A great weekend Scuba Diving in Chepstow and Wraysbury

Last weekend saw myself teach some specialties and an Advanced Open Water course in Chepstow, while Andy was in Wraysbury teaching an Open Water and dry suit course.

The drive to Chepstow was pretty awful, loads of rain and spray on the M25 and M4. On arrival in Chepstow though we had plenty of sunshine. Melvin took Rob for his Deep Open Water specialty course and I took Dean and Ollie for their first Adventure Dive; Dry Suit.

Both of them were a little wobbly with their dry suits at first but a few buoyancy skills on the platform at the start of the dive soon saw them gliding threw the water. It also helped ensure they stayed nice and warm for the duration of the weekend. On the Saturday we also completed their peak performance buoyancy and navigation dives. NDAC (National Diving and Activity Centre) was pretty packed so it meant that we had to wait a while for our tanks to be re-filled. So we left the site at around 5.30pm and we were all pretty tired.

Ollie and myself were staying in the Huntsman, about 10 minutes from Chepstow so managed to squeeze in some fish & chips and a pint before heading to our rooms.

The next morning we started at 8.30am which meant we were some of the first to jump in the water. Like the day before we had great viz of around 15m. We did our deep dive first which saw the boys descend to 29m next to the BAE plane. We did a couple of skills such as looking at how pressure and light effects a can of coke (you’d be amazed if you haven’t seen it!). Alex decided to try the Coke but naturally was a bit flat due to the pressure.

Then our final dive of the day took us around some of the Wrecks in Chepstow including the Troop Carrier, Airplane and an old arm Land Rover. We then had a drink and completed our knowledge reviews before heading home. In the meantime Rob joined us who completed his Nitrox and Underwater Digital Photography course, you can check his photos on our Facebook page.

Andy managed to successfully get all 7 of his open water divers through their course plus he managed to persuade them to accompany him to the pub afterwards where he completed the certifications.