DIR X Stoney Gig 8th January
The day started when I arrived at Stoney, met Al, and parked the car in the bottom car park without having to use the reserved space. that’s what you get when you tell people that Andy Kerslake is coming - space at 8am in Stoney on a Sunday
We then headed off to Willowmead for breakfast. I don’t think Frank was too impressed when we left him in the car park saying ’see you later when we’ve had a full english fry up’ Infact, he swore he would have his revenge on us
Al
Back at Stoney we kitted up and met up with Justin and Mal. Dive 1 went ahead without any problems (apart from Mal’s aforementioned torch) We agreed a thirty minute bottom time - S drills, valve drills (oops - sorry - wrong order) and we then set off for the Stanegarth with Mal in the lead. Al had a fixable valve failure on the way - no problems dealing with that and then, as Mal said, a few simulated failures on the boat led to my thumbing the dive early but all involved coped with the ascent well (two out of air, one DSMB deployment failure) as described.
Whilst Al went off to play scooters with Pete, Dive 2 for me was with John Kendall, Mark, David Martin and Rachael, to put up the snowman. Hopefully some underwater photos of this will emerge eventually I know Mark got some good ones. But it was a laugh.
Dive 3 was to be rescue skills with Kerslake and Frank again. Dropped in told to do valve drills and s drills first. I was number two so launched in to my valve drill when requested. Shut off 1st post, breathed it down, clipped it off, switched it back on. Isolated etc., Left post off, breathe it down, switched back to primary. NO AIR! Switch to back up - NO AIR! Hmm…
I simply have no idea what is going on. I go OOA to Al and once on his long hose signal WTF? He indicates by use of some *choice* signals that Frank has been playing around. He fires up my right post and I flow check to assure myself that all is well.
So what happened? Essentially I turned off my right post, but whilst I was breathing it down and clipping it off, Frank turned it on again. This means that when I returned to it and turned it ‘on’ I was actually turning it off again. Neat trick Mr Bruce - teach me to think about what I am doing in future.
We then do some toxing diver and unconscious diver lifts. When Al comes towards me for the toxing diver lift I cross myself as when he tried it on Tech 1 I almost drowned Much, much better this time - for both of us and we certainly feel that we have a sound enough basis to permit further practice now.
A bit of stage juggling next. Justin and I pass the stages between us quite quickly and wait for Al and Mal to do the same. I’m chilling out (literally) when two eyes appear upside in front of my mask - Kerslake has got bored and whilst lying on top of me - has ducked his head down to give me a fright! Funniest thing is that I discuss this with Justin yesterday and he was of the view that Al had passed him the stages - that’s what we get for matching drysuits then
I’m so cold that I appear to be toxing myself (shivering so much it is visible) so Frank orders me out of the water. But all in all a fun day - and I hope everyone else has as good a time as me
