Gale force winds, rain and snow to 400m, not the sort of forecast you like to hear when you have a planned weekend away diivng. However if its one thing I have learned over the years, I have to have confidence in the very reason why I set up a dive operation in Marlborough, "you can always get a good dive in, no matter what the weather"

With a full boat load of club members making up the weekends group we headed out on Saturday to East Bay where we planned to check out the scallop population. We were rewarded with visibility in excess of 15 to 20 metres and nearly the boat limit of scallops after the very first dive. The scallops seem to be as abundant as ever and in very good shape for this time of year.

MARLBOROUGH SCALLOPS YUM (Great in a white wine and garlic sauce)

Sunday dawned clear, calm and sunny, I decided to head out to a site I seldom dive due to its location and need for experienced well kitted out divers. Surprisingly we discovered a highly populated bed of scallops, again in very good condition and very large for the area. Also, in residence were Southern Pig fish and Carpet sharks, along with some huge Sand anemones and Tube worms, ideal for close-up and macro photography.

We played out the final scenario for Tomo’s and Hamish’s PADI Rescue course after the first dive, by springing on them a realistic dive accident scenario. Katie joined the 40m club on the last dive, along with completing her PADI EANx course over the weekend.

HAMISH TENDS TO TWO DOWNED DIVERS DURING HIS AND TOMO’S RESCUE TRAINING

Overall it was a very pleasant weekend with a very good group of keen and enthusiastic divers. Congrats to Hamish, Tomo and Katie who finished off of their rescue and Nitrox courses. Also thanks to Warren who acted the perfect victim in the rescue scenario and Guy his dive buddy.

Next weekends Lodge trip is now full, with the long range forecast now looking good, I am looking forward to getting back out to the Lermontov and experiencing the good visibility.

safe diving

Brent

Wreck exploration is progressive in both the techniques you adopt and the extent of your exploration.

There comes a time in a divers career where swimming the outside of a particular wreck isn’t enough and an overpowering urge grows within to explore those stairwells and hatches which lead to the bowels of the ship. Curiosity is what makes us tick, and its this basic instinct that creates this urge to explore, for the untrained and compulsive life expectancy can be short, for the trained and well organized the rewards can be immense and life expectancy normal.

Recreational agencies like PADI offer basic wreck training, these courses are a great way to get you started on wreck exploration, but they are only enough to give you basic skills and knowledge, it takes bottom time and advanced skills to safely penetrate a wreck. Technical diving agencies like TDI do offer generic Advanced Wreck courses, which take the student through the skills and knowledge to required to satisfy ones curiosity. 

MIKHAIL LERMONTOV ADVANCED WRECK DIVER TRAINING GROUND

Having completed many hundreds of hours diving on one of the most penetrable wrecks in the world and experiencing an increasing demand for advanced dives, has prompted me to write my own Advanced Wreck diving outline that focuses on this type of wreck environment. The course  will be specific to wrecks like the Mikhail Lermontov and will focus on skills that not only apply to the Lermontov, but to any other wreck within the 45 metre depth range. Students who successfully complete this course will receive a PADI Distinctive Advanced Wreck Diving Specialty rating, will have completed 4 dives on the Lermontov and have advanced buoyancy skills while kitted out with tools required for advanced wreck diving.

Go Dive will be offering the new Advanced Wreck diving course from August, there are some advanced pre-requisites required as well as equipment requirement’s, so nows the time to start preparing for it. If your interested in finding out more email me on info@godive.co.nz to register your interest. 

safe diving

Brent

Go Dive

www.godive.co.nz

After a few days of relentless rain it was great to see a bit of the sun yesterday, it’s amazing how a few rays can change your mood.

Due to a late start caused by Football world cup fever, I headed down to the shop to get started with some rescue training.  Due to the heavy rain we focused on CPR training and O2 administration, important components of the PADI Rescue course.

Guy and Warren arrived up from Christchurch early Sunday and we all headed out for a local dive. Looking at the color of the water due to run off from the previous few days of rain, we all expected pretty average vis. With a a bit of reassurance that fresh water takes a while to mix with seawater, Warren and Guy headed off for a dive on Koi, and were pleasantly surprised that the bad surface vis gave way to some reasonable vis on the wreck.

