Another DSD at Flamingo

On saturday we had another great session at Flamingo, this time we had Niki, Marcus and Marko with us. We started off a little later than normally since another group was there before us, gave us an excellent chance to enjoy the wicker chairs, fake palms and general tropical ambience at Flamingo ;)

After the dive we had time to chat a little about what happens after the DSD, generally, you have only one option, go on the open water course to keep diving ;)

We'll be arranging OWD courses for those who want to go further asap so please let me via email if you're interested in joining.

Our next DSD is going to be in the beginning of April 5.4. and then we're going to Kaatiala 11.-13.4. ( edited, was wrong about the date )

Have a great week everyone!

Discover Scuba Diving in Flamingo Spa

The pools are a balmy 32 degrees, there's fake palm trees, coloured lights, a café with wicker seats and diving equipment. No, we're not in Egypt, this is Flamingo Spa in Vantaa, the site for our DSD this week.

First time DSD Leader (me) picks up his customers from the reception and after a call for someone to open the doors we get inside. My three colleagues, Mika, Kenneth and Matz have agreed to be my guinea pigs for my first DSD lead :D

After the paperwork ( which I'll let participants handle in advance next time ) we go to the pool and put on our equipment, I go through how the regulator, BCD and mask work and we're off.

After getting used to the equipment for a bit and learning to control our buoyancy we go to the 4m pool below the jumping tower and practice equalizing ears.

Everything went smooth and we had fun, I hope you guys also enjoyed it as much as I did :)

Next week we have a fresh group of Baswareans to dive!

Awesome weekend in Kaatiala

We took friday off and headed out on the road in the morning.

Joachim and Maria, the couple behind eaze-eaze, picked me up at 8 in the morning from our parking lot and we headed off. We met up with the others north of Tampere after around 2 hours of driving, approximately at the halfway to Kaatiala Quarry. Little bit of shopping for supplies and then we're off.

2 hours later we arrive at the Kuharanta hotel where we'll be staying and drop off some luggage and head right to the quarry :)

"Ottering" it..

First day we took it pretty easy, it was drizzling most of the day and it's hard to keep your drysuits dry in that weather so we kept them on most of the time. Lunch was nicely taken floating in the water, felt distinctly like an otter chewing on an apple and drinking from a bottle while floating around. Later we dove from the shallow end and did clockwise and counter-clockwise tours around the quarry, we did do a 21m dive down to the tourist cave area from the shallow side but didn't enter the chamber.

Common roach

Common roach and Perch are very common in Kaatiala, there's actually a surprising amount of them as we noticed by tossing some pieces of pizza crust, carelian pies and lemon cake (their favorite) in the water. There must have been hundreds of them total, all competing for the food.

 The difference between the roach and the perch was quite substantial, where the perch is a carnivorous fish the roach are not and the posture of the hunter and the hunted was very clear. You can dive up to half a meter of a perch and it will just raise it's spiny fins at you, telling you not to come any nearer, or else... But if you try to swim close to a school of roach, they will never let you approach within 2 meters or so, you feel like one of the sharks on documentaries trying to catch mackerel in a large school, always surrounded by a clear water bubble.

Perch

After diving we headed to Neste and grabbed some burgers and pizza, no one had eaten anything since the drive to Kaatiala. Off to the hotel and off to bed. We tried to watch telly but after 30 minutes I was the only one awake. It's pretty clear that a whole day of diving is hard on the endurance of the best of us :)

Did notice an interesting thing tho, Close Encounters isn't nearly as thrilling today as it was when I saw it as a kid :) I remember being freaked out about strange lights for months after seeing it.

"Airplane"

On saturday we got down to business, we did a navigation dive for our AOWD student with Joachim (I must confess he was better with a compass than I am :)) and then we headed to the deep end, visited the diving bell at 25m, talked funny ( more about that in a video a bit later ) and went to see where the plane had crashed.

There used to be a model airplane ( I think it's an old aerial target that was towed for AA practice )  that hung suspended in the water "flying" but it's now on the bottom. Since it took us quite a bit of time to get down we only had a short bottom time and didn't check out anything else that time. A big suprise was that the car ( yes, a whole car chassis ) had been moved and wasn't anywhere to be found :) Later we did some more dives around the shallow end and then headed back to the hotel for a nice meal, or so we thought, the hotel kitchen had closed at six so we headed off to Neste service station fast food again :)

Had a great evening, a couple of beers, lots of talking and laughing. It must have been 2am or so before we went to sleep, divers really should sleep more I guess. Woke up energized in the morning, hotel breakfasts are magic :)

On sunday we did our best dives of the weekend, first a couple dives in the shallow end and then we finished off with a humongously awesome deep end dive. Everyone was down to their last minutes of no decompression limits. We went down to the bell and headed off to the tourist cave, after a short tour inside we returned to the bell and realized everyone still had 100+ bars of air so we decided to make a short trip to the little entrance also, after a brief visit we returned to the bell and started our ascent.

Summer diving in Vessö

Took a short daytrip to Vessö to help out with an OWD and AOWD prerequisites dive, some navigation and underwater photography was done. We also practiced drysuit maneuvers and spotted a nice amount of perch.

Shot some GoPro Hero3 footage during the dives and I've uploaded a short version for viewing.

Headed back home happy in the evening, spent a total of 6 hours in the water :)

Beginning my AI and OWSI courses

Been a while again but got the dive season started, we've been diving under the ice in the winter and now in open water again. The above shot is taken in Iso-Melkutin, reasonably close to Helsinki and quite clear water. It's a lake between sand ridges so there's not much muck in it.

During this summer I'll be doing my AI and OWSI instructor course so, hopefully, by the end of the year I'll be able to take you all for Open Water certifications and teach you how to dive :)

Earlier this year we made a hole in the ice and dove the Kisko quarry, this was an extremely interesting experience and I recommend Ice Diving to anyone who has the chance to try it out.

The H2 sports coupons are out, everybody get out there and dive :) http://www.blackbeltdivers.eu/ and Basware Scuba Club (intra company link, not accessible from outside the intranet).

Apo Reef now more easily reachable

Zac found a very nice article describing a newly opening scuba destination in the Filippines, Apo Reef, which has so far been only accessible via longer liveaboard trips. This means that it's quite untouched compared to many of the more frequented divesites in the world.

Please remember to be a responsible diver, everywhere, and follow the golden rule:

Dive to observe, never to interfere.

http://www.lakwatsero.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_2923.jpg

Apo Reef links:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20121011-the-undiscovered-jewel-of-the-philippines ( Thanks Zac! )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apo_Reef
http://www.aporeefclub.com/

3 days of diving in Kaatiala open pit mine

Today we got started pretty early, cleaned the cabin and packed our gear in the cars. Yesterday yours truly was filling the air bottles and managed to overfill a couple. Heard jokes about this all day ;)

We dove to the diving bell at 25m and made a trip to the "tourist cave" on the first dive and to the airplane on the second. I took the opportunity to touch bottom on one dive and measured 29,7m on the bottom.

Everyone were happy with the dives, we'd had nice weather for a change so the cold didn't bother us and many of us racked up some of our first proper "deep" dives in Finnish waters.

Lunch was steamed hotdogs and then I decided to start heading south to civilization. The drive is 330km so better get started reasonably early if you want to have some time with the family in the evening :)