Dives Planned 3 and 4 October

Weather permitting, and lets hope that this holds out for a while, we will be running 2 dive trips on both days over the weekend. Saturday we are doing the Highland Brigade in the morning. Around 30m, it is a big wreck with loads to see. Cost for that one will be £30. The Saturday afternoon dive will be something shallower, the Camswan, at about 18m max. cost for that will be £25.

On the Sunday we will be doing the Prince Leopold in the morning at around 30m and Tanks and Dozers (or possibly the Eldridge/Crab rocks) at less than 18m in the afternoon. Both these dives cost £30. If you want to book give us a call in the dive centre.

Change of Name - Triton RIB becomes "Rebellion"

Even though Triton Scuba has been around now for 12 years, and even though we had a 5.5m RIB called Triton in 1998, we have decided to changed the name of the 7.5m CobraRIB. The main reason - well I have already met 2 other boats called Triton out on the Solent - one a lovely little hard boat operating out of Chichester, and the other being owned by a dive club on the IOW. So, to prevent confusion, we decided to have a name change. The problem was - to what? One idea was to call it "Wassaaaaap" but that was just to see whether QHM would go for it on radio checks and things - childish but really funny! Another idea was to call it "go for it" - for similar childish reasons so that when we asked to cross the Harbour QHM could say, "go for it, go for it". We thought about having a competition, but thought that would take ages. Eventually we settled on "Rebellion" - not sure why, but we think it kind of fits with "Renegade". Name changes always have to be done with champagne (excellent) and we will be doing that in due course - no not smashing the bottle, drinking it. Rebellion is next in line for refit and during the winter period will be fitted with a cylinder rack and ladder.

Both Boats busy in Portland over the weekend

We picked up Renegade from refit in the Hamble and basically came down the river and turned right. About 1 hour 45 minutes later we were in Portland - straight out of refit and straight into use. There were loads of things going on over the weekend and around 25 club members and students going diving so we needed 2 boats and even had to hire in a skipper to drive one of them. Many congratulations to everyone who finished courses with us, (be it the Deep Course, Open Water, SMB or PPB) at the weekend and for all the guys who were experience diving we hope you enjoyed the weekend as much as we did and look forward to seeing you next time.

So, Renegade is now up and running and is the fastest and biggest rib operating in the Solent for dive charters. She has two bottle racks a ladder so you can get out easily and even some seats so not everyone has to sit on the tubes. She has space for around 20 cylinders with ease and with a full compliment of divers and equipment cruises comfortably at 30 knots. With dive prices starting at £20 it is a pretty cost effective way of going diving as well.

She will hopefully be out this weekend with 4 wreck dives planned for the Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting. If you want to come and try her out give us a call.

Renegade refit complete

I am pleased to say that Renegade has had its refit and is now able to take divers and/or charter customers. The refit includes 2 x 8 tank bottle racks and a foldaway ladder. While we were at it we also had new injectors fitted, a new depth sounder to go with the whole range of Raymarine electronics that have been put on board it, and various other things donw. There are still a few weeks left this season so why not come and give her a try. This weekend she is driving straight from refit in the Hamble down to Portland where we will have both ribs running over the two day. There are still a couple of spaces on Renegade on Saturday and Sunday so if you want to come for a dive give us a call.

We will have some photos and more details about the refit in next months newsletter.

A busy weekend of diving and training

First of all a few congratulations - well done to the new Open Water tudents who passed this weekend just gone, and also to the MSDT speciality instructor candidates who finished clocking up 6 specialities each. Well done guys. On the boat side of life we managed to get out for 4 dives - nothing exciting as it was a bit blowy, but we still had some great dives and even managed to squeeze the Ginger Dugong on the boat. Coming up next weekend - we are going to be looking at a wreck that we have not dived before - clocked it on Sunday on the old sounder so fancy having a look. It is nice and shallow (around 14m) so a good experience dive for the newly qualified divers as well. Plus next weekend we have a few other sites, so let us know if you want to come out for some fun.

Yet another fantastic event - Tooni and Lucy

There is no doubt that as a club we do have some pretty good functions so I suppose no surprise when we have another one. Our latest was the Tooni and Lucy event and it was yet another great success. With just over 100 guests it was a full house in the Royal Beach hotel last Friday. As well as members from most of the clubs in Portsmouth we also managed to attract divers and non-divers from much further away. In fact we had visitors from Cambridge, Romsey, Maidstone, Northampton and Reading. It was great to see them all and we know they all had fun. One of our visitors wrote to us this morning to say thanks and we thought we would share the comments:

Hi Guys,
I wanted to send you an email to thank you for putting on such a brilliant evening on Friday.
You have a lovely group of people at your club, many of whom came and chatted with us and all made us feel very welcome! I had such a huge grin on my face throughout the talks from both Tooni and Dr. Lucy, which I didn't notice until the end of the evening when I realised why my cheeks were aching so much -- and I do mean the ones on my face !!! :@)

Thanks again for putting on such a wonderful evening and for opening up to non-members of your club. We will definitely think of your dive centre when organising our club trips for next year.

Kind Regards
Hannah Theakston

We have to agree, we do have lovely people in the club, we do make people feel welcome and it was a wonderful evening. And not only that, but as a bonus, the event raised £250 for charity. Talk about being the best club in the area.

As a reminder the next club meeting will be in the Royal Beach Coast Bar on 1 October at 7.00pm and don't forget to put Halloween night in your diaries for the next party. We look forward to seeing you.

Muck Muck Glorious Muck - Borneo 2009

I thought it was about time that we posted a report on the Borneo holiday to date. We've just been having so much fun that there's not been time (or read: exhausted from doing so many dives!). Anyway the holiday started with a day in KL. It was hot and sticky and having arrived early it was a great opportunity to explore. We split up into various groups with some taking the slightly less adventurous option of sleeping for much of the day, while the rest at least managed to see the Petronus Towers (very big) and have a wander around. Some of us decided to get ourselves in the mood for things to come by visiting the aquarium. I think that Becci and I managed about a 12 mile hike which included the KL Tower, watching monkeys in the surrounding jungle, snakes in the wildlife zoo, China Town, Little India, copious numbers of Mosques and various other impressive looking buildings.

We eventually all arrived in Mabul safely and the first few nights were a little stormy to say the least. however, since then the weather has been good during the day and is getting sunnier and sunnier judging by the sunburn today. We have all done one day on Sipidan so far and have seen loads of turtles, "white tips, black tips, Galapagos reef sharks" (oops sorry wrong holiday). There is plenty of life here and some amazing scenes of Baracuda shoaling and balling. The diving around Mabul is really different to what we are normally used to, with loads of little critters and strange beasties. I think we have all adopted the head down a hole, eyes less than a foot off the coral approach to diving and everyone with a camera is totally engrossed.

Our resident non diver had her first experience of sharks yesterday while snorkelling....all be it a short experience due to the speed at which she exited the water and got back in the boat all in one motion.

We're all having a fabulous time but will be back in 6 days time ready for the Oceans talk at the Royal Beach and an update on the rest of the holiday. See you all soon.

August Newsletter

Sorry it's late. I have been a bit busy (or should I say very busy) and was in Plymouth this week. Anyway, it has been published on the website and you can download your copy by clicking here.

Course Success 30 August

Many congratulations to everyone who passed courses with us last weekend. It was great to combine a club outing with some training and a good oportunity to socialise as well.