Trips
Portland, Snorkel Dive Marshall Training Weekend
On the August Bank Holiday a small group of senior members went to Portland in Dorset. This was because Nick was going to run a Snorkel Dive Marshall Course for them. Matt, Sandy, Stef and Zoe all attended.
We drove down on Friday afternoon to stay at the Royal Breakwater Hotel, in Castleton Portland. This is just next to HMS Osprey, an old Royal Naval Base, now closed down. We settled in by about 7pm, the accommodation was excellent and the people were very friendly. Nick knew many of the people there, as the area is full of divers and this is where Nick dives when he's not snorkelling.
To relax into the weekend, we decided to go and sit down on Chesil beach for the evening and watch the sun go down. We went down there and sat on the pebbles, and watched as two storm fronts hit each other, it was really amazing to see the rain and lightening, but not get wet.
Saturday morning came quickly enough, the morning for lectures. Nick had planned to do five dives that weekend. These are required for the Snorkel Dive Marshall qualification, but we had to study too. It turned out to be quite interesting though. Nick had given us some study packs that he had put together, that told us about the various things that a Dive Marshall does and what is expected of them. We read these and then did a few practical exercises, on the use of Admiralty Charts, calculating tides and dive site selection.
In the afternoon we drove to Swanage Pier for the first dive of the weekend. Swanage is a major dive site for both snorkellers and divers and the place was packed out. We eventually found a parking space, got kitted up and walked onto the pier.
Nick decided that we were going to do a lifting bag exercise. Nick explained to us how a lifting bag works, and how to use them. He then got us to plan how we were going to run the dive and choose what roles in the exercise we were going to have. Once we had done this we practiced the whole thing on the pier in the dry to make sure we would get it right.
We were going to use Matt's weight belt as the shot to recover. We tied a marker buoy to it and dropped it in to the water. We then all entered the sea. We had chosen a gap underneath the pier to dive on, as this was the safest place to work. There were a lot of fishermen on the pier and we were worried that we could get tangled up in their lines if in open water, where they were fishing. The site turned out to be ideal. Calm, safe and secure. Firstly the lifting bag was taken down to the shot and was attached to it and then it was a case of taking turns to go down to it, unfold it out and then start to fill it with air. Filling it with air was quite hard work. The shot was about 4 metres down, with the bag just above it. You needed to hold your breath long enough to be able to stay down. However you also needed a bit of spare air to blow through your snorkel into the bag and then get back to the surface again. We eventually managed it and the bag lifted the weight to the surface.
It was really good fun doing this as its nice to have a task to perform in the water, rather than just snorkelling about without anything to do. It was definitely a good dive.
On Saturday night we had our meal and then decided to go to see the lighthouse on Portland Bill. It was dark and the lighthouse was on. It was amazing. It was spinning out four beams of light that could be seen for twenty-five miles (according to our Admiralty Charts - from the lectures that morning). It was really pretty. One minute it was dark and you could only hear the sound of the wave on the cliffs, the next the night sky was lit up with four beams shining into the horizon. It was great!
Sunday morning we went to the Durdle Door and Man 'O' War Bay in Lulworth.
The wind was not too bad so this meant that the water visibility was quite good at the Durdle Door. We used this site to improve our depth diving. We swam out past the door to open sea. There we practiced surface diving to the seabed. The maximum depth we managed to get was about eleven metres. Not a world record, but a good depth never the less. After we had done this Nick let us snorkel in the shallows just near the door. There it is about five metres deep and the seabed is covered in kelp beds. The kelp attracts all sorts of sea life, so we spent the remainder of the dive snorkelling with the multi-coloured fish feeding from it. It was really relaxing.
After a short break we walked round to Man 'O' War Bay and Nick and Matt showed us how to perform open water rescues. We learnt how to tow our casualties in the sea and give expelled air resuscitation and then how to lift them out of the sea and onto the beach. It was hard work trying to tow someone when the sea is trying to make you go the other way, but it was very useful and we learnt a lot.
Sunday afternoon came the time of the dreaded theory test. Nick sat us down in the hotel and handed out the test papers. We had to work out things from charts and answer questions on first aid, types of dive sites, marine and human biology and lots of other things. The test was quite hard, but we all passed.
On Sunday night we did our first night dive. We had all brought our torches and had purchased some chemical light sticks as well. We had planned to dive off of Chesil beach, but the wind was blowing very strongly in the wrong direction and we could not
dive there. Instead we used the Castleton Beach. It wasn't ideal but it was good practice. We were shown how to use night signals with our torches and we then got in. It was a bit scary at first but we soon got over that, and it turned out to be great fun. We snorkelled out to the harbour wall and saw loads of crabs that had been caught by the fishermen and hung up in nets over night. It was quite eerie but very exciting. The visibility there was very poor unfortunately so after a little while longer we got out to get dry.
On Monday morning we did our final dive, in Newton's Cove, Weymouth. This had been recommended to us by the local dive shop as a safe place to snorkel. Sadly the tide was out so the visibility was poor, but we overcame this by doing compass work. With the poor visibility it was almost ideal for compass work, as we could not cheat. We practiced reciprocal bearings, squares and triangles. The last one was the hardest and I think we might need a bit more practice.
Well, five dives and a whole weekend later we were all absolutely knackered, but happy that we had done so much. After we packed up and said our goodbyes, we loaded the cars and headed home for a long hot soak in the bath and a good sleep. Everyone had a good weekend.
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Junior Snorkelling Club
