Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the General category. Noteworthy entries are filed topmost.
It has been a while!
Okay, so I have been rather slack for the last 9 months over adding to this blog, but I promise to make an effort from now on. To summarise, the bits that have been missed…….
Trip to the Galapagos Islands for 10 days of liveaboard action, inlcuing 5 days up at Wolf & Darwin. More sharks than I could ever have hoped for and a whopping 32 whale shark encounters over 6 dives at Darwin, including plenty of “one on one” time. We then spent another few days kayaking down an Amazonian tributary, just the two of us and two guides. Camping on the river’s edge, right in the depths of the rainforest and ending up at a brding lodge, only accessible by the river, no electric light or power - brilliant….although I now fully appreciate the Rain bit of rainforest.
Friday night dives out of Falmouth ran pretty well up to Christmas, but after that the wind seemed to appear every weekend, right up into April, so the dive rate was somewhat down. This drove us to warmer climes and a week’s diving in Tobago. We stayed up at Speyside, and whilst the diving was good, it wasn’t mindblowing (I think the Gos has spoilt us) and we did sadly have our cash stolen from our locked hotel room, which was a definite downer on the stay. Still, shortie diving in 27 degree water can’t help but make you relaxed 
Since then the weekend and Friday night dives have picked up again and we have got a few reallynice dives in over the last 3 weeks - hence I am reinspired to blog. Watch this space!
The Move
So, alot has happened in the last six months. My ACL was reconstucuted and I have been having physio since the end of December, we moved down to Cornwall where I started a new job, and we are in the process of buying a house. All pretty stressful stuff. However, on the plus side - I now live near the sea!
Weekends are so much more fun, I can tell you.
Diveless Dover Disaster
The weather was looking shocking, the ropes-off time had been changed to silly o’clock and the word from Andy the Coastie was the viz would be terrible due to cable-laying in the area…so why did we get up and traipse down to Dover on Saturday? I wish we hadn’t…
The car is packed the night before and we leave the house at 03:15 for the 2 1/2 hour dirve to Dover. When we reach the harbour it is still dark, but there is a stiff breeze…so much for Paul’s comment the previous night that forecast 5mph winds could mean it was “Harry Flatters”.
There are a couple of folk milling about and we meet up with Debs and Gareth. No sin of Paul, or the skipper. The sky starts to lighten slightly and Paul appears weaing shorts and flip-flops…there is optimism on a cold September morning! Our numbers start to increase and Dave turns up and unlocks Neptune so we can start to load.
As we leave the harbour the rising sun behind the lighthouse is a beautiful sight and I almost start to think it was worth getting up for that alone. we then hit the rough seas that apparently are always worse withing a mile of the harbour. The boat bounces and spray rushes over the deck. We all shelter in the wheelhouse or just outsise. After about 20 minutes of battling against the waves the call is made to abandon out offshore target of the liberty ship Henry B Plant and go for a site closer in, the El de Bayo.
On site the sea is still fairly rough and it takes the crew several attempts to get the grapple to lock in. the usual practise for this boat is to anchor into the wreck, but today that isn’t practical as the wind and waves keep pulling the vessel off, so a shot buoy is left and Neptune floats clear. It isn’t quite slack so we don’t kit up immediately, and when we do go I take it slowly, aware of the movement of the boat.
Caroline and I have bench spots on the opposite side to the side door that you leap off from and so once kitted, in twin 12’s, and a 7l ali deco bootle, side slung, we gingerly stand and cautiously make our way to the stern of the boat, holding onto the side rails. I get to the gap between the bench and the transom first and as I cannot progress further due to a pair entering the water ahead of us, I hold n with one hand on the censtre spine of the benches, and one on the transom rail.
Brian, the crew member tells me they will let these two in and then turn around for another run to get Caroline and I in. I acknowledge him and adjust my postion slightly, to better bear the weight of the tanks against the movement of the boat. the buddy pair ahead get in and then….
..the boat moved suddenly and unexpectedly. I don’t know if it was getting into gear or an odd wave, but somehow, in trying to maintain my balance all my weight goes onto my left leg, my foot is rooted to the spot in my jetfins and my knee sort of twists and bends at the same time. I hear a crack, or a popping sound - although I am unsure whether it really was a “hear” or a “feel” - and my kne gives way in pain. I fall backwards, me and 50kg of kit landing, I think, on the mask clean bucket which cushions my fall nicely.
As Brian rushes to help I try and tell him that something has gone in my knee and soon there are hands all around getting me out of my kit. As I stand I think maybe i will be okay and I am keen to rekit and get in - that is what we have come all this way for! Then my knee gives way again. Still, maybe, if I fin gently…and the boat does have a lift….
Finally, tales of injuries precipitating DCI brings me to my senses…along with the knee starting to hurt. I sit down. Dejected. the final pair is now in the water and we have 80 minutes to wait until the planned runtimes are up.
I am helped out of my drysuit and sit in the wheelhouse supporting my knee and sulking. It is starting to hurt alot more now. As divers start to come up they firstly say what a great dive they have and then start saying it more quietly when they hear we didn’t get in.
The journey back to harbour was horrendous. There was no way of supporting my knee and each crash off the top of a wave jolted it and sent a shock of pain up my leg. Getting intot he calm water of the harbour was a real relief. We then had to work out how to get me up the steps. It was decided the best method was to avoid the steps and Dave dropped us off at his berth which was next to a ramp. With the arm of Matt on one side and a handrail on the other I inched up - this was after declining a push in a wire mesh kit trolley!
