Malta Dive Holiday : Day 4

Day 4

Today is to be my first day of diving with Divewise. So it was an early start as I had arranged with Viv that they would come pick me up at just after 8am. Breakfast was the usual cornflakes, coffee and sandwhich and I had this interesting character looking at me while I waited for Divewise!

Arriving at Divewise I met Viv and Alan for the first time as well as the team I would be doing a easy checkout dive on the house reef with this morning.

Dive #1

The dive was really just to check out that weighting was right and that gear had survived the trip. I had several issues with weight and broken line connections, but these were resolved post-dive. Check out this link to read the report of the dive.

Surface Interval

Throughout the dive I was fascinated, but had a few kit issues. Firstly, the crotch strap simply disintegrated and the cave line for the light head finally snapped after years of tugging. I'd only just got the Halcyon Cinch system on my backplate so I didn't know how to re-web the crotch strap so in the end I just took it off, which made things a little awkward in the water, but manageable. The light boltsnap was re-attached with a zip tie.

Dive #2

The team was now heading over to Valetta to dive on a wreck called HMS Maori. Check out this link to read the report of the dive.

Post Dive

On the way back to Divewise, Anne took us around the local area and pointed out the restaurants that we get discounts at. The primary one was Huggins as it was just up the road from the dive centre and also on the way back to my hotel.

Getting back at Divewise, it was time to rinse off gear and prepare for the next days dive. Once that was done, I thought I'd ask Svenke if he fancied a pint at the pub, I quite liked him and he was easy to get on with so why not share a pint. So off we trotted to Huggins and bought a pint, at least 12 pints later we are still there! We had a great bar maid full of fun and kept the drinks flowing for us!

Malta Dive Holiday – Day 3

Getting started in the morning

Up early with excitement it was a quick breakfast while I awaited Anne to pick me up from my hotel to take me over to Divewise. While I waited I was getting eyed up by a local cat:

The local was keeping tabs on me

Anne arrived in the Divewise wagon to take me over to Divewise dive center. The dive centre is located in a bit of a basement to the hotel.

From there it was lots of paperwork filling out and a quick site tour. We would be doing our first "check" dive on the house reef. I loved the sound of this because it meant I could get my weighting right given that I was using a new wetsuit. So the house reef is literally, right outside the dive shop!

Literally walk across the "loading bay" and down this short ramp:

Walk down the ramp ...

And you get this view of this bay:

Looking out across the bay

From the end of the pier looking back you can see the area is lovely and sheltered

A sheltered bay

And the water looks great!

Clear water - so inviting!

Dive 1 – Check Out Dive

The morning was used for a check out dive on the Divewise house reef. As my first dive in Malta and first in a good few months it was a lovely dive.

For a detailed dive report check this link out.

Dive 2 – HMS Maori

In the afternoon we went over to Valetta to dive on a wreck known as HMS Maori. It was fairly broken up, but still better than the UK wrecks I have done (other than the Stanegarth at Stoney Cove HA!)

For a detailed dive report, check this link out.

Post Dive

By the time we got back to Divewise and rinsed off the gear it was about 3pm, so it was food time! On the way back, Ann had told us and showed us some restaurants that we get preferential deals with because we are Divewise customers. The nearest venue to the dive centre is a pub called Huggins (http://hugginspub.com/wp/). As Divewise customers we get an excellent 15% off all food and drink. Svenke and I had had a good time with each other diving, so with a 15% off beer and food offer there was the completely-unnecessary-words-spoken of “pint?” when the looks we gave each other sufficed! So we went to Huggins and had our first pints of Cisk, pronounced “Chisk”. Its a very very light beer, very easy to drink, which is what makes it so awful, before you know it you’ve had 10 and your buggered!

The food at Huggins’ is very good and very cheap, especially when you add on the 15% discount too. In fact I enjoyed the food and drink so much that I came back to Huggins every single night! We had a great bartender looking after us, to the point where the drinks were arriving before we could even ask!

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 2 (pt 3)

Victoria and The Citadel

After lunch, we went to the Citadel in the capital city of Gozo, Victoria. Just getting to the Citadel was a bit of an exercise, the hill is quite steep and needs to be taken carefully as the cobblestone is smooth and the path uneven. Standing outside the entrance to the Citadel, Pat gave us a history lesson about the city.

