40 Years

1965-2005

 40 Years

WELLS DIVING GROUP

A HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

EARLY DAYS

THE ANGEL

EQUIPMENT

PEMBROKESHIRE 1978

VANS AND BOATS AND HUTS

TROPHIES

ACCIDENTS

STAG AND DOE DIVES

MOSES PARTED THE RED SEA -DAVID WALKED ON THE WATER

INTRODUCTION

The following is a light-hearted look at events that have taken place during the history of Wells Diving Group leading up to the present day. All names of individuals included in the book are the true names of those involved and have been included only in this version. Any other publication will contain names that have been changed to protect the individuals concerned.

I hope that you will enjoy and find amusing the following pages.

WELLS DIVING GROUP -THE HISTORY

Wells Diving Group began quietly in 1965 at Thorn EMI Electronics. The founder members seem to have started with little more than the will to go diving and were mainly ex services people who had been taught about diving after the Second World War. Training began at the outdoor pool in Wells where the club were fortunate enough to rent a small building. In due course the members acquired a boat and the means to get it to the coast. In 1985 the club were evicted from their premises at the pool and after much searching were offered an alternative site, and the present union with the Wells Operatic Society began. Since then the club has increased in strength, improved its facilities beyond belief, and become much more professional in its diving. Now in 1992 the club possesses more equipment than ever before, including no less than two boats. The instructional capability includes eight nationally qualified instructors, and the club runs its own specialised courses as well as participates in SAA National Training courses.

There are still one or two of the founder members that visit occasionally on club evenings.

In 1992 the club were awarded the Golden Club Award, by the SAA, for its outstanding services to diving.

EARLY DAYS

The club has trained at Strode Swimming Pool for a great number of years, but originally was based at the outdoor pool in Wells where a small lean-to building was rented in the Fire Brigade yard. Access to the pool involved opening the side gate of the club hut and walking directly into the changing rooms. The fee for this convenience, negotiated by the club’s Diving Officer, ran to the extremely costly sum of one cylinder of air each week for one member to scrub the bottom of the pool with a hand brush.

Training took place during the winter at Strode Pool, and during the light evenings of the summer at the outdoor pool.

The founder members of the club managed to purchase a very large ex-ship's compressor that was installed in the hut. This machine, a gleaming brass Hamworthy with a huge flywheel and Lister Diesel Engine, was our only means of pumping club cylinders. At the time the nearest dive shop where air could be obtained was Peter's Shirt Shop in Bristol. Here John Fowler could be found surrounded by numerous gallon ice cream containers each containing the components of some poor diver's demand valve in for service.

For those that remember, the purchase of spare parts for any demand valve was a sight to behold! If a new spare was unavailable John would wander up and down the ice cream containers looking for that part from somebody else's demand valve. Later to be replaced when he eventually reassembled that particular valve.

Service times were necessarily long!

Peter's was an Aladdin's Cave of diving equipment with all sorts of items hanging from hooks in the roof, and a favourite with everyone -John's box of seconds. This contained all sorts of sundry bits and pieces of diving equipment that he could not extract full price for. In those days you could strike a bargain, and often a piece of equipment would remain on display until the price dropped to a sensible level.

In 1965 the supply of diving equipment was in its infancy, most equipment coming as ex government war surplus from such suppliers as 'Bogey Knights' in Plymouth.

Wet suits came in kit form from Dolphin Wetsuit's in Surrey and arrived in an anonymous brown cardboard package, pre-marked to your size with full instructions for assembly. The state of the art was 4mm unlined with yellow seam stripes. Long-John's were unknown and you made do with a long pair of trousers and jacket. After spending untold hours with the initial assembly work the finished articles, which invariably failed to fit, needed regular maintenance between each dive to repair split seams and replace the prominent yellow tapes. Lashings of talcum powder were required to produce enough slip to get the suit on, the resulting sticky mess having to be washed off after the dive.

Diving cylinders were commonly obtained as ex-aircraft compressed air cylinders from either Spitfires or if you were lucky the slightly larger versions from bombers such as the Lancaster. They arrived from the government surplus shop neatly bound in a thick layer of plated copper wire that cocooned the cylinder from base to neck. This had to be removed and then a suitable pillar valve obtained to replace the aircraft valve with which they were supplied. Holding 26cf (6501 of free air) of air at 1200 psi most were turned into twin sets by linking them with home made manifolds and attaching simple seat belt straps for a harness. Some ingenious club members made backpacks by cutting and moulding a section of plastic water pipe. Later larger 80cf (20001 of free air) 'dustbins' became available, pumping to the incredibly high pressure of 1800 psi.