Everyone then kindly helps Caroline bring our kit off the boat and back to the car - divers are a wonderful bunch! Massive thanks to all… Having learnt my lesson last year after another diving accident we decided to dirve all the way home to our local A&E so that any ongoing treatment would not require inter-hospital communication - not a strongpoint of the NHS in our previous experience.
I hopped into A&E at Stoke Mandeville and after 4 hours, a nurse practioner, an A&E registrar, and a orthopaedic registrar and consultant there was agreement that I had ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament. I was sent home on crutches with an appointment in 10 days to reasses once the pain had died down. This could be bad news. the anterior cruciate ligament is in the actual knee joint itself, pulling together the tibia and femur, and apparently provides most of the stability for the knee joint.
It is now a few days later, and having had the leg up and resting it is feeling ok, although I can bear weight on it I can’t walk on it properly and it feels a little “odd”, but there is very little pain. I am very hopeful that the initial diagnosis was wrong and I have just strained something. That would be excellent as a ruptured ACL sounds like it would kill my hopes of walking the Inca Trail next year on our trip to the Galapagos. I shall find out for sure, I guess, in a few days when I return, but my fingers are well and truly crossed.
How old is old?
News stories earlier this year covered the 175th birthday of Harry, one of three Giant Tortoises taken, along with two others, from the Galapagos islands by Charles Darwin on his famous expedition in 1853. This story really caught my imagination - imagine the changes that tortoise has seen, the history it was part of!
Then yesterday came the news that Awaita,a tortoise that was allegedly the pet of Clive of India, had died! The estimates bandied around here are that Awaita was 250 years old. There are going to be attempts to carbon date the remains of this veteran creature, but even if he wasn’t that old it is still a tale that stops you dead in your tracks.
Think about the consequences if humans could live that long. Would it affect the way we behave, knowing that the things we do, fully aware of thier destructive implications, would take affect in our lifetimes? Would fuel-guzzling cars fall out of fashion overnight when we realised it was us, not our children or grandchildren who will face the true effects of global warming? Would fleets of fishing vessels begin to regulate themselves as the industry recognized that it wasn’t a working life of 30 or 40 years they needed to survive, buy one of 200 years?
How about the size of families? Would they reduce so that the planet’s population stabilised, fearful of the overload that would happen within lifetimes as 7 or 8 generations needed to co-exist?
Maybe it would just be a good idea if we all imagined we could live that long - if we developed the ability to empathise with future genreations instead of just looking out for our own? After all, who really wants to work for 200 years?
Spring is not yet sprung…
Looking through some photos on the hard-drive on my PC I came across a series I took of frogs in our neighbours’ pond at this time last year. I remember the day well. It was a gorgeous, sunny, warm day; we were all say in the garden in t-shirts, drinking chilled wine after an afternoon sorting through the composter in order to get some decent compost out to fill our new, raised vegetable beds.
The pond was full to the brim with frogspawn and every time someone walked past there were several watery plops and sploshes as frogs dived for cover. I decided to go and get the camera and see if I could capture a few shots of them. As it was I came out lucky and got a few pics that, as a point and shoot snapper, I was very pleased with.
It did feel a bit odd to click away as they earnestly went about creating the next froggy generation….
The same time this year there is no sign of any frogs as yet. I haven’t seen a single daffodil in bloom, the snowdrops are still out and I have scraped ice from my car window twice so far this week! By my estimates we are at least six weeks behind in the onset of spring.
The big question is, however, does this mean a lovely summer of no winds, clear skies and perfect diving to make up for the extended winter?
We’re going to the ‘Gos!
Last Saturday saw us meet up with the group of reprobates we are off to dive in the Galapagos Islands with in Oct 2007. Although Caroline & I had met everyone before it was a first meeting for some.
The Galapagos Islands are a dream destination for me, both for diving and for the landside attractions of the weird, wonderful and downright bold fauna. The visit there has become reality through a post made on Yorkshire Divers by David A (see http://www.yorkshire-divers.com/forums/recent-trip-reports/27205-galapagos.html) reorting back on his own, utterly fabulous, trip there. A group of us were bowled over enough to go and badger the hell out of Maldive Scuba Tours at the Nov 2005 Dive Show at the NEC, and ended up booking Deep Blue (see http://www.scubascuba.com/edit/pdf/worldwide/deepbluetn.pdf) for us and us alone.
Now it is all real and alot of saving is required - it is not a cheap destination. Still, whilst we are there I am hoping to fulfill another long-term ambition and hike the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu. That isn’t so much a monetary concern - more a fitness one, so the 20 months until D-Day need to be used in some training. The boots are already bought!
Intro to me…
My name is Louise and I have been diving for about 5 years. In that time I have taken it nice and easy and now do a bit of accelerated deco where required, but depth isn’t really my bag and I stay around 35m in the UK. My main motivation is to see the wildlife down there and I can get quite passionate about wildlife issues and conservation. I have no idea what this site will end up like - it is my first excursion into the weird world of blogging so please bear with me until I find my feet.
I hope to fill this little bit of the big web-world up with trip reports, wildlife sightings and general notes, complaints or downright rants about issues that deserve a bit more attention.
You can also find me on www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk where we chat, make friends, fall out and most of all - organise dives.