The choice was simple stop at home, get drunk and watch the England football team play worse than a pub team in the local park or get in the car and drive up to Capernwray and complete my peak performance buoyancy course with Alison and the rest of team at dream divers. not much of a choice really! Of course the diving won.
After a good two hour drive, I arrived spot on 9am and drove in straight away and found a good place to park near the rest of the divers from dream divers, who were diving here, either they were also doing their Peak Performance Buoyancy course, completing the last two dives of their PADI Open Water Course or just enjoying a couple of pleasure dives.
After parking up the first job was to pop up to the dive shop and complete my registration as this was my first visit to Capernwray. I was impressed with the facilities and the layout and how near the car parking was to the dive site entrance.
We couldn’t have picked a better day, a nice and hot summers day, (warmest day of the year so far!) with a clear blue sky, with the occasional white fluffy cloud.
After a quick briefing we started to kit up, Alison, who was our instructor for the day, then came round to check out our kit configuration to offer a bit of advice on how to better arrange the kit to ensure that everything was balanced streamlined and in trim whilst we were diving, so after a few adjustments we were ready! Then word came back from one the dive masters who accompanied the open water course, that Dream Divers was also running on the same day, that the water temperature was a balmy 14°c, during their first dive. So I decided to brave it and went in without wearing my neoprene hood and gloves.
After kitting up and performing our buddy checks it was a short walk and a giant stride and then we were in the water, time for a quick buoyancy check and it looked like I was weighted about right. So off we all embarked on a surface swim to the buoy secured by a line down to the plane, once everyone was there, the dive plan was repeated and double checked!
Darren (my buddy for the day) and myself were the first ones down to the line and I must say the was the best descent, up to that time, I made whilst diving , everything went without a hitch as we slowly descended down the line adding small amounts of air into our BCDs as we descended. Soon out of the gloom the plane cockpit came into view, I’ll never get over the excitement when something like this comes into view as you dive, so once everyone was down it was off we went practising our buoyancy skills hovering and landing on the plane, we waited for a couple of minutes whilst the qualified wreck divers amongst us swam through the plane. next it was off to our first major test, ascending safely up the wall from the plane to the ledge, without having a run away ascent as the air inside our dry-suit and BCD expanded as we ascended from 18m to the top of the wall at about 10m. Once we were on the ledge we then swan over to one of the 6m training platforms to start practising hovering in our dry-suits all to soon it was time to head back to the surface at the end of out dive.
After the dive we got our equipment ready for our next dive, taking our cylinders up for refilling, followed by a post dive briefing which also served as the briefing for the next dive.
When our surface interval was over we kitted up and headed back to the water, entering again with a giant stride, this time we had a shorter surface swim over to the 6m training platform were we all descended and successfully practised our hovers. Then it was off taking a gentle swim, using our buoyancy techniques to successfully navigate over a natural under water obstacle course, keeping off the bottom. This was only spoilt by a group of divers charging through practising their underwater navigation, when we all had to stop and drop the floor of the quarry, to get out of their way. During this buoyancy test swim we were joined by two of Caperwray’s sturgeons and well as numerous brown and rainbow trout. We gently swam into the shallows, keeping control of our buoyancy as we served our safety stop time whilst swimming, finally surfacing in about 1.5metres.
So two good dives and we were out in time to watch England loose on the TV’s set up in the cafe, or as Mark, Dave, Claire and Ian did, enjoy an extra pleasure dive feeding the fish.
