New Inland Dive Site

We have found a new diver training site in the Portsmouth area – and it’s right on our doorstep! For years we have been going past Canoe Lake without realising that it was actually 7m deep (ish). We always thought that it was just an ornamental pond, but how wrong we were. The lake has a huge amount of wildlife living on and around it, not least some ducks and swans who congregate together in the evening for feeding (see picture above). Ian and Zara went for a recce of the site (see other picture below) and they reckon we can use it for a whole range of training programmes in the future including Deep (Ian took his shovel and thinks he could have a hole down to 18m by this time next year), the Wreck speciality (we know several model boats have been sunk over the years) and Fish ID (it has some crabs at the moment but we hope to throw in a few haddock and cod - without the wrapping).

This is a fantastic addition to the local inland dive sites available and one that some divers might enjoy. If you want to dive it please let us know.

Oh Oh - been neglecting the BLOG

Oops - I have been neglecting the blog. Must be something to do with the loads of things that are going on. Right, so where are we ..... nearly at the end of October. Right this month there has been the normal number of courses going on including open water rescue and nitrox as well as a few specialities. And we have taught a Gas Blending course (which we have not done for a while). On the instructor training side of life I ran another IDC (3rd this year amazingly) and had 3 successful candidates.

In the middle of the month we were invited to the launch of the BBC "LIFE" series in Bristol which was great fun (see the photo with some of the team from the Bahamas). Some of the people I had not seen since we started filming years ago (and some even before the filming started!) and it was great to meet up again. The "beeb" took over a nice restaurant/bar in Bristol and after we had had a few drinks we sat and watched the first programme! Kind of a conversation stopper and everyone was trying to find out who had done what! It was not a programme we had been involved in so didn't expect to be in it.

Elsewhere ... we went to the dive show for the first time in a number of years. It was good to meet up with some old friends as well as promote the new boats for next season. Loads of interest I have to say.

Other really interesting stuff ... well Zara bought a drysuit, we became an Advanced Powerboat Training Centre and can also offer instructor courses in powerboating, oh and we published the holidays for next years and virtually filled the trip to Scapa in 4 days. As well as Scapa Flow we have trips in 2010 to Egypt, and the Philippines.

September Newsletter

September's Newsletter is now available online. Click here to download a copy.

1 October Club Night

It was a busy club night yesterday. Over 70 club members and guest turned up for a plate of curry and a social. So busy in fact that we ran out of chairs! It was lovely to see a few new members, welcome to Debbie's fab 4, and as well as some members who we have not seen for ages - good to see you George and Penny. The usual rafle raised another £68 for our charity and many congratulations to DJ who won a prize - told you that I would give you a mention.

Amazingly the next "normal" club night is actually in February 2010 as we have the Halloween Party at the end of this month (so no November club night) and the Christmas Ball at the beginning of December and Phil Short (adventurer and cave diver) coming along to the club night on 7 January. Now that is a busy club!

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.

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.