Report by Julian Avis
The trip down to Vobster quarry this morning was to finish off the Accelerated Decompression course which we ran last year.
It was just Paul Clunas, Norman Lamb, and myself as the instructor, we got there just before the place opened and once we had parked up and signed in at the office we started kitting up.
Norman and I went in first to make sure that his camera housing was water tight after being fitted with new seals and to make sure that the vis was good enough to do the course. At over 10 metres vis that’s ok and no water had got into the camera housing.
When we got back to the surface after 12 min at 20 metres Paul was already in the water and so we started back down to run though the course work.
We did a 25-minute dive looking at the pleasure boats and the helicopter before going through the tunnel which got us to our max depth of 22 metres before starting our ascent and the final test that needed to be performed.
At 15 metres we deployed our SMBs then went up to 10 metres and changed onto our 50% stage cylinders. From there up to 6 metres for our safety stop and after our 3 minutes stop we surfaced not far from the dock and got out as quick as it was possible to do.
Having been in the water for 44 mins total and a water temp of 7 degC my hands were starting to sting. Once the gloves were off I went to the toilet and ran my hands under the hot tap for a minute or two before the pain went.
A bacon & egg butty and some coffee. We then put the kit back in the car before picking up our refilled cylinders, paying for the day, then off home.
That’s another course completed and two happy divers and a very cold instructor but also happy.