Buoyancy compensators and ABLJs as we now know them did not exist and the only type of jacket available was the surface life jacket from Beaufort. This came complete with CO2 inflation that was about as much use as an ice cube in an inferno. There were no direct feeds and so weighting for neutral buoyancy was much more important than it is today.

Diving accessories consisted of imperial depth gauge, all the tables were in feet, a waterproof watch and if you were very rich, a ‘Bendo’. This was an early form of mechanical decompression computer housed in a stainless steel biscuit tin. It had a circular face with a clock hand that recorded the amount of tissue saturation as it revolved. It was completely unsafe to dive on and if used for decompression kept you in the water for so long that you ended up suffering from hypothermia. For those with shallower pockets SOS brought out a version housed in, yes you've guest it, a plastic biscuit tin.

Not surprisingly the incidence of decompression sickness was much less. Everyone dived with much less air than today and even if there was sufficient to allow a decompression dive by the time that this stage was reached you had given up because of the cold. All this afar cry from the equipment of today with our centrally heated dry suits, octopus rigs, spare air, large capacity cylinders, stab jackets, and sophisticated dive computers.

I sometimes wonder how we ever managed in those far off days.

THE ANGEL

In the early days a club van was an unheard of luxury until Mike returned to England after a successful season teaching diving in Spain. One of Mike’s few possessions was a very elderly and tired Bedford Comer van that soon became the property' of the group. The club boat of the time was manhandled onto the roof, tied with binder twine to the rear door hinges, these were the only anchorage points, and the club went diving.

In those days the drinking sessions at the pub on the way home tended to be lengthy affairs. The Police were not so keen and there were very few females to keep us in order. A favourite watering hole was the Blackbird. Just across the road stands a garden centre, and come closing time after a particularly boozy session, the club DO was found to be missing and only appeared at the last moment, very drunk, and accompanied by a beautiful Angel. Her large marble wings made her a difficult load but after a bit of manoeuvring she was dumped into the back of the van and eventually took up residence in his garden. Police 5, if that was what it was called then, the local papers and all and sundry new about the missing statue, it even made the local television news. Our intrepid diver decided that advertising the fact that he was the culprit with the thing in his garden was not a good idea, besides the wife put her foot down.

Assisted by a brawny friend, he could not lift the thing by himself, the 'lady' was quietly and discretely returned to the steps of Taunton Town Hall in the small hours to be found the next morning.

The papers duly recognised her return.

EQUIPMENT

About this time the club equipment took a turn for the better, we owned an unsinkable dory that sank every time she went out, an aged Nautisport inflatable and a new Initial Services club van with a non-operational 2 litre Perkins Diesel Engine, contained in a large cardboard box. Mike’s Bedford had long since expired.

The new Equipments Officer took things into his own hands. The Initial Services Van, now resplendent with 2 banks of coach seats, was towed, brakes binding, to Bristol Skill Centre where we ceremoniously presented the unsuspecting trainees with the large cardboard box containing the engine.

It only took them 6 months! ! ! , And they never did cure the starting problems. The unsinkable dory was taken on sea trails to Clevedon where it took on board so much water that it almost sank barely making it back to the slip.

It had to go! ! !

In its place, the same person from whom we had bought the Dory offered the club a rather dubious 13’ Avon inflatable. The Vendor, a likable Bristol docker, could be relied upon to provide any item at a moments notice, and had provided the club with such things as -Kawasaki Demand Valves -half price -no contents gauge -no questions asked - £20.00.

Mike equipped his Spanish Dive School!

The club declined, and after much searching in Exchange and Mart a suitable sounding inflatable was located in Hampshire. Arrangements were made, and a party of two consisting of Mike and myself left early one Friday evening to view the merchandise.

The M3 did not exist at the time and after asking friendly looking natives for directions we found ourselves lost in deepest Hampshire, eventually arriving at Nicholas Parsons house long after the arranged time. We were given directions to the nearest of his private clubs, but being unable to locate him, and not wishing to disappoint fellow members of WDG, the club holiday started the following day, eventually realised that we had to do something drastic!

