Sharm, snow, soup and instructors

Thanks to the powers of clairvoyancy granted to me by my long immersions in water I was able to predict the snowy weather at the beginning of the month and decided to head over to Sharm to check out the diving. Despite having been a diver for about 9 years I’ve never actually been to Sharm which is a bit like being into cheeseburgers and never going to Mcdonalds. I am regularly asked by customers where and what they should do in Sharm and I’ve always smiled and mumbled something about Naama Bay before asking them if they’ve ever considered Wraysbury so it’s nice to have finally had some experience of iconic dive sites like Ras Mohammed and Tiran Island.
 
I had a very enjoyable week working the buffet restaurant 3 -4 times a day and the diving wasn’t bad too either. Shark and Yolanda was an excellent reef dive with walls, coral gardens and a few baths and toilets thrown in for good measure. The wreck of the Dunraven is impressive with plenty of entertaining swim-throughs and we were treated to a flyby from a large eagle ray upon exiting.
 
Sharm in February isn’t cold and the water is around 22-24 but I still decided to take my drysuit and luxuriate in it’s warmth over the few days. I had several funny looks on day one which gradually dissolved into ugly scenes of naked jealousy (OK, I made that up), but it was very relaxed and enjoyable and made the shock of the 4 degrees of water that we faced at Wraysbury last weekend even more breathtaking… For anyone who’s interested we still have space on the September Red Sea liveaboard to dive some of these sites (not Wraysbury) as well as all the other cool ones like the Thistlegorm. Check out the trips section for more details.
 
Just before Sharm we enjoyed the traditional ‘icebreaker weekend’ this time at Vobster Quay. The weekend was great fun and we had an excellent turn out of divers. Congratulations go to Amelia and Maria who completed their drysuit courses, Andris who completed his Peak Performance Bouyancy course and my sister Alison, who is now Open Water qualified, well done sis! The viz was excellent and the water wasn’t too cold. We’ll be back to Vobster at the end of this month so it’ll be interesting to see what difference the snow’s made. One of the great features of all the inland dive sites recently has been superb viz, that and Arthur’s homemade soup down at Wraysbury.
 
We’re also currently half way through the instructor course and the Assistant Instructor part of the course ended on Monday. During that time we had a variety of entertaining discussions about the various merits of wrecks vs reefs all whilst ingesting a herculean quantity of junk food. Everyone on the course did really well and they all deserve a medal for putting on with some rather chilly water conditions on Monday.
 
Also massive congratulations go to Dan Stacey who passed his instructor exam yesterday. Dan is already a major asset to Diving Leisure and he’s going to be an absolutely excellent instructor.
 
We’ll be completing the instructor course at the end of this month and then we’ll be back into the swing of the dive season with our first trip down to Plymouth on the 14th and 15th of March. Other trips planned include a May Cornwall trip, a weeks diving in Mexico in the summer and, of course, Scapa Flow. All the details on these trips can be found in the trips section.
 
Finally I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along on the pool weekend of the 7th and 8th, we had an excellent turn out of new and prospective divers doing trydives as well as a busy Open water and Rescue course so thanks to everyone who came whether to do a course, try diving or help out.