Long Ke Wan

Present

Paul Blackburn DM
Les Dobson ADM
Simon Hales
Eileen Maxwell
Martin Haskins
Paul Bayne (Guest)
Adrian (Les’ friend)
Resusi Annie

Location            Long Kei Wan

 The day got off to a slightly late departure at the compressor room as a result of a no show. This also put the burden of loading and unloading the van on just two people- still divers need to stay fit. Some time was recovered on the way resulting in a reasonably prompt departure at 0935.

 As usual Blackburn brought everything he could find in the compressor room including what turned out to be 4 cylinders each, just in case O rings had gone or we decided to make it a six dive day. And just to make up the numbers we brought along Resusi Annie. As it turned out it proved to be a good idea as we were supposed to be on ‘Yip 2’ but in fact ‘True Light’ turned up instead. This was your typical brown wood junk with a covered and contained dry area but was not carrying any of our permanent ‘Yip 2’ equipment like DM’s box and charts. Moreover it meant that Trevor wasted a trip all the way to Sai Kung early on a Sunday Morning to deliver the new First Aid Box and Oxygen Kit to ‘Yip 2’ which would now have to be returned to the compressor room. This is the second time recently that boats have been switched without notice. Is Mr Yip trying to tell us something? The matter is now with the Committee.

 So with our back-up kit loaded we set sail on what was very calm water on a cloudy but dry day, in fact a good day for diving with south-westerlies force 3 expected ( but not arriving) and a temp of 30 degrees.

Our two guests are both PADI Open Water divers and Paul is looking to cross over (nothing to do with cross dressing) and join the club soon. He has just arrived in Hong Kong to begin work as a Physics teacher at West Island School. So about 15 weeks holiday a year should allow lots of time for diving  .He has volunteered to run special courses on Boyles Charles and Daltons laws for us thickies who forgot all that stuff a long time ago. .Anyway welcome to Paul, we need more Paul’s in the club.

 Diving commenced at 11.00 and was concluded by 1545 giving everyone 2 dives each. We were expecting awful viz based on experience the previous Sunday and the recent heavy rains. However we were pleasantly surprised to find about 2m on average, which made the training dives a lot easier. Most of the fun diving was in depths around 8 to 15 meters. There were the usual large clown fish guarding their anemones, small shoals of what we thought were damsel fish, the occasional stripped butterfly fish and nudibranchs- for some of us the first ever sightings in Hong Kong waters, Wow!!, it has taken a long time. We saw quite a lot of small scorpion fish.

Eileen and Martin were continuing their Sports Diver training with a pretty intensive day of activity. While the first waves of divers were down, AV techniques were practised by the boat without full kit. Eileen really enjoyed this part of her training but it took a while for to realise that the idea is to blow and not suck and that the nose is the preferred orifice!

Nevertheless we plodded on and prepared to take the newly acquired skills on a stage with full kit etc.

The actual training dives involved a lot of revision of Club Diver skills, which, having been only recently acquired, were performed well including mask clearing. Then there was some Assisted Air Sharing with octopus and single shared demand valve whist swimming around and then surfacing. As a result of all the required surfacing, albeit from shallow water, we must have had a classic saw-tooth profile, still we all survived without any DCI.  Later came (un)controlled buoyant lifts and then rescues with AV, towing and some great fun landing casualties onto a beach. At this point Eileen realised that she had picked the wrong man for a partner, twice her height and weight- it made the beach landing interesting, I haven’t laughed quite so much in a long time. Martin made an excellent casualty (had lots of practice?), a complete dead weight rolling around in the surf. Fortunately rescue was at hand for the rescuer, as the instructor became a helpful passer-by to help drag Martin up the beach using the classic windpipe grip. This seemed to bring Martin back to life pretty quickly. Then the entire exercise was repeated with Eileen as the casualty and eventually we were able to pronounce the lesson over, find our kit (which was almost lost in the surf) and return to the junk about 100 meters away whilst practicing some underwater navigation, if you can call it that. For anyone still reading this exciting story I am sure they can recall when they endured all this fun getting someone onto a beach, the experiences are usually very similar.

Back on board we set sail for base, with bad weather imminent. Martin was keen to meet Annie so we removed her from her sarcophagus doused her in some Dettol and let Martin have a fiddle.  ”No Martin that is not how you do chest compressions on a lady”. Once again our trainees practiced hard and developed a sound technique and Annie just about survived. Eileen refused to let Martin take Annie home for ‘extra practice’ and suggested he use the one he already has!!

Back at the pier, we arrived slightly ahead of schedule with our van waiting. We were back at the compressor room for 1900 were Paul gave Paul a lesson in the use of the compressor.  Paul then left leaving Paul to continue filling cylinders until 2100 by which time every cylinder in the stock was full.  Yes we’ve all done it!

Another successful day’s diving with reasonable weather, new friends some training done and a few laughs. What more could we ask for?

(well maybe better viz, a few more fish, some coral…….oh shut up and go to sleep…………sweet dreams Annie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Paul Blackburn DM and Training Officer