Dive Report : Divewise House Reef Check Out Dive

Location:

The house reef is through a gate about 30 yards from Divewise.
 

Dive Team:

Alan (Guide & A), TBD (A), TBD (A), Svenke Wall (B) and Chris Armstrong (B).

Dive log:

I had been an epic Muppet and managed to lose my 3mm wetsuit somehow earlier this year. I think that when I first joined by local dive club and we had gone to the pool in Burnt Island to do a check out I had left it there. So I had to rent a 5mm from Divewise. The objective of the checkout dive was to get the weighting sorted, and personally I wanted to get the gear checked out to make sure that all the gear had survived the journey.

I had dove my twinset in the UK in my 3mm wetsuit in the past so I knew I would be massively negative, 5mm vs 3mm, not big difference eh? Well it was! I took two 2kg blocks and slotted them on my waist strap.

Firstly, Alan led us in to the harbour to get our weight sorted and out and then we were ready we dropped down to 3m and did some quick skill checks like mask clearing and regulator sharing for out of gas emergencies. I was buddied up with a Swedish gentleman called Svenke. He was in a dry suit! Nearly 30 degrees air temperature and a water temperature of 25 degrees, nah I’m glad I left it at home!!

Settled and happy, Alan led us around the house reef.

There isn’t much to report; the house reef is fairly bland in terms of “attraction” to see. There are no sunken cars, vans, small boats or anything like that which would probably help a lot I think. The visibility was lovely 20m+. A far cry from all the UK diving I had done. There were quite a few fish, schools of fish danced and glittered beautiful silvers. I was on the hunt for an octopus looking under every rock but couldn’t find one. I was absolutely entranced with the dive. The visibility was beautiful, the water was lovely and warm, the fish were beautiful and I just felt so happy to finally be on a dive holiday!

I came out of the dive feeling excited, the water was gin clear, the fish were beautiful and even though it was relatively unexciting because there was very little to look at, it was still a lovely dive. Its nice to just check out the gear, get your weight right for some "proper" diving.

YouTube Video

My dear friend Svenke shot some video and has kindly allowed me to share it.