LEATHER JACKET ON KOI WRECK

I run through a few Rescue surface skills with Hamish and Tomo, after off which they to headed off for a dive on the Koi, although their navigation wasn’t to good looking at the route they took to get their. At one stage I thought they were going o swim back to Picton underwater, I think the increasing depth may have given them a clue that they were on the wrong bearing.

Second dive we headed over to Kumototo point, vis here was even better with it being close to 8 metres in some areas. Thats the beauty of the Marlborough Sounds, it doesn’t matter what the weather gods chuck at us we can always get a reasonable dive in some where.

It’s not long now until New Zealand hosts the Rugby World cup, soon Go Dive will be posting a schedule of Mikhail Lermontov dive tours from mid Sep 2011 to November 2011 for visitors whom will be visiting New Zealand for the Rugby World cup. With there being games in Christchurch, Nelson and Dunedin, it will be a great opportunity for those traveling between islands to stop off for a few days and enjoy some diving on the Lermontov at a time of year when the visibility on her is at its best. 

Keep an eye out on www.godive.co.nz or email me at info@godive.co.nz if you would like some more info.

Still a few spaces on the July 17/18 Dive Lodge trip, remember this is the first weekend of the scallop season, so we will be heading over to see how our house bed of scollop’s have survived the off-season. 

Enjoy your week.

Brent

Go Dive 

www.godive.co.nz

Go Dives technical diving training program is gaining quite a bit of  momentum with the completion of another TDI course at the Lermontov Lodge.

Bruce Curlow and John Mc Mulian have Truk lagoon in their sites and decided that to make the most of their dives at Truk they needed decompression diving experience. Over the weekend we completed 5 dives on the Lermontov, one on the Koi and Lastingham and a night dive on the Mussel farm. Bruce caught a really nice Cape Jackson cray, which was returned to the water once we took a few photos. Good job Bruce, its good to have responsible divers on board that see the value of these larger crays as breeding animals.

Bruce with his big male cray prior to returning it back to the water.

Soon I will be posting a "Go Dive Tek" page on our web site which will be set up as a resource for those who are interested in technical diving, the page will have links through to other groups within NZ and overseas. There will also be a calender of planned technical dives ranging in difficulty and location for the next two years. This will give those keen on getting involved with an active group of tech divers a  chance to plan well ahead and make the most of their investment in kit and training.

safe diving

Brent

Congratulations to Arnaud and Hamish who completed the practical modules on their TDI Adv Nitrox and Deco Procedures courses at the Lermontov Lodge over the weekend.

The weather wasn’t to flash for the weekend with 80mm of rain falling in over 24hours on Sunday, this made the track up to the Lodge a bit of a challenge, but the mighty Pajero done the job.

The visibility though on the Mikhail Lermontov was pretty good, Steve, Tomo and Katie visited the Starboard side anchor on one dive and had a good 6 to 8 metres on the bottom which is not to bad. On top of the wreck it got up to 10 plus metres in some areas.

On Sunday after our three dives, Arnaud and I made hasty retreat based on the horrible forecast back to Picton with the boat, with the rest of the group coming out early Monday. We finished the course off with 41 metre deco dive in Torea Bay, it is quite interesting the change in fauna as you get a little deeper, we encountered spiny sea dragons and gurnard, species not regularly seen in shallower depths.

All up, not a bad weekend given the average weather, thanks guys and girl for diving with Go Dive Marlborough.

Check out our events calender for upcoming TDI Tech courses and Lermontov wreck trips. Diving a sling and Nitrox really adds value to your diving, especially if your keen on wreck and deep diving.

Poor Knights trip is now full, but happy to take standby bookings or your name for future trips if your keen.

safe diving

Brent

PS: Steve wore his new TDI Cap and Beanie (not at the same time) with pride all weekend, as well as joining the 40 metre club.  

Congratulations to Aaron Harris who has just completed his PADI openwater course with Go Dive in Picton.

Aaron lives locally and plans to make use of his new skills to explore the sounds and collect a bit of Kai-moana.