We took the only avenue open to us: we camped in his drive. What better way to attract a person’s attention!

Success.

God knows how we slept, Triumph Stags are not that comfortable.

Sometime after midnight we were disturbed from our slumbers, by the continuous sounding of a car horn.

Mr Parsons is a very nice man?

The club holiday was to start Sunday. Saturday while chaos reigned we slept, eventually arriving in Wells to assemble the new boat during the afternoon.

PEMBROKESHIRE 1978

BLINKER COULD SKIN A DOG FISH AT TWENTY PACES

Pembrokeshire started the trend for many club holidays to follow. It rained. It chucked it down. It came across the campsite in horizontal rods. It flooded the field and any tent that was in the way. It made life thoroughly miserable.

We all made the best of it, but as the week progressed the visits to the local pub became more frequent. The local brew Felin Fack Triple Dragon was renamed 'feeling foul' and chronic hangovers became the order of the day. It was so horrible that one couple packed up and set out for home. The nearer that they got to Bristol the better the weather became and by the time that they reached Cardiff the sun was out.

They promptly turned around and drove the 100 miles or so back to Pembrokeshire in deteriorating weather, to re-erect their tent on the same pitch in the pouring rain. As things turned out it was a good job that they did.

Blinker caught endless Dog Fish and all soon became accustomed to the delicate flavour of Rock Salmon. The diving was excellent and numerous Cray Fish were caught. When did you last see one, let alone several?

Blinker, or Dave as his friends knew him, was one of the clubs staunchest supporters. If it was diveable then Dave dived it. Even to the extent of breaking into Glastonbury Abbey in the dead of night to dive the goldfish pond in the grounds. However Dave had the most unfortunate mannerism and was very quickly christened 'Blinker', when he joined the club. He was never addressed as such to his face, but everyone referred to him by this nickname behind his back, and I am sure that he knew this, taking it all in good part.

On one occasion the new Zodiac returned shortly after setting out for a dive crewed by relatively inexperienced divers. They came into the beach, all appearing to be a little edgy and somewhat sheepish, to admit that they had not dived because they had seen a shark and were afraid to go into the water. There was a mad scramble by those of us who considered ourselves to be more experienced. Somebody found an underwater camera and off we went on a shark hunt. As we approached all that could be seen was a large black vane protruding from the water. The shark was a Thresher and the vane its tail, a big brute, almost as big as the boat. We followed it for a short while until it suddenly disappeared; of course this was before any of us were able to get into the water.

Not that we were the slightest bit scared, after all Threshers are plankton eaters are aren’t they?

Before the holiday there had been a move to change the old Hamworthy compressor for something a little more portable to enable pumping to be carried out at the dive site. The result was a 5cfm Bauer. It arrived equipped with an Italian petrol engine for a prime mover and Pembrokeshire was one of the first expeditions that it was taken on. A pumping rota had been drawn up for the holiday and each day the compressor was taken to the top of the campsite away from all else to pump cylinders. This was an extremely noisy task and I think that everyone found it tiresome.

During one of these pumping sessions our friendly Bristol Dockers returned from a trip into the local town and unloaded from their car a very large sack of freshly picked swedes. Of course none of us asked any questions, and the swedes quickly found there way into the hands of the campsite owner.

Towards the end of the week an incident occurred that threatened to cause what at first seemed to be an insurmountable problem. The diver that had driven the van was involved in an argument, the resulting scuffle leaving him held by the throat, pinned against the side of a caravan with his feet dangling off of the ground, and this by the diver that broke the fight up.

Now our van driver was so annoyed that he packed his kit and left post haste for home abandoning the club boat. Fortunately the couple that had returned to re-erect their tent in the rain came to the rescue. The boats keel was carefully deflated and for the rest of the week it was transported to dive sites on the roof of their Austin Maxi and eventually back to Wells. By the time that they got home the boat had completely flattened the roof of the car leaving the roof lining hanging like a deflated balloon. Unabashed, the roof was kicked back into some sort of shape by the driver simply sitting in the back seat and placing his feet on the inside of the roof.

VANS AND BOATS AND HUTS

By now the Initial services van had returned, complete, from Bristol skill centre and we were once more in business with Sunday dives. There were however some complications. The Skill centre had done a wonderful job, producing something from nothing; they had carefully rebuilt the diesel engine and installed it in the van. What they had been unable to do was to turn it into an engine that would start. Once started it actually ran quite well but in order to go diving on Sunday morning the driver was forced to arrive at the hut at least an hour before the time to leave to begin the process of turning the engine over and over until it was sufficiently warm to burst into life. A huge choking cloud of black smoke and a lot of popping and spluttering usually accompanied this moment. The black smoke accompanied the van wherever it went.

