Swanage - May 2004

It was with a mixture of trepidation and excitement that I got ready to face my first UK dive at Swanage Pier. Despite being a member of the club for over a year and doing lots of pool training, I hadn’t yet proved my hardy BSAC credentials by jumping into murky water in a gale force wind in Winter.

At least that was my image - and on Saturday the weather didn’t seem much different to that. However I have to revise (at least some of) my preconceptions. Firstly I was struck by how well organised the trip was. Despite the usual amount of faffing diving seems to involve for a relatively short period underwater, I always knew where I was, what I was doing and who with.

I was a bit nervous as I was also trying my new dry suit, and was very grateful to Kathy for getting her wetsuit half on before realising it was backwards. The laughter cheered me up no end (quote Sid – Just take your time, you’re different to us, you’re blond).

Despite some initial problems with getting my weight right and having no idea where I was at any point in the dive (thanks to Rob for leading me around), it was really enjoyable. Ok, so it wasn’t quite the Red Sea and at around 2m we can safely say the vis wasn’t good, but we saw a lovely shoal of fish around one of the pier’s pylons, loads of crabs and there was lots of seaweed to look at.

Most importantly for me, it was an ideal first dive as I knew the surface wasn’t far away. We did have a competition for maximum depth reached. A whopping 4.1m was the clear winner. The less said about the nose sucking lesson the better but Rob did get another sports diver lesson signed off, and we all felt we thoroughly deserved our hot showers, pub meal and a few pints.

The next morning we dived Old Harry from the rib. This was the boat’s first outing of the season and it was in fine form thanks to Rob’s TLC and Pete and Sid ‘testing it out’ at some speed.

Tricky’s attempt at inflating the tubes wasn’t quite so successful: We found him working hard, but no matter how hard he pumped, more air seemed to be coming out than going in. Pete helped him out switching the pump from deflate to inflate!

With calm seas and much better weather, Sid and I enjoyed a lovely drift dive seeing a dogfish, a giant clam, a big edible crab and a couple of red gurnards. Even better, on the surface we watched around eight dolphins swim by a few times within about six metres of us. And that certainly beat the Red Sea! Kathy was particularly happy as she saw dolphins and got her Ocean Diver signed off – well done Kathy!

So am I a UK diving convert? Well I’m not quite ready to put away my shorty, shun warm water and defect to Scotland, but I had a great weekend with a really good group of people, ate more chips than ever in my life, didn’t get cold or wet (unlike Sid whose drysuit seems to want to drown him), played on the boat and saw fish and dolphins. It certainly beats Vauxhall at the weekend.

Just a final quiz question - what did Sid bribe me with a piece of Toblerone not to tell Tricky!!?!?