Just got back from my diving weekend with luusac. Pretty exhausted now, I had two early mornings to fit all the dives in! We packed the van up Friday night with all the kit, and then I met up with Sabine to go pick up her friend Sara's sister from the bus station, who came from France as a surprise visit to sara. So when we went to Saras and presented her, Sara freaked out, she was so happy. It was very cute. So then we went out to dinner at Bella Italia and we all stuffed ourselves into oblivion. Our waiter was real nice and he overheard me say something about Ny so he told me he got married in ny (I told him Congrats but I really was thinking oh that's a pity, he's quite cute!) So we had a chit chat about that. we were the last ones to leave, we actually stayed until about an hour after they shut. I'm still a bit surprised my dessert didn't taste like spit. Then I had to be up real early Saturday morning so we could leave to go diving at a lake in the north York moors. my dive buddy was tom, and Nathan was our instructor with coral shadowing. So we did the skills for the last sports diver lesson, which was what I needed to qualify. we had to plan a dive together and then take turns leading it. Our planning skills were a bit crap lol but both of us were rusty when it came to calculating rule of 3rds! So when we got in the water we tried mask clears, I messed up again so we moved onto me leading. I led us to a ship (underwater, it was like the underwater theme park at capernwray). I saw a small crayfish like animal crawling on it. Then tom had some issues with his kit so while coral was helping him with that, Nathan practiced partial mask clears with me and I was fine. So then we did AS ascent, mine was a bit fast but passable. Then tom led, and then we finished. For the second dive, we split the group, so I was just with Nathan and we only practiced mask clears. I did fine with the partials, but once I had to fully remove the mask i panicked, so I did 3 rapid ascents to the surface (we were only like 3m deep) but Nathan said we shouldnt go back down again, so we were only in the water for 10 min. It definitely wasnt as cold as the times we went to capernwray! So we packed up the Vans with our kit and drove up to Scotland. We stayed at like a trailer park near st abbs. It was a bit odd, I never knew they got rented out to travelers! It was a pretty nice little shindig though, very warm and I had a queen sized bed all to myself!! it was a good night there, I got on better with this batch of luusacers than I did all year with last years group, so its a bit of a shame that I won't be in Leeds to hang out with them, especially when they are going to karaoke on thurs and Dave has elected all of us girls (all 4 of us) to be his back up singers and dancers! So this morning we got up early and drove to st abbs head, but the water was too rough to dive, so we went up the coast but still at st abbs nature reserve, to a cove called petty wilcock, or something along those lines. We drove to the top of the cliff, and then had to walk down to the water! Like seriously, I can carry a 12 liter cylinder on my back up an uneven hill but I can't unflood a mask?! And there weren't any filling stations so we each had 2 cylinders, to bring down and up, but jamie, one of the adorable freshies, carried my empty cylinder after my first dive, and I used jemmas one for my second dive since it had plenty of gas left. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. For the first dive, Nathan and I first practiced partial mask clears, I did them fine, didn't do an ascent. Then we swam around but his compass broke, so we got lost, but we were still in the cove area. We saw lots of crabs, small and medium sized fish, sea urchins, 2 sea anenomes and sea snails. There was lots of kelp and sea grass everywhere, something completely new to me since this was my first temperate coastal dive! The water wasn't too cold either. Then we went back to our mask clearing spot and I did pretty good, but not good enough to advance to doing it at 10m on the next dive. So we got out and soon got ready again for the 2nd dive. there was also no bathroom, so we designated a spot behind a stone wall at the top of the hill as our area. I peed there after dive #1, but left Nathans dive computer up there, and didn't realize until the buddy check phase for dive #2! So I had to dekit and run to get it. We eventually did get in the water, and started with mask clears (I nearly kneeled on top of 2 crabs!), but I kept screwing up so Nathan said let's just forget about it and go enjoy the dive. So this time around I saw the same as last time, and also 2 big fish and 2 sea stars. I had buoyancy issues and managed to float right to the surface so we ended the dive there, which was about 30 min in. So after that we had to bring everything back to the vans, and load up, then we drove the 4 hrs back to Leeds and listened to BBC radio 1 nearly the whole way until there was a public protest in the van to change the station. The music was so god damn awful it made me want to stick knives in my ears and cut out my ear drums. But then we changed it back and forth between some reggae station and Asian fever fm.when we arrived at the chapel, we unpacked the van of our personal kit to put it inside, while we then went to coopers to rinse the clubs gear. This took longer than expected cause no one knew the most sensible way of washing everything. But at some point later we left, picked our stuff up from the chapel, and I got dropped off by Sabines!! So in summary, overall it was a good weekend with fun people and new diving experiences, but I didn't finish my qualification. But they have an Easter trip to Malta so I will go on that and finish up. I don't think it'll be a problem, cause the water is warmer!! Ok time for bed, gotta catch a 4pm bus tomorrow!
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