Bermondsey BSAC Christmas Bash - 12th December 2012

by Victor Grayson

In a brilliant turn-out on a cold evening in mid-December, thirty-odd club members (plus partners) took over an entire restaurant - the very good Jaflong on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich - for a night of civilised dining and sober reflection upon the year's diving experiences. With comedy Clive compering (and organising), prizes were awarded, some with deadly seriousness, others with none, as follows:

Best trainee of 2012 - Jill.
Most improved diver of 2012 - Bjørn.

Biggest (above the call of duty) contribution to the club in 2012 - Steve (for the Canada Water dock dives, and help with training).
Best buddy pair of 2012 - Alan and Colin (for their eventful dive in Newhaven).
Biggest boo-boo in 2012 - the incurable romantic Navneet.
Best club trip organiser of 2012 - Victor (for the Brussels trip).
Tallest story of 2012 - Brett (for his "massive crayfish" story).
2012 silly kit prize - jointly awarded to Colin, Elaine and Chris.

An impressive array of dive and stationery-related prizes were then dished out in the raffle (Chris won everything), and long after 11pm a merry bunch of revellers ventured on to The Draft House for a few more lemonades before bedtime.

Normal Wednesday meetings at the pool will resume on 9th January 2013.

Nemo 33 Trip - 17th-18th November 2012

by Jane Jackson

Somehow one expects a lie-in on a Saturday at this time of year, so what were we doing crawling out of bed in the middle of the night on this particular Saturday? Answer: going to Brussels to dive a 35m deep indoor pool on the outskirts of the city. 

Sixteen of us (thirteen from Bermondsey, and three from DAGSAC) met at seven o’clock in the morning on an overcast November Saturday at St. Pancras International for a weekend in Brussels, under the excellent organisational skills of Victor. After an uneventful train journey to Brussels and bus and metro ride across Brussels to the hotel (Brussels has an excellent system whereby you buy one ticket which covers your entire journey including changes provided you take no longer than forty minutes). We dumped our bags, and set off to explore and find lunch (pizza and pasta for the group I was with), before meeting up at the hotel to check in and set off for Nemo 33. 

 

The White Hotel is worth a comment, as it had pretensions to display the development of art and design in Belgium since 1945. I don’t know if all rooms had copies of a small coffee table book describing such development, but there was one in my room, along with a cast of a sculpture of a bull’s head. There was certainly a significant effort at style, whether or not successful (I’ll let my fellow divers decide). Other things included a bike in the foyer, and the lifts which were idiosyncratically typical of this type of hotel where the users of the lift have to open the doors, but they also had small representations of human figures variously painted on the doors and wall. Nevertheless, it was a comfortable hotel with a good variety of food for breakfast and served until 11.00, which other hotels could learn from, not that we were able to take full advantage of it, as we had to be at Nemo by then.

 

Back to Nemo 33. This dive centre cum restaurant resides in the outskirts of Brussels, the most significant thing about it being the pit which (according to my computer) was 35.1m deep at the bottom. The whole pool is about 20m square with a temperature near that of warm bath water. There are varying depths, immediately on entry it must be about 1.5m, where everyone mills around putting on fins (as you are not allowed to jump in you have to walk down the steps, although on our second dive, a number of people from the other group diving, insisted on stopping on the steps to put their fins on – understandable if less than 5’4”, but not if 6ft!). Much of the pool is split between 10m and 15m depth, where we were allowed to practice freediving for the first ten minutes of the session. Then back out to put on scuba kit and back in again to explore the rest of the pool. In one corner was the 35m octagonal pit, reached either by swimming across directly to it or through a swim through, which had a couple of underwater caves at either side which could be surfaced. I was diving with Mariette and on the first dive, when it was just our group plus three others, there was nothing to worry about as we all descended steadily to the bottom, variously amused ourselves for the 10 minutes that we were allowed down there, doing fin pivots etc. A nice slow ascent, another mill in the 10 and 15m areas, until the session finished. This was followed by a very pleasant Thai meal in the bar area, quite mild which I prefer. Return to hotel and off to a local bar for a few drinks before turning in.

 

The next day’s dive was a little more exciting as we shared our session with another group of about 30 people with very varying skills. Most of them plunged straight down the pit, and after Mariette and I had suffered being bumped into several times, we gave up and pottered around for 10 minutes or so in the shallow bit with Victor and Ken, who seemed to have come to a similar conclusion. However, as 10 minutes is the maximum time permitted to be below 20m, we just had to bide our time before everyone else came up and we could descend ourselves. The most interesting thing with all those people expelling all that air in a confined space was that it so reduced the water pressure in the pit that it created a significant current pulling us towards the pit.

