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.

September Dive Boat Schedule

The September dive boat schedule is available online. Plenty of dives going on with 2 dives a day every weekend, so why not make the most of it. Click here to go to the dive schedule.

Special Event - An evening with some of the team from the BBC series "Oceans - 11 September 2009

We have brought you some great guests in the past including TV personality Monty Halls and underwater film cameraman, Mike Pitts. Well next month on a similar TV them were bringing you some of the personalities from the BBC series "Oceans".

Tooni Mahto and Lucy Blue (shown in the photo above taken from the BBC website) were two of the presenters on the recent BBC "Oceans" series. The programme took a year to film and went around the globe to explore the underwater world. Tooni was the marine biologist for the programme while Lucy, a lecturer from Southampton university, was the marine archaeologist. Both of them have kindly offered to give a one-off presentation on the making of the series, as Tooni put it to me "a bit of a behind the scenes look at the programme".

The event is taking place on 11 September at the Royal Beach Hotel in Southsea at 7.00 pm. The cost will be just £15 (£10 to club members) and this includes a meal. All proceeds are going to go to charity. After the event there will be the opportunity to have a bit of a social with other dive clubs in the area, as well as meet the presenters. You can find out more about the presenters and the series by going to the website on http://www.bbc.co.uk/oceans

For anyone with a vague interest in diving, marine biology, marine archaeology or the marine environment in general, this is a unique opportunity, and I am sure that it will be great fun as well. If you would like to go, the tickets are available from Triton Scuba. Telephone 02392 838773. Payment by cash or cheque only please. Closing date to buy tickets is 7th September and we expect this to be a popular event so get your tickets early.

Triton Supports Southsea Fire Station

Once again we had our pool out, this time we "teamed up" with the Southsea Fire Station to support their open day. We put the pool up during the week and even at 27,000 litres it didn't take the guys long to fill. It was then left for a couple of days with the heater on so it was a lovely and warm 28 degrees. Even though the pool was undercover we were still hoping for some good weather and we were fortunate on that one. There were some big crowds out and the pool was a great attraction. In total we did 38 try dives in the 6 hours the show was open and charging £3 a go, we raised a fantastic amount of £114 for the fire station charity fund. We think that was pretty good.

Summer Ball Raffle

Forgot to mention in the last post that we had a very successful raffle on the night of the ball and raised £535. Top prize of the top of the range Fourth Element undersuit was won by Julie Western (in picture) - actually it was won by Paul Western but apparently Julie is having it! Second prize was an Oceanic 3-piece wetsuit, there was also a range of Estee Lauder products (well done to Luke for winning that one!), champagne and meals in local restaurants. Many thanks to everyone who donated pries and to the guests for supporting the raffle so generously.

An Absolute Corker

The summer ball at the weekend was an absolute corker - probably one of the best we have had. I have to say the Queens Hotel did us proud with the food - excellent all round, and the rain stayed away which meant that the other "entertainment" could also go on and it allowed people to use the garden. We have put on some "surprise" activities as well as the usual disco - a bucking bronco and some chubby chicks suits - a bit like sumo suits but different. After the initial "you won't get me on there" comments it soon changed and was even difficult to get people off! Everyone entered nto the spirit of things. There was some collateral damage - Big Gary ripped his trousers and Woody made a mess of his dress shirt, but it was still a cracking night. Next big function is 11 September so don't forget to grab your tickets.

August Boat Schedule

The August boat schedule is out and it includes some dives around the Solent as well as in Portland during the club weekend. Loads going on and all at discounted prices for club members. Click here to view the schedule.

Cowes Fireworks

We had 2 full boats for this year's Cowes Fireworks display. We all met up in Old Portsmouth and then had a high speed trip over to Cowes, where we watched the Sea Vixen display. The bubbly came out and then it was a chug up the river to the Folly Inn, where we had tables booked for dinner after which we had the treat of a Red Arrows display. Finally we chugged back down river to find a lovely spot close to the spectacular fireworks before heading back to Portsmouth. Everyone agreed it was a fantastic trip out - well worth doing and something we will book in for next years programme as well.

July Newsletter

The July Newsletter is written and available online. It is a bit shorter than normal but that is due to the fact that I am going away on holiday tomorrow and ran out of time, rather than not having loads to tell you! Still some good stuff in it including plans for the next Club weekend and a report from the Malives. Click here to go there.

New Open Water Students

We went to Vobster for a change to complete the OW course this weekend and many congratulations to all the successful students. A special word must go out to Dumb and Dumber, the Young brothers. Gary Young (not our new instructor but the Shamu variety of "Young") who did so well on the navigation he is now known as "Garmin", and Lee cried like a baby during the mask removal. And also ..... come on Zara tell all .... we don't recommend that you put your underpants on your head during the surface practice for navigation. Luke, the human javelin, had a face fungus issue leading to a leaking mask so had some interesting facial hair designs going on. But, a great course, great fun, lots of good natured banter and we look forward to more hilarity at the next club meeting!

Try Dives for Youngsters

We have been doing a fair bit of work with some of the youngsters in the area - the last session was at the Pyramids. We had great fun and so did the youngsters as you can see.

Club Weekend in Portland

It was blowing a bit of a gale up in Portsmouth, but we were lucky in Portland for the club weekend. The RIB did 8 trips in total over the weekend with students and club members making the most of it. With around 30 people in total making the trip we filled the bunk house so it was a good job that some made their own arrangements for accommodation.

There were some course successes at the weekend as well with Advanced and Open Water being finished. Well done to all of you - not quite sure what the photo was all about, but I'm sure I will find out in due course.

Hearty Congratulations!

Yes hearty congratulations (a nautical sort of word that should be said with gusto methinks) to our newly qualified Deep Divers. Well done to Mark, Blain and Dave and glad you enjoyed the programme.

June Newsletter

The June Newsletter is available on line by clicking here. There is loads of stuff and features inside including, our new 9m RIB, bringing fast, convenient diving to the Solent area , details about the summer ball, a change in our powerboat business (lots of opportunities), reports from Daf and Bev as they travel around the World, and lots more.

Navigation? What's that all about?

Many congratulations to our Deep Diver speciality students who passed the course last weekend. Barnes Wallis was running the course assisted by Stu and it was good to have Eric along from Gloucestershire. The navigation objectives of the course were .... well challenging to some of the students, but extremely beneficial and great fun. See if you can work out who found it a bit of a challenge from the photo !!!!!!

A Good Club Night - Next club night in September

With quite a lot of club members away on holiday the numbers were down at bit at the July Club night last Thursday. However, still a healthy 40 or so were there for a lovely evening and BBQ. Just to remind you, the next "normal" club meeting will be on 3 September as the Summer Ball is in August. Tickets for that event are selling fast so let us know if you want to come. More details on the next newsletter which will be out in a couple of days.

Course Success

Just a quick "well done" to our successful Rescue Diver course candidates last weekend. We know you all loved the training. Hope to see you soon on the DM programme.