Scuba Club
Monday 24 March 2014
Another DSD at Flamingo
After the dive we had time to chat a little about what happens after the DSD, generally, you have only one option, go on the open water course to keep diving ;)
We'll be arranging OWD courses for those who want to go further asap so please let me via email if you're interested in joining.
Our next DSD is going to be in the beginning of April 5.4. and then we're going to Kaatiala 11.-13.4. ( edited, was wrong about the date )
Have a great week everyone!
Saturday 15 March 2014
Discover Scuba Diving in Flamingo Spa
First time DSD Leader (me) picks up his customers from the reception and after a call for someone to open the doors we get inside. My three colleagues, Mika, Kenneth and Matz have agreed to be my guinea pigs for my first DSD lead :D
After the paperwork ( which I'll let participants handle in advance next time ) we go to the pool and put on our equipment, I go through how the regulator, BCD and mask work and we're off.
After getting used to the equipment for a bit and learning to control our buoyancy we go to the 4m pool below the jumping tower and practice equalizing ears.
Everything went smooth and we had fun, I hope you guys also enjoyed it as much as I did :)
Next week we have a fresh group of Baswareans to dive!
Monday 8 July 2013
Awesome weekend in Kaatiala
Joachim and Maria, the couple behind eaze-eaze, picked me up at 8 in the morning from our parking lot and we headed off. We met up with the others north of Tampere after around 2 hours of driving, approximately at the halfway to Kaatiala Quarry. Little bit of shopping for supplies and then we're off.
2 hours later we arrive at the Kuharanta hotel where we'll be staying and drop off some luggage and head right to the quarry :)
"Ottering" it.. |
Common roach |
The difference between the roach and the perch was quite substantial, where the perch is a carnivorous fish the roach are not and the posture of the hunter and the hunted was very clear. You can dive up to half a meter of a perch and it will just raise it's spiny fins at you, telling you not to come any nearer, or else... But if you try to swim close to a school of roach, they will never let you approach within 2 meters or so, you feel like one of the sharks on documentaries trying to catch mackerel in a large school, always surrounded by a clear water bubble.
Perch |
Did notice an interesting thing tho, Close Encounters isn't nearly as thrilling today as it was when I saw it as a kid :) I remember being freaked out about strange lights for months after seeing it.
"Airplane" |
There used to be a model airplane ( I think it's an old aerial target that was towed for AA practice ) that hung suspended in the water "flying" but it's now on the bottom. Since it took us quite a bit of time to get down we only had a short bottom time and didn't check out anything else that time. A big suprise was that the car ( yes, a whole car chassis ) had been moved and wasn't anywhere to be found :) Later we did some more dives around the shallow end and then headed back to the hotel for a nice meal, or so we thought, the hotel kitchen had closed at six so we headed off to Neste service station fast food again :)
Had a great evening, a couple of beers, lots of talking and laughing. It must have been 2am or so before we went to sleep, divers really should sleep more I guess. Woke up energized in the morning, hotel breakfasts are magic :)
On sunday we did our best dives of the weekend, first a couple dives in the shallow end and then we finished off with a humongously awesome deep end dive. Everyone was down to their last minutes of no decompression limits. We went down to the bell and headed off to the tourist cave, after a short tour inside we returned to the bell and realized everyone still had 100+ bars of air so we decided to make a short trip to the little entrance also, after a brief visit we returned to the bell and started our ascent.
Summer diving in Vessö
Shot some GoPro Hero3 footage during the dives and I've uploaded a short version for viewing.
Thursday 27 June 2013
Beginning my AI and OWSI courses
Monday 15 October 2012
Apo Reef now more easily reachable
Please remember to be a responsible diver, everywhere, and follow the golden rule:
Dive to observe, never to interfere.
Apo Reef links:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20121011-the-undiscovered-jewel-of-the-philippines ( Thanks Zac! )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apo_Reef
http://www.aporeefclub.com/
Sunday 16 September 2012
3 days of diving in Kaatiala open pit mine
Today we got started pretty early, cleaned the cabin and packed our gear in the cars. Yesterday yours truly was filling the air bottles and managed to overfill a couple. Heard jokes about this all day ;)
We dove to the diving bell at 25m and made a trip to the "tourist cave" on the first dive and to the airplane on the second. I took the opportunity to touch bottom on one dive and measured 29,7m on the bottom.
Everyone were happy with the dives, we'd had nice weather for a change so the cold didn't bother us and many of us racked up some of our first proper "deep" dives in Finnish waters.
Lunch was steamed hotdogs and then I decided to start heading south to civilization. The drive is 330km so better get started reasonably early if you want to have some time with the family in the evening :)