The UKRS 'IceBreakers' Event

Stoney Cove 6th Jan. 2001

I picked up my drysuit with some hesitation on the Friday as the previous 'gerbil-induced' damage had been fixed before...... well, some of it had !!! I didn't particularly want to dive in a semi-dry as I froze quite spectacularly on the last outing here just before Christmas !

Like many of us, I had woken up at some stupid hour and met up with Steve Jones at Strensham services. Even though we had never met before, we were the only two people there, so it wasn't that difficult. Steve followed me to Stoney via many windy roads and villages. After two stops to consult the map..... we made it. Our problem now was to find Simon and his bright yellow undersuit !! As Steve and I had never met the UKRS crowd before, we patrolled the car-park. Eventually, Steve got through to Andy Cox on his mobile.........

Here follows the few pictures that were taken, along with a bit of narrative. There were a couple of other cameras around. For more detail and possibly more pictures, follow this link to the UKRS WEBSITE

Simon nominates Digs as his cameraman for the day

Digs and Gordon

Gordon took the back off his Inspiration and gave us an interesting demo of how the thing worked along with a rather dubious account of the 'green sludge' that he regularly cleans out from the 'bagpipes' unit around the back !

Danny Burchett and Andy Cox

Keith Lawrence with his O2 analyser

Enough of the camera-work for Digs, she went to sleep for about five hours !!

Steve Jones (The iron man!) and Andy

Keith, Nigel Hewitt and Steve sporting his Semi-Dry and NOT shivering !!

Would you ask this man for Argon ?

Danny is a PADI DM and gave us a couple of stories about errant instructors. For example, the time that an instructor made his DM trainees do their time-trials in water at 8C with only bathing suits and the time where a terrified OW trainee was almost forced into doing an open water entry from a 5m platform. Danny, quite rightfully, intervened and stopped the nonsense. Would you mess with this man ??

Anyway, onto a bit of news about the diving............. Steve and I paired up for the day and the first job was to test the drysuit. After the last time, I was very nervous about getting another flood so I gingerly lowered in from the slipway and vented all the air from the suit...... NO LEAKS !! .....FANTASTIC !!

Dive One was a surface swim to the Stanegarth and a descent down the line. The visibility was not as good as before Christmas but around 7m or so. There were a few other divers shooting video and taking pictures of each other. We u/w swam back via the Commer Van and up the shelf to the pub-foundations.

I could not believe that Steve was not shivering when we got out wheras I froze, particularly my hands, when we reached 7m. Getting the coffees in was a laugh !!

Dive Two was planned and executed like a dream. We jumped in from the bus-stop and followed the old quarry road down to the BOP. After wondering what this structure was, we set bearing for the bus and found it about two minutes later. Being naughty, we went inside..... The next bearing was to the Wessex and I couldn't believe, after my last outing here, that the navigation was spot on. An excellent dive..... time to amuse Steve again with the coffee-cups ! An added bonus was that Digs handed round the chocolate-buttons !!

Dive Three was a rush against the 15:00 'Out of the Water' deadline. In order to keep a bit warmer, I put on a wool-jumper which made my neck-seal a little dodgy. After some help from Nigel here, we jumped in the water. The seal held....... but only when I kept my head back !! I followed Steve as I couldn't keep my eye on a compass and stay dry. I turned to find him at one point and got a decent portion of Stoney-water down my back. Quarter of an hour into the dive, regrettably, I had to abort..... we surfaced...... and we were on the far side of the quarry !! Ho Hum !!.... another surface swim that seemed to take hours !!

After a quick de-kit and a pass-around of the brandy, the welcoming arms of the pub beckoned......  There are a few missing here as they had to disappear..........