It was indescribably tatty. The 'Initial' insignia, partially painted out, still showed on the rear doors and the aluminium sides were green with mould that no end of scrubbing would remove. Not surprisingly it was a target for every Police car between Wells and the coast and during a season the committee would lose count of the number of times that it was stopped.

It had become the practice of some of the younger club members to smoke pot in the back of the van during the trip home from a dive and it was not unusual for there to be more smoke in the van than was coming from the exhaust. After one Portland dive, when a great deal of success had been had with flatties, the van was heading back to Weymouth Scuba Centre when a Police car pulled out behind it and started to follow. The van wound its way through the narrow back streets of Weymouth with the lads in the back frantically fanning cannabis smoke out of the wide-open windows. Eventually the vehicle pulled up on the pavement, with the boats, on double yellow lines outside of the dive shop and the driver slid the door back to speak to the rapidly approaching Police Officer.

Expecting the worst, the opening gambit came as a bit of a surprise.

"Evening lads, bin diving"

"Well yes officer, it’s been a good day"

'Jolly good, fancied a bit of Plaice for my tea", replied the Police Officer.

At the same time the club were again short of boats and were offered by a local BSAC club a very tidy 18' C-Craft inflatable. This monster, viewed in the dark as all good boats are, turned out to be the biggest white elephant that the club has ever bought. The main problem was its shear size and weight. In the dark, in a confined space, it had been all too easy for six divers to pick it up, but when it came to struggling across the beach it was a different proposition. If you think an Alpha RIB is heavy then think again.

To go with the boat the club managed to purchase a brand new 40 HP Mariner outboard motor and sea trials on the river looked promising. The boat had a vast amount of space and huge 36" diameter tubes.

At sea performance was not so good, the length of the boat was so great and the construction such that she would not plane. Every time it reached planing speed the bows would drop off of a wave and droop into the next effectively bringing the boat to an abrupt halt. The floorboard layout, similar to many other inflatables of the time, had a fixed board at the front of the boat bonded between the tubes. Its purpose was to make the floor rigid and thence the boat. In front of this fixed panel was a rather large triangular bow board. When the boat dropped into the back of a wave the shock would cause this bow board to pop out of its place at the front of the boat, and would then need to be wiggled back into position before the boat could proceed. To achieve this the keel had to be deflated and then re-inflated after the board had been replaced. A time consuming task.

Many attempts were made to couple the boards together to make the boat plane. The most complicated involving bolting a length of aluminium box section along the side of each board.

They both broke on the first outing and the club eventually became resigned to operating the boat as a displacement hull.

Because of the exceptional size of the tubes it proved impossible to climb into the boat from the water un-aided, and to make life easier a flexible boarding ladder was constructed. This consisted of two nylon straps that were bolted to the centreboard of the boat and stretched over the tube into the water where were two aluminium rungs formed the ladder. The process to board involved passing your kit into the boat, removing your fins, and then climbing the ladder by placing one foot into the lower rung. This was then forced beneath you to allow you to stand up. Now you simply stepped up one rung and into the boat. In practise this was far more difficult than it would seem and there were many occasions when divers fell off backwards into the sea.

On one outing when the club were diving in South Devon one of the divers surfaced with a large ray that was passed into the boat. The boatman concerned that the sharp spines might cause a puncture insisted that it was put back over the side. So a rope was threaded through its gill and it was lowered back into the water to flap along beside the boat. Shortly a pair of divers surfaced and the boat went over to pick them up. After they had removed their cylinders and passed them up the first diver, who was unusually short sighted, moved along to the place where the boarding ladder was usually lowered. Seeing something in the water he took hold of the Ray and made a very creditable attempt at climbing into the boat, only realising his mistake when he took hold of the tail with his bare hands.

His mistake was rewarded at the next dinner dance.

Eventually the C-Craft reached the end of its usefulness to the club and was sensibly passed on to some other unsuspecting divers.

