental cylinders got us to Brighton Marina at about 12:30pm ready to board Channel Diver and head out for the afternoon.

Due to the weather not being quite as bad as anticipated we stuck with the original plan and headed out to the SS Pentyrch, a 103m long cargo ship torpedoed by UB-40 (the German submarine, not the band!) on 18th April 1918 on a voyage from Tyne to Genoa with a cargo of coal. The visibility wasn’t great and the conditions were very choppy, with a bit of swell down on the wreck, butnevertheless a very interesting wreck and definitely one that needs another couple of visits to properly explore it.

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O2 Administration course – 23rd February 2019

On 23rd February, 8 students and 6 instructors were joined by Resussi Annie and friends for our annual oxygen administration course. As part of diver first aid training, the course is hugely important and the club encourages all members to keep up to date with these skills.

The day included a mixture of practical and theory lectures with a break for buffet lunch. We covered basic life support, diving incidents, casualty assessment and oxygen administration, as well as role plays, performing chest compressions on our mannequins and setting up the oxygen administration kit. Though we hope we never have to do this for real, what we learnt could make a difference to the outcome of a diving incident. At the end of the course, all Resussi Annies survived and subsequently students were signed off their oxygen administration or corresponding dive leader theory lectures.

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Vobster Quay – 17th February 2019

Keen to get the diving season started early in 2019, six members of Putney Sub Aqua Club, headed up to Vobster Quay bright and early on 17th February for a straightforward (but cold) first dive of the year.

At a brisk 5 degrees Celsius, drysuits were the order of the day for all, except Pradeep who we hope has now defrosted after his first and only dive of the day.

A great day out, with all who attended raring to go for the rest of the year!

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Plymouth – October 2018

And now attention all divers, here is the Plymouth dive trip report for Saturday and Sunday 6 and 7 October at 1800 hours GMT.

Visibility: good to extremely good.
Skipper, Red Alert: cheerful; pasties and hot drinks, frequent; cream tea later.
Wind: North easterly, moderate to strong; sea calm, (sheltered).
‘Newish’ divers: super to very super;
Cold: moderate to slight.
Diving: wrecks 3; reefs 1; sea life; colourful.
Rusty metal bits and conger lairs: frequent.
General situation: superb.

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Pembrokeshire – August 2018

Pembrokeshire is one of my favourite places in the UK, so to dive there has always been on my wish list. The area hosts some great reefs, thanks to being home to one of Britain’s Marine Conservation Zones, and a load of interesting wrecks thanks to the historic boat traffic associated with Milford Haven being a natural deep harbour. Our group of divers was diverse in its experience – recently qualified Ocean Divers with only a few sea dives, up to Advanced Divers and instructors, but there was something for everyone enjoy.

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Scillies – July 2018

We all set off in high spirits from South West London heading for Penzance on Friday afternoon and met up with Brian & Cameron already getting into the holiday spirit trying out the mead at the Penzance Meadery next to the harbour. After a jolly evening in the Admiral Benbow pub, we got up to breakfast and load all our kit onto the ferry for the (hopefully) smooth crossing to St Mary’s. The weather was kind to us, and most people spent the fairly smooth journey sprawled out asleep in the lounge/cafe area.

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Selsey – June 2018

Newhaven Selsey

Plan the dive and dive the plan, that’s how things are meant to work. It’s a bit more difficult when you call up a local dive centre the day before to check the conditions and they tell you the visibility is all of 8 inches… And so it was that we changed plans last minute to abandon Newhaven and head back to our now well-known haunt – Selsey Bill.

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Medes Islands – April 2018

Our first trip abroad this year was to the Medes Islands in Spain. A small group of islands just of the coast of Catalonia

Despite being in the Mediterranean dry suits were still required, the water was a brisk 13C. Due to the cold water the wildlife is similar to the UK this time of year except everything is much BIGGER. There are huge groupers, scorpion fish the size of your head and loads of nudibranchs. The islands also have some great cavern dives that gave us the opportunity to work on our cave diving skills.

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