Well done Aaron.

April 23/24/25th has been set aside for Go Dives next TDI Advanced Nitrox and Decompression procedures course which will be held over 3 days at the Lermontov Lodge.

The Adv Nitrox course will teach you the knowledge and skills to dive up to 100% Nitrox, while the Deco Procedures course will introduce you to stage decompression diving using air and Nitrox.

Over the last year we have run these courses from the Lermontov Lodge and completed the practical application on the wreck of the Lermontov, doing the dives on the wreck allows for more enjoyment and real world experience.

All inclusive cost including, training, manuals, meals, accommodation, O2 for both courses is $950.00 for non club members and $850.00 for club members. There are two spaces left on the April course.

For those without the pre-requisite EAN’x training a PADI Nitrox course will be held prior to the 23rd.

Contact Brent at 0800 GODIVE for more details or to book.

Last week I headed up to Auckland to attend PADI’s Course Director update where the new Instructor Development curriculum was released. The PADI IDC has always been the leading instructor program and this new curriculum will insure it stays that way for quite some time.

The old program which has been around for 5 years was quite boring on todays standards, mainly due to the rapid advancement of the Internet and online training techniques etc. The new program embraces developing technology and offers an e-learning component, meaning candidates can start their development on-line and then attend a 4 day live development session with one of PADI’s Course Directors.

Go Dive being Marlborough’s only Instructor Development Centre will be offering this on-line option for our next IDC and we look forward to running the new curriculum which is more hands on and interactive.

If you are keen on developing through to this level give me a call to talk about the training options and career possibilities.

Safe Diving

Brent

Go Dive

After a pretty ordinary start to summer the weather has finaly settled and we are enjoying a settled period of weather. Over the last few weeks we have been as busy as a "lizard drinking", with another 4 day trip to the Lerm Lodge with a big group from Aussie, plus full local tours and the next three weekends booked solid out at the Lodge.

LATEST GROUP TO EXPERIENCE  THE LERMONTOV ONE OF THE WORLDS BEST WRECK DIVES

The conditions at the Lermontov have been fantastic for this time of year, with vis up to 15 metres and mill pond conditions on the surface, welcome relief from the early summer windy conditions. Our latest group of rebreather, twin and rec divers come away with some of the best memorabilia I have seen come off the wreck, all of it from areas not visited normally by recreational divers. The most interesting being a coin collection consisting of Russian coins;. plus a few more peices to add to our Lodge Morflot dinner set.

Other than the wreck we have been more than busy with local dives and courses, with local conditions matching that off the Lermontov.

Congratulation’s to the following on completion of our courses.

Douglas Blood: PADI Nitrox

Karen Hopkinson: PADI Openwater

TOMO:PADI Advanced

Paula: PADI PPB

Theres still plenty of summer left and heaps of forward bookings for day trips to the Lermontov, with a few spaces on scheduled live-a-ashore charters. 

If your in Picton drop into our shop in High Street Picton for a chat, we are right next door to the Shell Service Station with heap’s of off street parking.

safe diving

Brent

Congratulations to Georgie, Steve, Mitchell, Warren and Arnaud, whom over this past weekend successfully completed their PADI Rescue course.

The Rescue course is a physically and mentally demanding program covering a diverse range of topics from equipment problems to physiology and O2 administration. The goal of the course is to identify personal limitations, strengths and weakness, so in the advent that you are involved either directly or indirectly in a diving emergency you have a better understanding of how to respond.

DIVE RESCUE SCENARIO

Over a period of 4 days the team went through a variety of exercises and scenarios, ranging from missing divers, unconscious diver, beach exits and administration of oxygen, to mention just a  few. The course was not all work and we managed dives on the Long Island Marine Reserve and a scallop dive.

As always a few mistakes were made, including a few near drownings where the rescuers had to be rescued, but that is standard for the rescue course and all part of the learning process.

Thanks again team for training with Go Dive, I hope you never have to put your rescue skills into practice other than identifying and then eliminating problems before they become a hazard.

On another topic, GO Dive is now on Facebook, so become a fan and visit our wall for a on-line chat.

Safe Diving

Brent