Due to instructors not being available Phil had arranged for my AOW course to be done with Cardiff Bay Diving. I spoke to Sarah and arranged to meet her and the others at Dosthill Quarry at 9:30 on the Saturday morning.

There was a slight delay in getting started due to the mini bus from Glamorgan University taking the wrong turn on the M42.

Once everyone arrived the 6 of us were split into 2 groups for the weekend, Group 1 was Duncan, Hillary and Richard, while Group 2 was Steve, me and Laura (renamed Stevette for the weekend, to avoid confusion….???)

First dive of the day was the Dry Suit dive. We had a surface swim to the South side of the quarry where we descended onto the platform to set buoyancy and do some recovery from a “legs up” situation. We then had a tour along the West wall where I had problems dumping air from my autodump. Mac gave some advice and the dive continued.

The second dive of the day was the navigation dive. We again had a surface swim to the South side of the quarry and then descended to the patio outside the house. We all successfully completed the “out and back” and the “square” navigations. From there we had a tour along the East wall. The viz is not as good on this side of the quarry though. We followed the instructor for this tour albeit we were at 14 to 16 metres. (He wanted us to be at 10 to 12 metres)

The third and final dive of the day was the boat dive. The RIB took us to the South of the quarry where we exited and descended to the patio again. This was followed by a tour along the West wall and surfaced beyond the RIB to dekit and re enter the RIB.

That night everyone had a few? drinks to celebrate completion of the first day.

By the look of one or two people the next morning some obviously had more than a few drinks.

So back to Dosthill for the 4th dive of the course, the Deep dive. Steve and I followed the others down to 22 metres at the North end of the quarry. We then moved off following Mac. We were about 3 minutes into the dive when my regs decided to free flow. No problem!! Having had a free flow at Stoney about 5 weeks ago I was fully prepared and changed to my Pony. Took about 5 or 6 breaths and then the Pont free flowed also. Fortunately Mac saw what had happened and gave me his Octopus and we came to the surface sharing his air. After a couple of minutes there he opened my valve again and it appeared to be OK so we descended again to complete the dive. I would say that the second part of the dive was probably the least enjoyable dive that I have done to date. It was a case of “just waiting for it to happen again”. Fortunately there were no further problems during the dive.

Time for the last dive which was the naturalist dive. We had to plan this dive ourselves, and given my problems on the previous dive I was content to stay quite shallow. So we had a surface swim to the South side of the quarry and then descended to the house. We then followed Mac as we toured the van and then towards the West wall. In this area we saw 2 large pike, one being approx 3 feet in length. Also saw some perch, roach and koi. As we got under the platform at the North end of the quarry we saw a shoal of very small roach above us.

So that was the end of the weekend, apart from a visit to the local pub, well we had to get our cards signed by Mac and Sarah!!

Must get those regs checked out again!!!