 

This was followed by a stroll round Brussels, people variously visiting art galleries, museums, finding a nice lunch somewhere, before we all met up again at the Gare du Midi for a smooth journey back to St Pancras, disregarding the tedium of having to go through UK Border Control twice!

Instructor Foundation Course, 3rd & 4th November 2012

by Victor Grayson & Ken Gordon

Twenty-eight divers, including Ken and Victor from Bermondsey BSAC, gathered at Trinity School, Croydon, not – as might be assumed – to learn to speak proper, but for a two-day Instructor Foundation Course, the first step in BSAC’s instructor training.

 

The day started well – there was a catering truck, breakfast room, make-up trailers and wardrobe all laid on in time for our arrival at 8.45am. It was almost as if we’d walked into a telly set. Most importantly, the heating was on and the front doors were open. Sadly, we soon discovered that there was indeed a TV crew on site that day making a pilot for a Sky sitcom and that no, the catering wasn’t for us.

After following the BSAC signs around this labyrinthine, well-resourced private school, we found our instructor trainers, classrooms and classmates. Attendees were from various London branches, or came from more exotic places such as Southampton and even Switzerland. Everyone was qualified to at least Sports Diver level, but people’s range of experience varied significantly – among us were seasoned divers, people from university branches, and school kids from Trinity School’s own dive club.

The excellent (and slightly Eddie Izzard-ish) Ben Thompson from Exeter branch was leading the course, assisted by seven instructor trainers. The day began appropriately with a look at what makes a good instructor, and how people learn. Next we were given lectures on planning, preparing and presenting a diving theory lesson, and a demonstration of a well-done 10-minute lecturette. After watching a video explaining how to conduct a practical lesson, we broke up into groups of four students (and an instructor trainer) to plan our own attempts at a theory lecturette and pool lesson, which we’d be delivering the following day. The last main activity of the day involved us moving to the school’s pool, and each group’s instructor trainer conducting a short lesson (on rescue breaths) which we then assessed and discussed before spending a further hour in the water, seeing how various skills can be taught – this itself was revealing to those of us who’d crossed over from PADI and hadn’t done the Ocean Diver pool lessons, or who’d learnt certain variations of each skill in our clubs.

We went home with heads filled of useful acronyms/mnemonics – SEEDS, STEP, REAP, PAVE etc. Our evening in Peckham involved a takeaway curry, marker pens and syllabus summaries, all put to good use as the fireworks went off outside. Homework done, Ken went off to find props for his theory lesson, and an early-ish night was necessary.

Beginning with another pool session on Sunday, we delivered our practical lessons in the same small groups we formed yesterday, each time reviewing what we’d got right and what we’d change, and getting very useful feedback from our fellow students and instructor trainers. Ken’s lesson was on snorkel surface dives (or rather, waving your legs about above the surface), while Victor attempted to teach buoyancy, which went well despite running over time.

Back in the classrooms, we bravely took off our coats (the heating was off) to deliver the 10-minute theory lecturettes we’d prepared the night before, with a lot of what we’d learnt yesterday making sense and proving useful when put into practise. After lunch and the last lectures and group work (on open water lessons, which covered everything from how-to-teach-in-poor-visibility to what-to-do-if-your-students-are-distracted-by-Manta-Ray-in-Wraysbury), we were done. Congratulations and thanks were dished out, as were Assistant Diving Instructor logbook stickers, and some healthy networking went on before home time.

This course is well worth doing. We got a lot out of it, there were plenty of laughs, we now have a huge amount of ideas and resources to make use of in future lessons (much of it contained in the comprehensive instructor’s manual and CD-ROM), the instructor trainers were excellent, and the entire course was a brilliant confidence-booster and provided a thorough grounding in the essentials of diving instruction.

Buckland Training Trip, 7th October 2012

by Victor Grayson

With lots of us needing to get wet again before the end of the dive season, a trip to the lake was in order. Brett was the organiser. This time we opted for Buckland Dive Centre ( http://www.polarisscuba.co.uk/ ), hoping for better visibility than we had on our last lake trip. 12 divers (plus 2 non-divers) were on this trip, some having been on the eventful Shoreham dives the day before.

Everyone had different reasons for diving today - some of us continued our Ocean Diver and Sports Diver training, Ken was refining his kit configuration and buoyancy, and others just wanted to get some practice in and build their confidence in the water. Sally, Mariette and Victor concentrated on compass navigation and DSMB deployment. Lee, Navneet, Jill, Grant the younger, Steve, Bjørn and Rajan also dived.