Entrance to Gozo

The architecture is extremely impressive and its beauty can’t be denied.

The Citadel feels like in city inside a castle.

From the top of the Citadel, it is possible to walk along the walls and get a full 360 degree view of the island with some stunning views.

The Citadel was absolutely beautiful to walk around and the architecture was beautiful. Coming back to the Church, we found the Prison. I must admit I was slightly disappointed, basically all you could see were about a dozen cells. Good thing I paid the student rate of 2.50! I also got locked in the stocks too!

We left the Citadel and visited a grand Church. Claudia had her daughter and her friend, being teenage girls they had to put a shawl around their legs to be respectful! From the outside the Church looked impressive:

Getting inside it was even more so! This was incredibly difficult to photograph. It took me about 6 attempts. I had to use manual (like an avid photographer would of course, I NEVER use Auto … *cough*), I had to set the flash to go off, open the aperture wide open, and leave the exposure on high enough to gather the light. Certainly not bad, I think!

Coming out of the church we started working our way through the town to meet the coach at the bus station. A few of the “tenants” in an alley had really made their alley nice with lots of potted plants:

My feet were well and truly aching, so it was bliss to be back on the coach. We caught the ferry back to Malta, at a beautiful time to watch a gorgeous sunset:

The coach met us at the Ferry Terminal on Malta and took us back to our hotels. It has been a brilliant day today, enjoyed every minute and getting back at 7pm I feel I’ve had brilliant value for money as well as being exhausted!

Getting back to the hotel, I had a quick shower to get freshened up and then passed out in bed! I was exhausted!

I hope this has been an interesting summary of my second day in Malta! Ciao for now!

Malta Dive Holiday - Day 2 (pt 2)

Ggantija Temples

Once we landed at Gozo, a new coach took us around the island. Like Malta, the architecture of the buildings was stunning:

Our first destination was the Ggantija Temples.

It is such a shame to see such a valued monument weathered away to not much more that piles of rocks now. But from the archaeology that has been done, sketches and models have been made which make the temple sound so impressive when it was first constructed, over 6,000 years ago!

Also on the site of the temples was a small store selling hand made goods such as scarves, jumpers, jewellery and crafted items.

 From here we caught the coach which took us to Blue Lagoon.

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon has two key areas of interest, firstly, THE Blue Lagoon, you can take boat rides out through fissure in the limestone walls and into some sea caves.

The other iconic sight is the Azure Window.

The Window was originally a spit of land, but a violet storm caused the rock to give way leaving the arch.For just 3.50 euros I took a short boat tour through the caves and the sites were incredible!

The blue lagoon, quite literally, imagine luminous blue and that's what the water looks like! On the way across on the ferry I saw these orangey-brown “things” in the water, couldn’t tell what they were from the bow of the ferry, but up close they were Thunderbird Jellyfish! The head must have easily had a diameter of 30-40cm. The corals also looked incredible too. I’ve asked Divewise if we can dive here and they said maybe. God I hope so!

Here is a quick edit of the video I recorded of the boat tour:

The Blue Grotto also had many handmade goods stores like the Ggantija Temples:

Xlendi Bay

After about an hour at the Blue Grotto, we got back on the coach and it took us to Xlendi Bay. Its pronounced “Shlendi” and is a beautiful area. As part of the tour package we got lunch provided for us at a nice “cliff-front” (I bet that phrase has never been used before!! Probably for good reason!!) restaurant.

For lunch we had a lovely chicken chasseur type meal with dauphin Oise potatoes and a salad too. There wasn’t enough room on most tables so I sat with a small group of French women. I know, poor me eh? We did talk occasionally, I was racking my brain to remember my French from high school, and small phrases were coming back to me, but i thought best not to embarrass myself TOO much with them, so just spoke slow English.

After lunch we walked down to the bay to await the coach to take us to the capital of Gozo.

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 2 (pt 1)

Introduction

I had booked my first of three excursions for the trip to take me over to the island of Gozo using a company called Malta Travelnet (http://www.maltatravelnet.com). Their website was wonderfully simple to use, everything just worked automatically. Vouchers were emailed automatically and promptly – I was very impressed and would recommend using them again for any tourist-y type stuff again.
The excursion takes you all over the small island of Gozo.

