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An early season scuba diving trip to Stoney Cove
As a suitable antidote to the club trip to Lanzarote at the end of February beginning of March, Steve Groves and myself thought a bracing scuba diving trip to Stoney Cove near Leicester would be in order, for some strange reason there were no other takers in the dive club, then we realised that we had chosen "Mothering Sunday" so assumed that all the other club members were being dutiful children and the icy water was not a factor.
I don't know, the youngsters today (Gratuitous old G*T comment)
We arrived at 7:10 after a misty journey up and virtually drove straight in with plenty of parking available, and cheery staff to welcome us in. With reported visibility of 4-6 meters and 5 degrees water temperature, Steve and I were happy that we could show the dive club flag amongst the training scuba schools in wetsuits, free divers in swimming costumes with their rubber ducks, and the weighed down tec divers. We were wanting to practice our dry suit skills, in particular with many layers of insulation, this proved to be a suitable challenge for the day.
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Using the wonderfully heated changing rooms we were ready to scuba dive before the schools had finished their briefing, however, a false start dealing with the effect of the low temperature on regulators, even low temp rated ones, meant that we had to fine tune our buoyancy skills in pretty murky water. Keeping a constant depth with no datum other than your buddy and a dive computer was an educational experience but one we had experienced before and we descended down to 18 m, our computers registered 4.7 C. Steve reckoned he saw the Viscount cockpit but I was a bit preoccupied as I found a combination of balancing squeeze with depth and the detrimental effect of the squeeze on my insulation added another variable by needing more air in the suit than on previous scuba dives, but then that was why we were there! Eventually, the Bacon Cobs beckoned, and we enthusiastically ended the dive.
Having achieved our objective, it was felt the second scuba dive would be a shallow one with some exploration for both of us, we chose to go round the quarry in a clockwise direction going no deeper than 8 m. Our first encounter was the Nautilus submarine where we had to wait at imaginary traffic lights to lets dozens of youngers in wetsuits pass by, the trip had to include a visit to the monster, I had to hold Steve's hand as he was terrified. Visibility did improve as we moved away from the student activity areas, the highlight of the scuba dive came for me as we reached the "Gresham" a genuine Elizabethan wreck. This wreck is being held at Stony Cove for preservation purposes and is fascinating for anyone who has visited the Mary Rose exhibition in Portsmouth Dockyard. This scuba dive lasted 36 minutes and I left the water with over 100Bar in my tank, a real achievement for me and combined with my 50th dive made for a memorable day for me.
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In conclusion, an enjoyable day for both Steve and I, the challenge being, in part, the weather and temperature but all the more satisfying because of that, we learnt and experienced new things not least the" third scuba dive" which was in "Nemo’s Bar" where the fire was burning, and good food and drink was experienced. Well, we needed somewhere to update our logbooks!
Simon
As a suitable antidote to the club trip to Lanzarote at the end of February beginning of March, Steve Groves and myself thought a bracing scuba diving trip to Stoney Cove near Leicester would be in order, for some strange reason there were no other takers in the dive club, then we realised that we had chosen "Mothering Sunday" so assumed that all the other club members were being dutiful children and the icy water was not a factor.
I don't know, the youngsters today (Gratuitous old G*T comment)
We arrived at 7:10 after a misty journey up and virtually drove straight in with plenty of parking available, and cheery staff to welcome us in. With reported visibility of 4-6 meters and 5 degrees water temperature, Steve and I were happy that we could show the dive club flag amongst the training scuba schools in wetsuits, free divers in swimming costumes with their rubber ducks, and the weighed down tec divers. We were wanting to practice our dry suit skills, in particular with many layers of insulation, this proved to be a suitable challenge for the day.
Using the wonderfully heated changing rooms we were ready to scuba dive before the schools had finished their briefing, however, a false start dealing with the effect of the low temperature on regulators, even low temp rated ones, meant that we had to fine tune our buoyancy skills in pretty murky water. Keeping a constant depth with no datum other than your buddy and a dive computer was an educational experience but one we had experienced before and we descended down to 18 m, our computers registered 4.7 C. Steve reckoned he saw the Viscount cockpit but I was a bit preoccupied as I found a combination of balancing squeeze with depth and the detrimental effect of the squeeze on my insulation added another variable by needing more air in the suit than on previous scuba dives, but then that was why we were there! Eventually, the Bacon Cobs beckoned, and we enthusiastically ended the dive.
Having achieved our objective, it was felt the second scuba dive would be a shallow one with some exploration for both of us, we chose to go round the quarry in a clockwise direction going no deeper than 8 m. Our first encounter was the Nautilus submarine where we had to wait at imaginary traffic lights to lets dozens of youngers in wetsuits pass by, the trip had to include a visit to the monster, I had to hold Steve's hand as he was terrified. Visibility did improve as we moved away from the student activity areas, the highlight of the scuba dive came for me as we reached the "Gresham" a genuine Elizabethan wreck. This wreck is being held at Stony Cove for preservation purposes and is fascinating for anyone who has visited the Mary Rose exhibition in Portsmouth Dockyard. This scuba dive lasted 36 minutes and I left the water with over 100Bar in my tank, a real achievement for me and combined with my 50th dive made for a memorable day for me.
In conclusion, an enjoyable day for both Steve and I, the challenge being, in part, the weather and temperature but all the more satisfying because of that, we learnt and experienced new things not least the" third scuba dive" which was in "Nemo’s Bar" where the fire was burning, and good food and drink was experienced. Well, we needed somewhere to update our logbooks!
Simon