Buckland is easy enough to find from our side of London (take the A2, then follow the signs that say "Brett"!). Entry is £10 per diver, and cylinder fills were £5. The kitting up area was well organised - Bermondsey BSAC were allocated an area with proper benches and enough space for everyone. The dive centre's dog happily accepted tummy rubs from any willing donor.

The visibility proved to be good enough - 5 metres in some places, so that the site's various underwater features were easy to find. The famous shark, however, was away being repaired (as it was when we were last here in March), and the site map on the pontoon needed updating - this created some confusion underwater! 

Supreet was celebrating her birthday today, and (with Rashi) brought amazing food to share with the club, which was very much appreciated.

The sun shone for most of the day (as it always does when we come here), and we were home by 4.30pm. A successful trip.

Club Committee Meeting - 13th September 2012 - Notes

The club committee got together on Thursday, 13 September, to discuss and review training, the dive calendar and other ongoing activities.
Thank you to those the provided feedback on topics that should be discussed and activities considered.

Kit

• The club will acquire a new (2nd hand) stab for trainee use

Training

• A rescue skills review session will be organised as a pool session. ALL club members are encouraged to join the session to make sure all divers have buddies that are up to date and in shape with their rescue skills
• Booster theory sessions will be organised to cover off multiple lessons in one sitting - for Ocean as well as Sports Divers (dates tbc)

Dive Calendar 2012 & 2013

• As it was non-official club trip, the outstanding Scapa payment will not be subsidised by the club. Info will be communicated to relevant members
• The dive site survey from earlier in the year will be used as the basis for bookings in 2013
• In 2013 we'll aim to have at least one Ocean Diver and one Sports Diver+ dive per month (within the season)
• Some members might be asked to help arrange official club dives for 2013 to share the workload
• A club dive is defined as a dive that has been identified as a favourite amongst members through the survey, meets training requirements and diver abilities and fits the tides and date availability. These dives are determined by the committee. Where a non-committee member is asked to help with arrangements, it will still be a club dive and will be listed on the Dive Calendar. Only official club dives will be subsidised in case of shortfall of numbers
• The west coast of Scotland is being considered as a club holiday trip in 2013

Other bits

• We're looking to book out an entire Indian restaurant for the Xmas meal. Details to follow
• If anyone has a mobile to donate for the club phone, please let us know? (we have an O2 simcard)
• A second Litterpick session will be organised in Canada Water on October 14th - ALLWELCOME
• Any donations of lead weights and masks would be greatly appreciated

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Underwater Litterpick - 2nd September 2012

by Jill Nicholls and Bjorn Gale

Jill

All in all it was an excellent day to pick up underwater litter. Spirits were high as we descended upon and then into Canada Water.

There was an undercurrent of excitement as to what would come up from the depths first. Not surprisingly it was a shopping trolley, much decayed and covered in algae. Lots of people stopped to see what was happening and watch the litter be pulled from the water. I think my favourite part of the day was when a little boy was introduced to the crayfish, probably seeing one up close for the first time.

Bjorn

Firstly I'd just like to say what fun! When I first heard about it I knew I had to get involved as it is all excellent experience and as a novice diver I want to gain as much as possible. I also wanted to experience the other side to diving. Diving with a mission or agenda to serve a practical purpose other than just for pleasure. The atmosphere was buzzing and most of the club turned up to support. it was also fun to speak to passers by who were all very interested in what was going on.

The water was warm, but descending only a few metres the visibility quickly started to diminish. When we were close to the bottom the temperature suddenly dropped and the visibility went from little to zero! Quite un-nerving I have to say, thank goodness for the sturdy rope to hang on to. I even experienced a gassy, fomenting gunky smell at the bottom  too, even through a mask! We dived for about 50 minutes and we managed to retrieve a shopping trolley, a stack of cones, planks of scrap wood, metal and bags of tin cans and a shopping basket. A highlight was Brett catching a massive cray fish. We kept it in a bucket and it drew lots of attention. We let it go at the end.

Great experience with Bermondsey BSAC, would definitely do it again.

It Started out as Salcombe... - 25-27th August 2012

by Ken Gordon and Jane Jackson

Saturday by Ken

 

Saturday on the dive formally know as Salcombe...

Off to N50°20'56.67" W3°34'38.47" (aka Dartmouth harbour office steps...) we go, 105 of Dagenham's best horses dragging two sets of dive kit up hills almost at walking pace.