Now it was time to change the van and a replacement was found in Bath, a bright red hand painted Ford Transit mini bus that had been used by a large family for foreign holidays. This was the forerunner of the yellow Transit buses that the club now use. It had a partition behind the seats and could accommodate eight divers and kit, and we soon found that it was possible to put both outboards on stands in the back as well. This was a revelation; it was nice to drive, reasonably economical, had a huge roof rack with ladder on the side and was above all reliable.

We were like pigs in muck! !

Diving continued with the new van undertaking numerous trips to the coast. In all respects it seemed to be perfect apart for being a little underpowered with only a 1600cc engine. This seemed a minor inconvenience until one day when the driver took a wrong turn on his way to Hallsands and descended the steep hill leading down to the ruined village. Realising his mistake he simply turned around at the bottom and proceeded to drive back up the hill. This should have been fine except the overloaded engine was having nothing of it and simply ground to a halt about half way up, and once stopped could not get going again. The answer was of course to lighten the load. This is where I earned my first ear. Not giving a thought to the steepness of the hill we lifted the trailer off. It was a good job the lane was so narrow, it only dragged us about 25mts, and it was fine on top of the bank, and neither of the boats got punctured.

It was the holes in my knees that encouraged them to give me an ear.

Of course the van got used for other things. When the council gave the club notice of its intention to knock down our little hut at the outdoor pool the club were immediately faced with the problem of finding storage for the equipment. For some time, as a result of Ron Norton's involvement, we had been drinking at the Little Theatre and they very kindly offered the old school toilets for storage if we could do something with them. Well, there was no roof, no door, and the builder’s rubble and rubbish was piled as high as the top of the walls. The urinals and sit down toilets were still in place, as were the partitions, and the place stank.

It was the best offer the club had.

All diving was banned until it was completed and the building sub- committee went into action. Every diver was enlisted to remove the rubbish and turned up equipped with spade early one Saturday morning. Someone had obtained the use of a 10 Ton lorry free of charge, for one hour only, and all the rubbish had to be moved in that time. If we went over the club had to pay, and there was no money. We all worked like Trojans, the lorry was filled twice in the hour, and moved more than 21 Tons of rubble and rubbish. One young lad had blisters on his hands the size of boiled eggs.

Now the van came into its own as builder’s vehicle, collecting materials and shifting yet more rubbish. On one occasion when we ran out of chippings for the concrete floor it was dispatched to the council gravel dump to steal some. The clubs only Policeman seemed quite surprised that chippings could be bought on a Sunday. The end wall was knocked out and the help of Dave, a friend who was a builder, enlisted to cast a lintel in place to form the doorway. The toilets were removed and the floor levelled. The biggest task was the roof and to begin with suitable materials at the right prices were un-available until Mike located the roof timbers that were needed at a coach garage in Weare that had suffered a fire.

One corner of the building had survived and the timbers were ours, if we took them away before the boss arrived. The van was dispatched with suitable burly helpers and soon returned with the roof rack full of beams. In fact they had so many on the roof that an accident had almost occurred on the way home when on cornering sharply the vehicle had healed over so much with the weight that the occupants had thought it was going to role over.

The roof beams went up and the asbestos sheet to cover it was obtained, again at a knock down rate. I found a set of wooden double doors and this made the place secure. This left only electrics, and for a while this stumped us. The amount of heavy duty three-phase cable needed to connect up to the supply was I think beyond the finances of the club and some had to be found for nothing. Eventually an old caving friend came to the rescue with a huge roll of the stuff and it was even armoured. Arrangements were made and club members started delving into the inner recesses of the Theatre, pulling cable through roof spaces, into lofts, along trunking and to the supply.

Dave supplied all the boxes and switchgear at a discounted price and even drove down from Eastbourne to fit them. Mike supplied the motor and plugs for the compressor and we were in business.

TROPHIES

It was only recently that the history of the clubs trophies came to light. The 'Diver of the Year' trophy originally featured a swimming diver with outstretched arm, mounted above the base on a wire. It had always been assumed that both of the figures were of silver plated base metal until one of the legs fell off of the diver to reveal the inside of a plastic model. Investigation exposed the full story. Ron had made the bases from apiece of mahogany driftwood that he had picked up on Chesil Beech. The plaques, pieces of solid silver were acquired from Thorn EMI Electronics, and the figures provided by Brian  in Wells. Being plastic toys they were taken by one of the members to Thorn EMI and silver plated in the company's tanks. This explained all, but still left the club with the problem of how to repair the broken diver. The first approach to Thorne EMI for some further silver plating failed as they had removed their plant only the week before. No other source could be found and finally a replica bronze diver was purchased and replaced the original.

