Wraysbury Weekend!

The weather was very kind to us on Saturday at Wraysbury, where Tina and Graham enjoyed the delights of drysuit diving for the first time and Terry was leading a PADI Open Water Diver course. Ann was also enjoying her first outing as a trainee Divemaster, we were both assisting Barry as he taught the drysuit course. Terry had an army of able helpers including Adrian, Tina, Jan, and Matt.

While the sun was unseasonably warm for October, the visibility was as murky as ever! Still, that’s what we like about UK diving – a challenge …

For our first dive, Barry took us down to one of the platforms to complete the required skills – fin pivots and hover – before finishing with a little tour of the bus – great for buoyancy practice in the shallower water! For the second dive, we swam around some of the small wrecks towards the back of the lake, including a rather rusty old taxi. Our new drysuit divers stuck together like glue through the cloudy water, and we emerged all together close to the exit thanks to Barry’s amazing navigation – days like this make me long for underwater satellite navigation!!!

Dry and dressed again, we sat down for a well earned pile of chilli nachos – YUM! Tina and Graham had recently returned from diving in the Maldives (where I will be going with a group of fellow Divecrew Divers in less than a month!) and they had all sorts of good advice – from how to repel the mosquitos to water temperature and good dive sites. Barry filled in the cert cards while I got more and more excited about my diving holiday, and then finally it was time to say Congratulations to our two newly certified drysuit divers

Meanwhile, Terry and his team were putting the Open Water divers through their paces, completing Open Water dives 1 & 2. Trainee Divemasters Matt and Jan were working hard to make sure the course went smoothly so that they could get a good assessment, leaving Adrian time to pose for the camera …

Terry’s Happy Helpers, working and playing hard

And finally … the Open Water Divers returned to Wraysbury on Sunday to not only complete their Open Water course – but also a third dive to gain their drysuit qualifications! So we would all like to wish a big Congratulations to Felicity, Veronica, Peter, Ian and Alistair.