Early Morning Start

My first night in Malta turned out to be a bit of a late one, by the time I had wandered around the local area, snapped pictures of some yachts and had a snack, it was about 11pm and getting up at 630 was a bit of a challenge but whereas I normally struggle to wake up in the morning, the excitement of my first day of a holiday got me going. I was feeling pleasantly excited when I headed downstairs to get breakfast, decked out like a true tourist, in shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops and camera bag. Breakfast came with my “hotel” booking, but it literally consisted of cornflakes, juice, apples and toast.
I got myself loaded up and pleasantly stuffed and then wandered over to await the coach at the Hilton. While I waited for the coach, I wandered around the Marina with the benefit of daylight and got some nice pictures, I hope you agree!

The coach took us to the ferry terminal, here we met with our guide. I was grouped with the rest of the English speakers and a small group of French with a very colourful and entertaining guide called Pat, whom I can’t recommend enough!

The ferries between Gozo and Malta run about every 30 minutes and the operation is very slick so you are never waiting very long at all. On board there is a well stocked cafeteria, but I prefer to be outside in the glorious sunshine and admire the views:

Landing on Gozo:

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 1

Introduction

So I’ve decided I need a diving holiday. Ever since my last true holiday in 2007 to Florida, I’ve not been away since because of university and life generally getting in the way of things. Even with buying a house and all the new responsibilities, I’ve managed to scrimp and scrape to get together a holiday to Malta. I have a very specific window of time when I am able to take this holiday, October 25th 2013 for a week. I’m flying out with Ryanair from Edinburgh airport. Booking 20kg of extra luggage, picking front-row seats for the legroom, insurance and all the taxes and charges, the flights came to £270. http://www.ryanair.com/en .
I went on LastMinute (http://www.lastminute.com/) to book a hotel. I’m staying at the Alfonso hotel in St Julian's. Despite booking the hotel in June, so not exactly last minute, I still got a weeks accommodation with breakfast for about £105. Granted, I’ve scrimped on the bed and it’s only a single. But saving £30 means more diving money! The hotel is also about 200 yards from the dive centre that I will be using: TechWise (http://www.techwise.com.mt/)

Day 1 – October 25th 2013

09:00 – Alarm goes off. I’m not a morning person, but thankfully the 10 hours sleep make up for it. The morning flew by in a haze of getting dressed, taking rubbish out, last minute house cleaning, packing the car and what have you. Before you know it, its 11:30 and I’m leaving for the airport. The weather is awful today and its pouring down with rain, but its not dampening my spirits because it is currently 24 degrees in Malta!
I’d got a week of parking in the long stay car park for about £55, certainly no more expensive than a taxi, but I also managed to get a fast pass through security for just £3.
First challenge, “checking in”. The boarding card says “FR6695”, OK, not a Ryanair prefix … it could be a shared flight, FR, that sounds France-ish to me, Air France just happens to have its own desk, so lets go there! So I go to the automated check-in, swipe my passport, “Good Morning Mr Alberto, can you confirm that you are flying to Amsterdam?”, Hmm no! The very tiny Air France helper eventually pointed me to the Ryanair stands at the FAR end of the check-in hall! So toddled over and got queuing.
I had weighed my checked bag about 200 times so I was confident it was below 20kg, only just. But then, how accurate are £3 scales from Morrison's? Well the scales said 18kg, and the proper electronic Ryanair ones said 19.1kg! Boshty, bag went in no bother. Next security.
The fast pass meant I got to use a queue with dedicated x-ray machine just for us. By the time I reached the machine the queue had gone, that's how few use it! I’m travelling with my canister light, that I think looks quite “explosive shaped”, so I had planned ahead and got some stickers made up to try and make it look less threatening. Put my stuff on trays and let it go on its way to EM heaven/hell! Funny, for most people, the bags just whizz, through, for mine, it was back and forth and lots of head shaking. Which I expected, so wasn’t shocked. In the end they went through all of my bags and rescanned things, wiped them and checked for explosives etc. The woman was friendly and it didn’t take too long, but this was why I booked the fast track, to have spent 30 minutes queuing plus 20 minutes of analysis… plus I’d spent at least 30 mins checking in my bags, so that's why I was worried about my nearly 3 hour early arrival getting chewed up!
Once through security I just found a spot and sat. I swear someone had a black hole in their handbag because time was going incredibly slow. I would send a couple of texts, that would surely burn up a few minutes, look up at the departures information board and it would STILL be on the same minute!
Well when they finally announced the gate, off I trotted, sprinted (with excitement!) more like, and of course, the gate was at the farthest possible end of the airport. So far I’d never even been this way and I’ve been through Edinburgh a lot over the last 5 years. I had reserved a seat so I was feeling posh in the Priority Queue! So we queued for about 15 minutes, then we went through the gate to then queue in the tunnel outside in front of the plane for about another 20 minutes! Now the tunnel is acrylic and the sun also decided to come out at that point so it was cooking in there, just inches from the plane.

