LDC Lectures at the Royal Geographical Society

Clive organised some tickets for us to spend the evening at the London Dive Chamber lectures at the Royal Geographical Society.  This evening’s speakers were Rick Stanton (world record cave diver) and Monty Halls (TV presenter and all-round nice guy). 

Although a couple of us had seen Rick Stanton before a couple of years ago at DIVERSE his talk was still very interesting and went over the further diving he has done in the Pozo Azul cave system in Spain.  With a cave dive of almost 10,000 m it’s pretty impressive although most of the club decided they wouldn’t sign up for the trip just yet.

Monty gave us a brief overview of his presenting gig on the BBC production ‘The Great Barrier Reef’.  This was a really entertaining presentation as all of Monty’s are and the bloopers reel at the end was a real giggle.  He followed it with a few pictures and a taster on his latest job working as a Cornish fisherman for 6 months which is due to be on TV soon.  This looks to be a great insight into the small boat fishermen on the Cornish coast.  One to look out for.

These evenings have always been in support of the ScubaTrust, helping divers with disabilities and we got a chance to hear from Barry, a tetraplegic who learnt to dive with Scuba Trust and we even got to see a short film of Barry diving in the Red Sea which really goes to show the great work that the Scuba Trust.  Following on  the back of our Try-Dives with Aspire this really goes to show how we can help to make a difference.

All in all a great evening followed by a beer at a local establishment before catching the train home.

Bermondsey AGM – 1st February

Apologies for absence from members.

Chairman’s Opening Remarks

• Talked about our Try-Dive with Aspire
• Discussed our attempts to forge links with FUSION about publicising the club
• Also discussed that when emails come out to the membership that it would be useful to get some kind of response even if it is a no, just to know that people have got the email

Diving Officers Report

• Talked about last year’s dive schedule
• Joint dives with DAGSAC and noted that there are 2 joint dives at Brighton carried over from last year
• There is also a deposit from the cancelled Dover dive that still needs to be refunded to us
• We’re diving some different dive sites this year, Shoreham, Salcombe, Swanage training weekends

Training Officers Report

• It’s been a good year with plenty of training going on both lectures and practicals
• TO reminded all trainees that if lectures and practicals are arranged for them then they need to attend or at least let people know if they are not coming
• The training schedule will be set up within the next couple of weeks and the training records will be available on the internet so that members and instructors can check the lectures and practicals they require
• The club have also been quite lucky with instructors helping out  with training and hope this will continue for the next year

Membership Secretary Report

• Club are now approaching 44 members, 30+ active divers which means that we are doing well but need to keep up the momentum
• Due to the increase in member numbers we need to be a lot better at look after members data and as such on all club related emails from now on only the committee email addresses will be shown and all others  hidden.  This is to safeguard your information and also should cut down on the number of one word emails that bounce around sometimes.
• If any member wants to contact the club then they should email a committee member and they will forward it out to the club distribution list.
• The club will be following the BSAC guide lines for Data Protection.

Equipment Officers Report

• Currently have 6 complete sets of kit along with a BC and regulator but no gauge or octopus.  This has been down to a number of members selling or donating kit to the club
• Any members with spare kit that they no longer require and would like to donate please contact the equipment officer.
• As part of our commitment to training and member safety, all the club kit will go in for servicing, although it will be staggered to allow for training to continue.

Treasurers Report

• With the increase in members our financial situation is better than it has been in recent years.
• The pool hire is going to be increasing sometime soon although with the current membership this should be manageable so club subs will stay at the same level for this year.
• As with last year we will not be rolling over any deposits with skippers so that at the end of each season we have all monies in the branch.

Nominations and Elections

• There were a number of nominations for the committee this year but after all the votes were counted the only change was in the Training team where Brett became Training Officer and Clive became Assistant Training Officer.

After thanks to Teresa for the use of her Hall we retired to the Queen Vic for a post-meeting pint.

Try Dive with Aspire

So we managed to get through our first Try-Dive with Aspire without losing anyone and judging by the write up on their website we did quite a good job.

There were so definete points of improvement but once we got started it really went well.

Hopefully we'll be able to make a diffrence to some people and if it gets them into diving as well them its all good.

The aspire write up can be found here Aspire Write Up and below are some of the comments that got forwarded through to us from the staff at Aspire.

'Scuba - diving was awesome, great way to have a first go - there are lot's of people who I think would be up for trying it.'

'Thanks very much for the opportunity yesterday, it was good to experience how the equipment feels, I did find the breathing a little strange but think I could get used to it. I think it would be great to have a longer session and maybe even run one of the first courses available perhaps over a day or weekend.'

'Thankyou for the experience.. was wicked.. I woulda stayed there hours if had had the time.... BRILLIANT...'

'Thanks for organising the Scuba session! It was excellent and I hope to do some more... maybe in Egypt next time!'