New Advanced Open Water Divers

Well done to Josh and Greg from O'Three Dry Suits. They completed their PADI AOW course over the weekend. We did to dives at the Cove on Chesil Beach on Saturday then 3 dives off X Dream out of Weymouth on Sunday. We had a good 5-10m visibility on all our dives which was good.

Red Sea CCR Trimix Training

I have just returned from a very quite Sharm El Sheikh where I was running a Mod 2 Inspiration course. We had a cracking week completing 10 dives on the course 8 of them on Trimix down to depths of 60m.

I had 2 students on the course who had previously done their Mod 1 course with me. We had a good week and the guys learn't a lot. However the highlight of the week was on the last day of diving after the course had finished when we went Scootering at Jackfish Alley in Ras Mohammed where we saw a couple of Black tip Reef Sharks some Turtles and a Dolphin.

S.S. Leopoldville

The 11,500 ton passenger ship Leopoldville was launched in 1927 at the John Cockerill S.A. Shipyard in Hoboken Belgium. Up until the second world war broke out she was used to carry passengers and goods to Congo. When the War broke out she was commissioned as a troop carrying ship, with some modifications and the fitting of necessary armament.

During a 4 year period from May 1940 until December 1944 she covered some 219,949 miles and transported 120,000 American soldiers to aid in the battle for Europe. On the 24th December 1944 at 0900 the Leopoldville left Southampton carrying 2,235 troops of the 66th Infantry division to Cherbourg. As the Leopoldville approached Cherbourg the U-486 laid in wait the U boat was equipped with a snorkel so was able to stay under the water and out of site to all on board. The U boat fired a torpedo and struck the port side of the Leopoldville, the damage caused was enormous.

An SOS was sent out and several ships came to the rescue. HMS Brilliant came along side the Leopoldville to extract the ships passengers and crew however many lives were lost due to the rough conditions causing the jumping men to miss and fall down into the icy water.

Seven Hundred and Sixty Three men died that night. The Supreme commander tried to keep everything quite in order to to keep up moral of the troops. Only in 1996 did the British Admiralty release documents that detailed what exactly happened. Since then a memorial has been erected at Fort Benning in the USA.

The Leopoldville now lies on her side in 60m, 5 miles from Cherbourg. She is still very much in tact and makes a cracking dive

For underwater video footage click on the link bellow.

Trimix Diving in the Channel 6-10th June

I have booked Skin Deeper out of Weymouth to dive some cracking dives in the Channel and off the coast of France. The cost for the boat will be around £4,500 (cost could go up or down due to fuel costs). The trip is open to CCR divers as we need to be self sufficient for gas fills. I am limiting the numbers to 10 divers to give us plenty of room for the extra kit we will need to take for the 5 days.

The Itinerary is

6th June Leopoldville then in to Cherbourg & nbsp;

7th June wreck north of Guernsey ( decide max depth ) then into Guernsey

8th June HMS Limbourne then in to Plomanach

9th June HMS Charybdis then in to Guernsey or Alderney

10th June dive Illinois then home

To book you place email me or give me a call. But as usual you are not on the boat unless you have paid your deposit. Deposit of £200 required.

Cheers

Kevin

O'Three Goes Nitrox

Well done to 8 of O'Three's staff and friends who completed their TDI Understanding Nitrox course. We spent today learning all the aspects that make a safe Nitrox diver from Oxygen CNS tracking to analysing and marking of your dive cylinder.

Well done guys and see you all soon for longer bottom times!

Cheers

Kevin

Busy few Days

Hi Guys,

Well the new year finally got going for me as far as diving was concerned on Sunday!

Martin D and Martin P both did their Mod 1 Inspiration courses with me. I must have done a good job as they both came back for more! On Sunday they started their Mod 2 course we covered all the theory aspects of the course and had a discussion on equipment configuration which gave them ideas on how best to set up their rebreathers so to carry all the equipment needed to safely dive to 60m. They now have the next few weeks to fettle with their kit and practice their in water skills before we all fly off to Sharm El Sheikh for some serious diving.

Monday saw me take on a role reversal rather than being the educator I was the student, as I was attending the first day of the Sentinel rebreather user course run by Phil Short at Vobster. We covered assembly and disassembly of the unit preparing the unit for diving and the pre dive checks required for safe rebreather diving. We also touched on the theory of the course which is very similar to the Inspiration. It was an excellent and an informative day. I will no doubt be spending more time with Phil and the Sentinel in the very near future.

Tuesday and again I was learning new tricks this time at Sea & Sea I had a days instruction in the Ocean Reef Full Face Mask (FFM). This was to enable me to go away and teach others that want to learn how to dive using the FFM. We spent several hours in the classroom learning how to set them up and the benefits of the FFM one of which is the ability to communicate with your buddy, students and the surface. We then moved to the pool and put all the theory into practice. Within a few minutes I had the FFM fitted and I was under the water we tried to flood them and all that happens is air is released and this keeps any water out. We did removal and replacement and with a quick press of the purge button the mask was empty of water. Lastly we tried out the underwater comms these didn't work to well due to the confines of the pool and the signals bouncing off the pool walls.

I have now got a couple of days doing paperwork getting all my HSE stuff in order, then on Sunday I am off to O'Three for the day to teach nine of the staff how to safely dive breathing Nitrox.

Cheers

Kevin

Its been a Good Year

I know the year is not quite over yet but due to a sore knee (old war wound) my diving finished back in September! But thanks to the good old NHS I will be back in the water by the middle of January.

Well where should I start? The season really got started for me in March I had booked Ian Taylor's boat Skin Deep for the first and last weekends for some weekend diving out of Weymouth. However things were not going to go to plan as at the last moment I decided to go out to Sharm to see an old friend Aaron Bruce for some personal development!! I booked for 2 weeks meaning I would miss the first weekend out of Weymouth but then I was asked to stay and do some work, teaching a couple of Inspiration courses meaning I would miss the 2nd week in Weymouth. My presence was not really missed and every one had a great time feeling their way around the M2.

Four weeks later I was back in Sharm delivering an Inspiration for one of Aaron's colleagues and to do some more teaching, an open circuit trimix course. This was the last time I would be in Egypt despite being invited several other times.

Well the weather back in Devon was improving day by day and the underwater visability was getting up to 10-15m so training conditions were perfect. Over the next few months we did several Inspiration courses and a number of Open Circuit courses of varying levels. As the days grew longer we managed to get out and do some of the medium range trimix wrecks out of Plymouth. Gems such as the Medina, Untiring and the Unicorn. But these wrecks were just the tip of the iceberg compared to the trip we had planned to Malin Head, Ireland. Here we had 3 of the top 10 wreck dives in the world with the Justicia, Empire Heritage and Audacious all of them spectacular in their own way.

However if I thought I was not going to be blown away by more spectacular wrecks then I was was wrong we had 2 more aces up our sleeve. In September I had a trip of my own planned to dive out of Plymouth but before that we had 2 days diving out of Newquay on the wreck of the Armenian a White Star Liner that lies in 95m. We only managed to get 1 dive on her due to the weather but that dive will stick in my mind for a long time. Moving over to the south coast and Plymouth we were quickly going to go from hero to zero with a dive on HMS Seabed on the Saturday and Sunday we were totally blown out! But there was still Monday when we were due to dive the Afric another White Star liner and yet another memory that will not be lost any time soon.

I would like to thank all of you who joined me in my adventures this year. I look forward to more of the same next year and making more new friends and dive buddies.

Have a great Christmas and a cracking New Year.