Plane is in sight!

EVENTUALLY they let us on the plane, i had booked a seat on the very front row for the legroom, so I went up the steps and turned right straight away and plonked myself in. The seat looks a lot smaller than it felt. I still felt the sides of the seat pressing against me, but I was half expecting to have to force myself in, so that was a pleasant surprise. An unpleasant surprise was the price of food though! £1.35 for a Snickers!! I then got a Panini and a bottle of water for £8.30 (!!!) as I was dressed for Malta, I was actually cold with the air con!
After a very good 3 hours and 40 minutes of tender loving care from two of Ryanair's fine female staff we arrived. I’d been on a Ryanair flight before, to Dublin, but the flight arrived about 30 minutes late so I never heard this fanfare thing that they do, so whenever I heard people talk about it, I thought they were pulling my leg. But no, 30 seconds after touchdown, that stupid trumpet came on! Had to chuckle though!
I had arranged with Malta Transfer to have a return shuttle journey between the airport and my hotel. I arrived at the Al Fonso at about 8pm local time. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the hotel had Wi-Fi so whilst unpacking I gave the missus a surprise Skype call. It made me chuckle because I logged in and went straight to a video call, she accepted the call but didn’t put on her webcam because she thought my account had been hacked!
So I got my bags organised for diving and unpacked.
I went out for a walk around the local area to try and get my bearings and I found the marina, the first impression of the marina was that it was where the very wealthy moored their yachts!
This was one of the first :

A small yacht ...

And they just kept getting bigger and better!!!

A massive yacht!

Feet were starting to get very sore by this point, I was wearing my flip-flops and had blistered, even from walking through the airports! Not a good sign to start with. I stopped by a little shop of the way back and got some nibbles to eat for tea. Annnndddd bed time!

Return to Powmill Quarry (04-08-2013)

Introduction

My partner and her Swedish friend are visiting for a short while, so I decided to take them to Powmill. In my previous blog when I first visited Powmill I talked about how great it would be to have a little BBQ/campfire, listen to music, eat food, dive and swim. Well that is exactly what we did!
The plan was that I would go diving whilst they wandered around taking pictures, I’d been loaned a camera by a friend so we wanted to test it out and see what we could do with it, so far, we were loving it! We stopped off at Asda on the way to buy one of those cheap, instant-disposable BBQ’s, some burgers and chicken, drink and headed to Powmill, the weather was looking reasonable, not quite the perfect 30 degree sunshine we had been having up until a few weeks ago, but still just nice.
After driving through Powmill town and approaching the lay-by I was pleasantly surprised to see that the gates had been opened and boulders moved out the way!! Brilliant! This meant that I could park my car right at the bottom of the hill, certainly cut out about 80 yards of lugging at least! It took two trips to get the tanks, dry suit, accessories and camping stuff up the hill.I then proceeded to get kitted up to do a dive.

