Diving

In Mid 2004 we realised we had not dived for over 18 months and that we that it no longer played such a major role in our lives - why. ??? A good question and one we have puzzled over many times - maybe we had reached where we wanted to be and the number of challenges ahead were reducing. Also we are now enjoying the land type activities (geocaching) as much as we enjoyed diving. As such we have started to sell all our equipment and have indeed officially "hung up our fins". As it was a large part of ours lives for many years so felt we still had to include a section within the web page of how we get started and some of our high point dives.... Well there was this fateful day in Bermuda when G and a collegue called Nigel Pink, were sat in the hot tub (maybe this is why we ended up with a hot tub at home too) trying to think of something to do the following day. We were coming to the end of a 5 day trip, and having always had an interest in swimming, Sue in particular with snorkelling there seemed to be only one option. Scuba Diving.
	The result of the hot tub debate was a trip to South Side Scuba and our first try dive carried out in Bermuda in 1991 just for the fun of it.

Little was it known just what this would lead to. For many years diving was a major part of our lives. Maybe we should have taken note of the kit we were wearing at the time... boy just look at the photos of it - what a change. Blame it on being young and foolish.

From relying on rented school equipment to owning a whole bunch of stuff, throwing away even more stuff than some folks ever buy. On the left for just a single cave dive in Ginnie (Florida) and on the right the cylinders required for 6 to do a dive in Doux De Coly (France).

The thought of having to do a resort courses each time on holiday was too much so after the dive in Bermuda we returned to the UK to suss out the options - electing the basic training with BSAC, Sue naively thinking that this was just enough qualifications to prevent having to do continuous resort courses. Immediately following on from the novice course (as it was known then) we enrolled in sports diver - and the ability to dive together without the need of supervision. Then there was dive leader and advanced diver. Not really wishing to do the instructor route, training opportunities were beginning to be limited. Hence the move towards ntirox diving - rumour has it that as it was still at the time that BSAC were classing this as the Devil Gas it meant that we were unable to dive with other BSAC divers whilst diving on this gas.

Several years later completely hooked - the garage used to be a combined boat house and dive store and getting up earlier at the weekend to go off on dive trips than during the week to goto work!! After selling the boat it became just a dive store for a while and is now also where the pinball machines live.

Our downfall is listed below with those events marked with a * being the really turn upside down ones, and in amongst this there is the backup stuff - boat handling, VHF, oxygen admin......

GAS Diving is still an on going diver training facility especially now with GUE having been approved in the UK. Andy, the A part with Graeme and Sue providing the G & S letters, is now leading this activity. See background information via the link to the left, or this to get to the GAS Diving UK web site.

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