Ron had also been involved in the history of 'Ears' for whilst on a shallow dive at Portland he had surfaced a little more quickly than the desired rate and had suffered a perforated eardrum. This was commemorated at the next dinner dance with the award of a plastic ear, and the tradition of awards for those committing mistakes whilst diving came into being.

ACCIDENTS

Exactly ten years later to the very day, the club found itself on the 'Maureen' for a weekends diving from Dartmouth. The plan was to leave Dartmouth on Saturday morning and make our way South as far as Plymouth diving on the way down and spending the night at Cawsands. The boat was in the capable hands of Graham Bush a good friend who had taken us diving on many occasions. Our first dive of the weekend was the SS Maine at Salcombe, and we were all delighted to find that on entering the water the viability was incredible. From 10m the wreck could be seen spread out on the bottom in its entirety. This was especially pleasing as amongst the group were a number of new members and this was their first wreck dive. The Saturday was extremely successful and we eventually arrived in Cawsands late in the evening in order to anchor for the night. Sunday's programme began with a very early morning dive at the Eddystone, followed by a breakfast of bacon sandwiches and black coffee on site. All this frivolity was followed by a long debate on the diving for the rest of the day. We eventually decided that it would be best to steam back to Dartmouth before diving late in the afternoon in order to give a maximum surface interval. The dive was to be on the ‘Riversdale’, and my partner then as ten years previously was Geoff.

The underwater viability was still incredible and it was possible to view the entire length of the wreck from the broken bow. We resolved to return the following weekend to dive it again. The team for this mission consisted of Geoff, Mike, Vanessa and myself. We launched from Lanacombe. With our usual efficiency in wreck location, diving commenced approximately two hours late!

What slack!

Mike and Vanessa dived first and with the bottom at 42m, dive time was necessarily restricted. After what seemed an age they were seen to be decompressing on the shot line having spent far longer on the bottom than they had ever intended.

Geoff and I were worried.

Eventually they surfaced, and were so ecstatic over the exceptional visibility and how good the dive had been, that the lengthy dive time was somewhat overlooked. They had simply become carried away with the superb conditions on such an intact wreck. (In fact we had delayed re-surfacing so that Mike could retrieve his reel and line; we should have left it for the other two to retrieve but I suppose we were narked. Vanessa) In fact I had never seen such clarity in British waters before in my diving career. It was now our turn and with the tide starting to run, we made the best of our dive. All was well, and the exuberance of the day was put down to experience. It was only later that Vanessa was found to have suffered a Type II Bend.

STAG AND DOE DIVES

IN HONOUR OF VANESSA

Traditionally, once a year, towards the end of the season the male of the species would make the long and tiresome journey to Branscombe, Devon, with the sole intention of becoming totally inebriated for a whole weekend. The excuse given to the fairer sex being that we were going diving for the last weekend dive of the season. A poor excuse I know but for many years it seemed to work. Club boats would be taken and sometimes on the Saturday diving did take place. This invariably came to an end after the evening session at the local pub.

On one occasion conditions were particularly good. The surf was pounding up the beach. Launching was downright dangerous, and those that wanted to dive had to swim with their kit out to the boat. Ron reached the boat, took hold of the side, and promptly spat his false teeth into the murky deep waters of the English Channel.

The following year the stag dive again took place at Branscombe. Now, Chris was keen on metal detecting and often disappeared during the day to comb the beach for lost coins that reputedly were sufficient to pay for his beer for the weekend. On this occasion he returned with a pair of false teeth! Keeping them to himself he chose his moment during the evening session at the pub to drop them into Ron's pint. We all waited in anticipation. Ron eventually noticed when the teeth slipped down the side of the glass against his face.

Without batting an eyelid, he removed his own teeth and popped the new set in to check the fit. Perfect.

During these weekends almost anything went and a favourite game that was often played was 'Dead Flies' .For those of you who are not familiar with this popular party game I will explain the rules. Everyone contributes to a 'Kitty' for the winner and the game is played over the weekend with a finishing time on the Sunday afternoon. Those playing each get one life and when this life is lost they are out of the game. The winner is the last person with a life at close of play. Each player also has one call, 'Dead Flies', and when this call is made all of the other players have to throw themselves on the ground on their backs and shake their arms and legs in the air. The person who has called judges who was the last to go down and they lose their life. The only other rule is that no one is allowed to call if in doing so they endanger the others, anything else is allowed. Calls in the pub in the evening are popular but a bit expensive in beer.