Dive #1

Max Depth :13.2m
Duration : 88 mins
Log :
I’ve brought my reel and wet notes with me, I want to practice line surveying. Ever since I got into DIR diving and heard about projects such as the EKPP and the WKPP being a part of a team of explorers is something that I’d love to do, so my idea is that I need to get these broad skills. I’ve done a Cavern course so I know how to use a reel.
I dropped down to about 3m where the floor is at this end of the quarry and found a rock to make my initial tie off to, (I noted this in my wet notes as “Start”) once I’d done two wraps and it was solid I started heading into the quarry. I kept the quarry wall to my left and I swam slowly looking for decent rocks to tie off to. Its interesting, whenever you are watching someone else lay the lie, you can see a million tie off points, but when its you doing the searching, its much harder! I want the line to follow the general trend of the quarry (wall) which was generally straight at this point, but eventually I could see that the quarry wall was starting to bear to the left (opening up into the tear drop shape) so I needed to tie off and there was a rock I could tie off to (I noted this in my wet notes as “WP1”).
After securing the reel, I left it where it was to head back to my first tie off point (the entrance) and survey it … Once I reached the tie off, I hovered above it to take a depth reading and used my compass to take an azimuth measurement of the line. Now I needed the distance to the second survey station – it was at this point  it hit me, I should have had knotted line. I decided to use an ad-hoc method of measurement – arm spans. I figured that it would help me get a first cut at the survey. By this point I was already 30 minutes in to the dive and it started to hit me how slow the progress has been and will continue to be – I’m doing everything three times over : I’m first swimming along and laying the line, returning to my start point to survey the station, then return to the end of the line to pick up the reel again and continue onwards!
Now I was back with my reel, so I picked it up again and continued onwards, again once I saw that following the quarry wall meant that the line would be bending around a rock I made a tie off (this is “WP2”). I again returned to the previous station to survey the line and measured the distance in arm spans.
With reel once again I continued onwards and came to what looked like an entire tower block of flats worth of shopping trolleys pushed in! I found a solid rock here and this became WP3.
The next waypoint was a car wreckage, after surveying I needed to make a decision as to which direction to head. I was at the point where I either stay to the left side of the quarry as though I wanted to travel clockwise, or turn right to head anti-clockwise. My reel is only 400’ at full capacity which would be nowhere near enough to do the whole site, but I also didn’t want to just do one route, as I figured I would get bored of that.
So I decided that it would be good to start both branches in the quarry just a little so I turned right to start the counter-clockwise branch. I came across a large rock just near the quarry wall – I could clearly see ahead to the quarry wall so I thought that this was as good a place as any to stop and survey up to – I would clearly be able to see my future direction. I made several wraps around the rock before cutting the line to my reel. I had to be methodical about this – I am wearing fairly thick neoprene gloves so I have almost no dexterity under the best of conditions so I had to make sure that I had knotted the tie off well so that at least that end of the line was secure. I then cut the line, and had to re-tie a loop on the end – I only made a small one, about an inch in diameter because I knew that I would shortly be tieing it in again.
I returned to the quarry wall to survey the line from the car (WP4). I tied back into the line and starting heading along the wall in a clockwise direction to find a new tie off which after about 10 minutes turned out to be a car wreckage, so I returned to what is now a branch to survey the line again – at this point I was at 80 minutes of bottom time and starting to feel a chill – I was moving slowly and spending a bit of time just floating there so getting cold was something that was getting to me faster than normal.
I headed into the “pit” of the quarry – the central portion of the quarry that gets down to about 12m. I like to drop down deep so that I can launch an SMB from depth and it will be full when it hits the surface, although with the little 3.3’ SMB I was using, even from 6m a full bag isn’t a problem. Bag launched – I ascended to 9m and hovered for 1 minute as my first “deep stop”. Ascending up the shelf at about 7.5m the shallow shelf appears so I can make some progress towards my exit even as I’m ascending. The shelf slopes steadily up and when I hit 6m – I treat that as my “ceiling” and wait for another minute. From this point I’m doing a 1m per minute ascent at the fastest, so I continue swimming to the exit whilst watching the gauge – I get to 5m, so I have to stop again for another minute.
I’m now at about 84 minutes of run time and now right below the entrance to get in, so its a straight up ascent to 4m and stop, up to 3m and stop, up to 2m and stop up to 1m and stop and then a nice slow ascent over the last metre. I surface to a cheery girlfriend a buzz of cameras firing at full frame rate and the special of a BBQ starting!

Surface Interval

I’d told Charlotte that I would be about an hour to 80 mins and that when they see my yellow SMB launched, I will be on the surface within 10 minutes that would be their cue to start the BBQ warming up. We made garlic chicken and pepper kebabs while the BBQ was warming up. Charlotte made these for my birthday BBQ a month prior to this and they went down a treat.  The burgers went on next – it was great just relaxing, eating and soaking up the sun.

