In 2004 there was a total of nine divers wishing to get their Sports Diver Qualification that year. Rather than rely on casual training through the normal dive plan, as it was such a large group a dedicated training schedule was put together. This was structured as a weekend followed by two separate days, over subsequent weekends. If everything went to plan, then these four days of diving would allow most of the students the opportunity to complete the six open water lessons.

Some of the students kicked off their training over the Easter Break so managed to start the course with a couple of dives already under their belts. Most of the students took the opportunity in the early season dives to get wet before the start of the Sports Diver course.

All four days of the diving was based in Castletown on Portland. This wasn’t the original plan but the weather changed that for us. Castletown offered easy access to training sites, shelter from the prevailing South Westerly winds and good facilities (especially a couple of dive shops for those who can’t go diving with out buying at least one new toy).

We then returned to Castletown, the students thought they were in for an early lunch. Wrong! Once the boat was secured we did the towing and beaching lesson cumulating in the students doing a 25m tow with AV and recovering the casualty onto the beach. By the time they had done all that they had certainly deserved their (late) lunch.

After lunch we returned to Balaclava Bay for the second part of the rescue dive. After an instructor demonstration all the students did a Controlled Buoyant Lift, summoned the boat while giving AV and then recovered the casualty into the boat.

To finish the day the three students who hadn’t already had a chance to do their SMB exercise went for a gentle drift over Grove Point.

We abandoned the boat and most of the cars in Portland Port and headed over to the Cutter Inn in Weymouth Town Centre. We arrived to find that the Cutter Inn sponsor Weymouth RFC and nearly all of them were in the bar celebrating. Once we had a chance to brush up we dashed through the rain to the Weymouth Tandoori, for the usual high standard of curry. Parental control of what Patrick ordered was applied, as it was going to be one of us who was opening his dry suit the next day. We then met up with Weymouth RFC in another pub before returning to the Cutter. We then drifted to bed from the bar in our own time, except Shed who was sent to bed by the landlord with the comment, ‘if you expect me to cook your breakfast early tomorrow I am closing the bar’.

Overnight the promised storm blew in, rattled all the windows and pelted them with rain, banged the loft hatch a few times, and then blew out again.

By the next morning the storm had pretty much blown through, however you wouldn’t have wanted to dive outside of the lee of Portland. The storm had left us with a gentle swell, which subsided during the day, and a drop in visibility, perfect for a navigation exercise.

Using his NAS training, Derek had devised a training station that would allow us to do the navigation exercise and the rescue part of the Sports Diver Assessment (Alternate Air Source Assents & Mask clearing). After the brief, most of the students and instructors still looked a bit puzzled. However after we had done a complete walk through in the car park of setting it up, using it and recovering it, everyone was happy even if we did get a few funny looks.

We returned to Balaclava Bay to carry out the exercise, everything went to plan, the flat sandy bottom and reduced visibility put an emphasis on the Compass Navigation.

This time when we returned to Castletown we just had lunch with no extra training.

For the last dive of the weekend we went on the Countess of Earn, where the students had chance to have a 20-30 minute look around before doing the Delay SMB lesson using the struts at the stern of the Countess as security.

Back to Castletown bright and early.

The first group met up at 8:00; these were the students that hadn’t managed to make the whole of the last weekend. We nipped round to Balaclava Bay to go through some rescue skills and then back to Castletown for some towing and beaching before the rest turned up with the second boat.

Once the second boat was launched and all sixteen divers had got their kit on the right boat we congregated on the beach while Derek demonstrated the dos and don’ts of line laying to all the students. Using abandoned trailers as belay points and other instructors as entanglements.

We then set out to dive the British Inventor on Lulworth Banks. This wreck is in 21m and is perfect for the line laying exercise; only the bow section remains here and that has been completely demolished leaving a pile of twisted plate and pipe work. Slack on this site was 11:30 to 13:30 so it was back to Castletown for a late lunch.

After lunch we returned to the Countess of Earn. For some of the class this dive was their final assessed dive. As we had already done the skills part of the assessment we could just focus on the Dive Leading part and give the student complete control of the whole dive. Having finished here we return once more to Balaclava Bay for a few more rescue drills before returning to Castletown.

A very long day, some of the group started at 8am and it was 7pm by the time everything was packed away. Some of the divers said that it felt like they had done two days diving; they went quiet when it was suggested that they might want to pay double then. However it was worth it at the end of this day, seven out of the class of nine had completed all their open water training.

As it was Independence Day we had planned to take the newly qualified divers out to dive the St Dunstan as a lead dive and then a chance to dive with each other on the Baygitano. However the weather had other ideas and we found ourselves back in Castletown sheltering from a South Westerly 4-5 Occ 6. The students filled in the marshal slate:
Dive site: Portland Again
Weather: English
Slack: Except Shed
Sea: Wet
 

With the original plan we had two full boats, with the change of plan a few had dropped out. We still had two boats with a total of thirteen divers, one of which was a Sports diver Trainee and two were Ocean Diver Trainees. Having been up late replanning the dive Derek had then forgotten his briefcase with all the paper work and training notes in it. Luckily Annie had a set of the training notes, the Voyage plan was recreated on a slate (which he had remembered) and he had to call home at lunchtime for the mark for the Himalaya.

Back out to good old Balaclava Bay! We did various Ocean and Sports diver training before moving down to Grove Point where the newly Qualified Sports divers got to dive without an instructor.

After lunch we went out to do a silty dive on the Himalaya (a good candidate for the Sports trainee who was doing his line laying exercise), followed by a marginally less silty dive on the Countess of Earn.

That’s it for the Sports course this year, it has been a success; out of the nine original students seven qualified as Sports Divers by the end of the four days. The remaining two only have one dive to do to qualify. On top of that Shed has now got enough instructing hours for his Open water Instructor.

It wasn’t all about training and getting qualifications we also had a lot of fun, there was definately a good camaraderie in the course and it helped some of the newer members integrate into the club.

All pictures taken by Shed on Day 3 – 23rd May.

The instructors (except Shed who was behind the camera), Moira makes a firm point during the instructor debrief with Derek.

We have got the boat, we are ready. All we need now is a few diving instructors

Launching the boat at Castletown

Patrick soon gets back into the Seafaring way of life

We did have fun too