Often at Branscombe when the conditions were too rough to dive we would spend the day beach combing and collecting driftwood to build a fire. After the pub all the divers would collect around the fire on the beech, toast sausages, and do stupid things. On one occasion someone brought some of that wire that they gave us to burn in chemistry at school. You know the stuff that burns so brightly that you can't look at it. Well they set it alight on the beech and night turned to day.

Skinny dipping was popular and I can well remember Mike racing across the pebbles in bare feet to swim out to an off shore buoy for a dare.

His feet have never been the same since.

Then there was the night that Tony fell out of the boot of Luke's Capri on the way home from the Pub.

When Luke went back for him he was laying in the road where he had fallen, too drunk to move.

One year the stag dive was moved to Bovisand. The resulting epic will be remembered by many. After a successful days diving we all travelled into Plymouth for a slap up meal at the China Garden, arriving back at 'Bovi at around 9.00pm. The bar was full but there was little of interest and the whole atmosphere was quiet. One group of divers from the midlands were attempting to liven up proceedings, and in a moment of folly encouraged by too much Saki, I stood upon a stool and announced to the entire bar that WDG were going to arrange a game of 'Silly Cricket' and that we were going to take the Warsaw Divers on. All divers are adaptable and no one really minded having their table moved up onto the raised section of the bar.

Wells hammered Warsaw to the delight of everyone, and to gain revenge their DO, built like a brick out house and with biceps like a gorilla, offered a return match in the form of a boat race. Steve, the Wells DO at the time took poll position at the head of the team. He assured us that he new what he was doing and that we were going to win again. The rest of us had serious doubts.

Before the start the Warsaw divers all dropped their trousers. Wells remained serious in their approach and at the gun Steve poured his pint down his throat in one huge gulp giving us such a lead that we won.

Warsaw were not amused and things became worse when their DO offered to buy Steve a pint. Steve, who was legless already, declined and said he would have a half.

"A half", the gorilla said. "You'll have a pint and like it" Steve quietly obliged.

Eventually everything cooled down and normal drinking resumed.

Later the club were in the market for a new echo sounder and as equipment officer I was given the task of looking around for the best deal. One of the suppliers that I rang was Bob Williams of Aquascan International. The moment that I spoke to him he mentioned that he new my voice but could not place me. The conversation continued until Bob suddenly said,

"I've got it, you’re the fool that stood on a stool at Bovisand last time I was there, and re organised the entire bar".

Often we would take a barrel of Wadworths 6X along on these events. It was usually set up on the Friday evening and left to settle until after the lunchtime pub session on Saturday. Our Bristol Dockers were in charge one year and were left on the beach with strict instructions not to touch the beer until the rest of the party returned from diving. When the boat returned the pair were sat on the balcony of the chalet each with a pint in their hand. The lad who had provided the barrel went storming up the beach with the rest of us in hot pursuit, all thought of landing the boat forgotten.

The Bristol lads were completely un-repentant and really stirred everyone up, pointing out that they had contributed towards the beer and why shouldn’t they have a drink. The more that they were chastised by the provider of the barrel, the more they laughed, and it gradually began to dawn on the rest of us that they were pulling some sort of stunt. Quite oblivious to this our leader was now ranting on about how they must have disturbed the barrel as the beer appeared to be very cloudy, and that it would now take longer to settle. One of the beer drinkers retorted that it was quite drinkable and proffered his glass, an ever-widening smile spreading across his face.

Cold tea looks very like cloudy beer! !

One year on the first day of the weekend I was diving in a threesome with Phil and John on the scallop banks off Beer Head. The first part of the dive had been fairly boring, the seabed flat and uninteresting, when we came across a very large dogfish. In fact the grand daddy of all dogfish, the biggest dog fish that I had ever seen. Well, fresh with the memory of succulent dogfish stakes from the club holiday in Pembrokeshire, I decided that this one was for the pot. Fortunately the underwater visibility was good and I managed to indicate to my partners to wait while I caught this monster of the deep. John had his Nikonos with him and snapped happily away as I approached the leviathan with my knife. From behind I struck the fish a massive blow on the top of the head, driving the knifepoint down into the flesh.