Dive #2

Max Depth : 12.8m
Duration : 52 mins
Log :
This dive was about extending the line laid on the previous dive, ideally in both directions around the quarry so that the two ends were a bit closer to meeting up – but given that I’d started the lines in each direction, I was quite happy just extending one line. My idea was to extend the survey from where I branched to the right, I’ve been that way and I know that there are a lot of cars to tie into which makes it good for surveying.
From the surface you could see the line that I had laid! The viz was good with the water being so cool, but still not gin clear.
It was nice descending and seeing a line to follow as opposed to previous dives such as my very first trip which was very much a case of gingerly progressing and seeing what I come across. So off I toddled along my line and once I came to the branch I turned right - I found my rock that I had tied off to as the extent of this branch, I tied the reel back in and headed off – this edge of the quarry is littered with dozens of cars that have been pushed in so I had no shortage of places to tie off to, but upon later reflection – my line did zig-zag up and down a modest bit so I am wondering about relaying it to be more “through the middle” of the wrecks as opposed to each one in turn ….
I decided that because I got quite cold quite quickly last dive, what I would do is lay all the line (so lots of swimming to keep warm), return to the start point (lots more swimming) and then survey the line, swim-stop-swim-stop…. It turned out that this was actually a far more effective method I think.
The line meandered its way through the piles of cars (which is why WPB, WPC and WPD are quite close) before ultimately terminating at an extremely large tree stump! Easily the size of a small car – I’d love to know how someone managed to uproot THAT (there were a lot of roots, it wasn’t just a log), and get it in the quarry … if it was an entire tree I’d see that maybe it was a landslide .. but just the stump? I had aimed to tie off to a large rock about 20’ past the stump, but had a sudden stop when the reel ran out of line – the most convenient tie off point was the tree stump. So my reel was left with about 20’ of line left!
So now that I’d done the first task of laying the line, I now I had to swim back to the “start” and start the surveys – as I previously said, it was far more effective to do all the surveys in one go I quickly moved from station to station. I learned another lesson, you really need the runs between stations to be a good length (50’ maybe?) so that you can get a good measurement. I noticed that when I had two survey stations (tie offs) separated by about 20’ it was both a bit awkward to survey and it would add very little to the survey as well as probably adding a lot of error to it too.
For this session, I just numbered my surveys 1, 2, 3 etc. but I really should have a more robust scheme – I’m thinking that I might want to try and get some tags / identifiers that I can leave at each survey station so that when I’m in water its more obvious what station I’m at (thinking ahead to caves – if I was surveying a cave with dozens of branches that branched and branched again – this is where this could be more useful).
Having completed my mission of extending the line I had nothing left to do – I was at about 45 minutes of bottom time now so it was time to make an ascent. Like I did on the first dive, I headed into the pit to get the depth and launched the bag and did a very gradual ascent.

Survey Notes

For those that can’t read my writing this is what I wrote – making this little table made me realise that I’ve missed noting some information. Fortunately, I will be returning to Powmill to rip up the line I’ve laid and replace it with line that has been knotted every metre so that I can make far more accurate surveys. I do also think that I’ve noted things down wrongly – a returning trip will help me correct this!!

Waypoint / Survey Station	Depth (m)	Connecting Waypoint	Bearing to WP (degrees)	Distance to WP
Start	3.2	WP1	190	8 arm spans
WP1	3.75	WP2	150	6 arm spans
WP2	5.45	WP3	150	20 kick cycles
WP3	6.0	WP4	150	10 kick cycles
WP4 (Car)	6.9	WP5 (Rock)	120	7 kick cycles
WP4	8.1	WP6	220
WPB	8.7	WPC	200	20 kick cycles
WPC	8.4	WPD	290	6 kick cycles
WPD	6.0	WPE	190
WPE	10.0	WPF	100	7 kick cycles
WPF (Tree Stump)	10.2

That pretty much sums up this trip – I’ve ordered some new line from DIR Direct so my task will be to get that knotted and onto the reel before I am able to return to Powmill. I think I will also buy some more cookies so that I can leave them at each waypoint as a reference for me. Once I’ve made the complete survey I can always pull them out again …