Dan's Adventure

I think its fair to say that scuba diving really has taken over this year. Every holiday I’ve been on has been focussed on diving and almost every weekend during the summer was spent diving somewhere on the South coast of England. Its been a very varied year. From the first dive of the year in January whilst on a liveaboard in Egypt to the last – a cold December day diving in Plymouth.

The turning point was joining two London based dive clubs, Big Squid and Clidive, both of which I have dived with numerous times since. Diving with both has meant a nice mixture of dive locations, types of diving and lots of dive buddies. With Big Squid the diving tends to be from hard boats whilst Clidive favour diving from the club rhibs. I’ve also been on quite a few independent trips to the coast.

Further afield, I’ve been diving in the Red Sea twice this year, the first was on Whirlwind in early January for a tour around the northern wrecks and reefs including the Thistlegorm and Shark and Yolanda reefs, and the second was at the end of October with Clidive on a very similar itinerary on a smaller boat called Juliet. I’ve also been diving from an oil rig in Malaysia where I dived at Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai, and I dived in Gran Canaria when I went out to visit my sister in March.

I have also been doing a fair bit of training this year. In January I completed the PADI deep speciality whilst on Whirlwind and in March I did the dry suit and nitrox PADI courses with Big Squid in the muddy puddle that is Wraysbury – that was my very first introduction to UK diving. Since then I have become a BSAC Sports Diver through training with Clidive and I am currently doing the Dive Leader course which I hope to complete early next year. In addition to that I’ve taken courses to drive the club rhibs, and to help out as an assistant instructor.

Next year is shaping up to be a great year of diving too. So far I have two trips to Egypt booked and will be booking a trip to North Sulawesi in Indonesia very soon. Thats on top of a whole season of UK diving with Clidive and Big Squid that I have to look forward to!