The shock to my wrist made me feel dizzy. The point of the knife penetrated at least 2mm and far from killing the creature, served only to make it very angry indeed. It lashed back and forth with its tail and broke free swimming off with a trail of blood streaming behind it. John continued to take photographs.

The dogfish was obviously stunned and instead of swimming off started to circle. I was in hot pursuit, knife raised, somewhat reminiscent of Lloyd Bridges in Seahunt. After two circuits I was making little progress and John decided to take a hand in events. Putting his camera down on the seabed he positioned himself in front of the dogfish and as it swam past him caught hold of it behind the head. All hell broke loose. The dogfish twisted and squirmed, the cloud of blood surrounding it grew larger, and the viability deteriorated as John attempted to subdue the monster. Within seconds John appeared from the cloud firmly attached to the dogfish that in turn was very firmly attached to John's right hand. We fought it into a post office sack that we had, still firmly attached to John, and then ceremoniously beat it about the head until it let go.

I was delighted.

John completed the dive with a trail of blood streaming from his hand.

It weighed twenty-two pounds, clearly too large for a common dog fish, and was identified as a bull huss, a member of the shark family. Still it was supposed to be as good eating as rock salmon, so home it went to be skinned and cut into steaks.

It looked excellent when I served it up to the family the following evening. I had made an onion sauce to accompany it and served it up with those lovely small new potatoes, and runner beans. The children tucked in first and after a very short time began to complain that they did not like the fish. This was quite usual with anything new and was quelled with a chorus of 'Be quiet and eat your food' .It had a pleasant taste to it and seemed no different to any other white fish.

The children continued to complain and it was not until I tried to swallow the mouthful that I had been quietly chewing that I realised that all was not well. It tasted fine, its consistency was fine, it looked fine but no matter what, you could not swallow it. It was like attempting to swallow a ball of rubber. Continuous chewing made no difference, and after a short while all had to admit defeat to the stringy stuff.

Well it would be fine for the next-door neighbour’s dog wouldn’t it! !

MOSES PARTED THE RED SEA DAVID WALKED ON THE WATER

Flushed with the success of the club holiday to Pembrokeshire, and harangued by the member’s wives who quite reasonably disliked sunbathing in the rain, the committee were persuaded to organise two weeks diving in the sun. It was 1979 and Malta came highly recommended for weather, diving, and cheapness. It had to be cheap; none of the members had any money.

Victor Azopardi organised a package for the club and off we all went to Gatwick for a late night flight. None of us having been abroad before, we had relied heavily on the villa company for advice and help on all sorts of minor problems. The girl that had looked after us did a wonderful job in most respects but had no experience of sending a group of errant divers abroad. Our luggage was checked in and all twelve divers, struggled through to the departure lounge burdened down by the weight of flight bags that were bulging with all the delicate and expensive bits of their equipment.

Here we sat for the next six hours while the aircraft that was due to carry us sat on the tarmac in Malta. Eventually the problem was resolved, the flight called, and we all trooped through to have our baggage searched prior to boarding. Of course these aircraft hold quite large numbers, and it was definitely a them-and-us situation when security began to pull great big knives from our hand luggage. Fearing arrest or even worse missing the holiday altogether I patiently explained that we were divers on our first trip abroad. At this point the metal detector that all have to walk through went off.

The rest of the passengers retreated further into their corner and began whispering to each other.

Fortunately Luke is not a terrorist and his tobacco tin was soon located, clearing him of any hi jack involvement.

The pilot was called and took our knives, for collection from him on Malta, and we were finally allowed to board. The flight was excellent except for the final descent into Luqa that had us all clearing our ears like mad to keep up with the steepness of the descent.

It was dark, humid and pouring with rain when I walked out across the tarmac to meet the pilot to retrieve our bag of knives. Come to sunny Malta Victor had said; to me it looked much like Pembrokeshire, it was certainly as wet.

Victor bundled us into the mini bus and we set off across the island. The place looked like a shantytown, the rain rushed in torrents along the gutters, there were part-finished buildings everywhere and the whole place looked shabby and scruffy.

What had we come to?

The following morning all looked much better, the rain had stopped, the raging torrents had evacuated the gutters, and in the distance the sea could be seen sparkling in the sunlight. It was a wonderful morning and we were all desperate to sample the diving.