In Dartmouth various members of bsac42 leap out of a waterside breakfast place and point us the correct way.

The boat is blue and quite cosy, very much a squash and a squeeze.

Once all the kit has been shoehorned into place all the drivers are thrown off to make more room or maybe to park *on the other side of the river* we motor across to pick them up on the Kingswear side.

The first dive was a low reef off Tinsey Head, a bit north of Start Point and offering a good view of the lighthouse.

The bottom, about 15 to 18m, was a mixture of boring sand with the odd scallop and more interesting rock formations. These were like slate on edge, rising maybe a meter or so, with lots of long thing gullies to hide in. Hiding was further aided by the poor vis, maybe a couple of metres. There were plenty of crabs, mostly swimming ones but a couple of medium sized edible ones too. A few small fish were hanging about but mostly the game of not losing your buddy occupied the mind. It couldn't have been too bad though, we lasted about 40 minutes before starting back for the surface.

After some hours trying to figure out how to get the less liquid fraction of chicken soup out of a mug while motoring north back towards Dartmouth we jumped in for the second dive. This was on an underwater pinnacle lying between a couple of sets of rather pointy and upright rocks on the north side of the river mouth.

The bottom is in the twenty somethings, we saw 19, and the top about 10. This was rather like diving a wreck life wise, with the usual pouting and pollock appearing as silhouettes in the mixed vis, dead mens fingers and some great anemones. The vis varied from "ooops where has she gone?" to maybe 3m. Despite the rubbish vis this was a good dive, we managed nearly fifty minutes, and would be excellent dive in better conditions.

The grey but calm day had deteriorated to a grey an blowy day, so getting out was more of fairground ride than usual. Since we were close to home it didn't take long to get back in, get air, go to the pub etc...

 

Sunday by Jane

Arrived in Dartmouth Harbour at 8.00 am, and the place was already buzzing. A much more pleasant day, sun was shining and much of Dartmouth seemed to be taking the opportunity to get into their boats and yachts, the gig racing heats had started before we left the harbour, as a prelude to the following weekend’s Dartmouth Regatta.

First dive of the day was on an old collier the Bretagne which sank in 1918. The wreck is around 250ft (70m) in length and lies in about 30m of water, about 5 miles east of Torquay. The shot line was well sited on the wreck and Brett and I made an easy descent to the upper deck of the wreck. As with all the dives of the weekend, the visibility was poor, but might have been the best of the four, at about 3m for most of the time. The wreck actually looked like a ship, not just the usual hunks of strewn metal so often found. It was also very popular with fish, although I failed to see any congers, which several buddy pairs spotted, there were more fish mainly pouting and pollock on this wreck (albeit spotted through the gloom) than I’ve seen in UK waters – which explained the presence of anglers over the wreck and the odd bits of filament and angling weights caught up on the wreck. Swam between decks coming up beside a pulley encrusted on to the deck. Swam over the side and came across several edible crab in the crevices caused by the degradation of the wreck. Brett found a good sized lobster but couldn’t persuade it out of its hidey-hole. There were several types of anemone together with dead man’s fingers. Made our way back to the shot line, and used it to ascend, making the usual safety stop at 6m.

The second dive site was back towards Dartmouth at the Mewstone (there seems to be several of these – certainly one near Plymouth, and I guess is a name given to rocks offshore frequented by sea birds). The tedium of the journey was enlivened by lots of sea birds, particularly gannets diving/plummeting into the water and the wind was also beginning to pick up a bit so it was more bouncy. We anchored in the shelter of the Mewstone and soup was served (an interesting variation on pulse and smoked meat) lentil, I think, and smoked sausage.

The Mewstone was formed of a ridge of rock square to the land, which continued in a curve under water for some distance. The top of the ridge was some 11-8m deep and landward side descended to about 20 m, with the seaward down to at least 30m. The shot was on the landward side. Brett and I descended down the shot, tracking the ridge away from the Mewstone on the landward side. Briefly popping over to the seaward side, before tracking the top of the ridge back into the shelter of the Mewstone. There was not so much life here as there had been in the morning, but lots of small starfish and a few pieces of soft coral, together with several spider crab. Made a more rapid ascent than was desirable, and Brett followed shortly afterwards.

 

On the journey back to Dartmouthit was clear that the wind had continued to pick, but fortunately it was only a short journey back to Dartmouth. However, during the course of the journey the skipper checked the shipping forecast and informed us that the following day would be force 5-7, southerlies – and therefore with the wind blowing straight on to land, no sheltered spots along the coast for diving the next day.