2nd Wreck Dive

Off to Ringhaddy today to dive the M.Y. Alastor it's an intact wreck and quite small so did a few swim throughs of the gang ways and poked my head in a few holes. The wreck lies upright at ~23m (75').

Vis was poor but apparently it's rarely great here. Good dive if a bit murky, there is something otherworldly when you are swimming forward then this large black shape appears at the edge of your vision.

1st Wreck Dive

My third dive since I started with training with NDSAC and we are doing a wreck :) or what's left of one.

The S.S. Annagher was sunk in 1937 and is at a depth ~12-15m (39'-49') in Belfast Lough, it was dispersed by explosives after salvage attempts failed. In short it's mostly just a collection of scattered plating. 

Water temp was a toasty 12 Celsius with a surface temp of approx 19 Celsius, vis was about 2-3m.

Did a second dive today as well up off the Copelands, saw some lobster pots & scallops.

I was a nice relaxing dive..

1st Dry Suit Dive.

Went to Bramton, Bangor, Northern Ireland for a quick check out dive in the dry suit. It went well I was a tad nervous as I'd heard that the dry suits could get air bubbles in the feet forcing you upside down. Luckily that didn't happen to me and I was told that for the 1st time in a dry suit I'd done better than most.

I was a bit weird having to be aware of air in the suit as well as the BCD.

I did have a few issues:
1) As it was a loner suit it didnt fit quite right, the boots were too large and this caused my fins to slip off.
2) New mask kept fogging up. (Solved for future dives by using some toothpaste on the inside to clean it)
3) Buoyancy control was a tad difficult.

All in all it was a ood dive even though the vis wasnt great.

BSAC Ocean Diver

Started my Ocean Diver course.

Did my pool lessons quickly as the guys were happy to give me some credit for doing my PSAI and once they were happy with my performance we proceeded with doing the bits they required that PSAI didn't.

Next up Sheltered Water dive on Saturday looking forward to it as it's going to be my 1st time in a dry suit so should be interesting.

Joining BSAC

I went down last night and as it happened they had an open night on so I was able to talk to a few of them.

They all seemed like a nice bunch and the main cost seemed to be the Yacht club part of the membership (it's rather steep).
I think I will be joining them bar the cost of the Yacht club the only other downside is there is no direct transition from PSAI to BSAC Ocean Diver, So I'm going to have to re-qualify, more annoying than anything else but on the flip side it's more practice and they do have a few extra elements of training that PSAI dosen't.

Back to Northern Ireland

Well back out of the sun and clear skies.

The diving in Malta was awesome, saw lots of fish and even an octopus. Octopus are just wierd, the way they move and change color, first time I've ever seen one up close and in the wild, (I've seen a few up close before but that was on my dinner plate :).

Now I want to keep up the diving but not really sure where to go the only place doing PSAI is in cookstown and I'm not driving all the way there when I want to go.. I suppose I could do PADI but it's expensive and there are so many courses I'm not sure if I could ever complete half of them.

There is a BSAC club in Ballyholme so I might give it a whirl, seems more like it would be up my alley. It's close and the costs are fixed per year I'll go down and see what the craic is.

PSAI Open Water Certified

W00t. I got certified I can now dive to 18m after 7 dive lessons, I think I managed to a get a few extra free lessons as the resort wasn't busy.
A few Pics :) thanks to the Dive instructor as my GoPro failed me. It's going back once I'm back in the UK.