Like so many great ideas the journey towards this year’s 24 Hour Dive Challenge was decided of a few pints. At the end of last year’s pack up Claire, Brian, Stuart and I celebrated with a drink and decided there and then that this should be an annual event. Slowly the wheels began to turn and on the 27th of May the Wellington City Council accepted 
our application to have the 24 Hour Dive at Scorching Bay on the 7th and 8th of December. Now that we knew the event was going to happen we started planning. By the time we hit September we had a plan of what we wanted the event to be. We began to bring the 24 Hour Dive Facebook back into action and started to engage with divers on the event.
Bigger and better. This is what we wanted this year. We wanted to see the event grow and involve more of the public. We made a push to get a bit of publicity from local papers and radio. It was a success, Radio Active plugged the 24 Hour Dive
in their community notices, both the Hutt News and the Upper Hutt leader gave us a little write up and the Dominion Post gave us a great article in Capital Day. This was exactly the start we needed to make this year’s 24 Hour Dive bigger, but we still wanted another way to bring in the donations, so we approached local business for sponsorship of a raffle.
In what felt like no time at all it was 9am on Saturday the 7th of December. The weather was less than ideal, 45knot winds, and 2m swell in the harbour. My heart sank as I drove around the bays thinking we may have to postpone the event until 
next week. But as I came around in to the relative shelter of scorching bay I let out a sigh of relief, the bay was flat and looked perfect for diving. The surface on the other hand was less than ideal. The blustery wind made setting up a nightmare, and if not for the help of Shayne Garratt and Scott Gameson potentially impossible for only two people like we had planned.
2:00pm saw the arrival of our first divers Oscar and Dean. These two had set themselves the challenge of completing a 45 minute dive every time the time sheet read: 00. This meant 12 dives which would have added up to nine hours under water! This year’s 24 Hour 
dive also saw what may be the longest dive ever made in scorching bay, if not Wellington. Pete Humphris spent over 9 consecutive hours underwater, that’s a whopping 10,800 litres of air consumed. It seemed that everyone was keen to get involved and do their part this year, even Mayor Celia Wade-Brown. We were even able to coax Tomo out of the shop for a dive.
As the event rolled on we had 56 divers take part in the event, those 56 people worked together to complete 51 dives, with some people completing more than one dive. That means that there will be 114 log book entries from the event! That doesn’t include all the people who just came down to see what was going on though.
The day would not have been the same if it was not for everyone hanging around 
and helping out. Zach Best deserves a special mention for all the help he gave us ensuring the day ran as smoothly as possible even though he couldn’t get in the water for a dive. And let’s not forget the Kiwi Tub spa provided by one of the Dad’s – thanks Max! Defiantly one of my highlights was sitting in the tub (in my drysuit of course) relaxing and warming up after a particularly chilly dive at 5:20am.
For me it has been so satisfying seeing the 24 Hour Dive run so smoothly, but it would not have been possible without help from so many of you. In particular we would like to thank all of the business that sponsored spot prizes or raffle prizes. So thank you Oceanic New Zealand, Mares New Zealand, The Dive Doctor, Chocolate Fish Cafe, Ripe Cafe, John Vaughn Ltd, PADI, Unilever and Ocean Sports Wellington. Thank you to everyone who bought a raffle ticket but only one could walk away with the Grand Prize and that lucky person was Cameron Parks.
Next year I’m sure the 24 Hour Dive will be even bigger. We all seemed to have so much fun and to get the chance to hang out together rather than just dive is something I think we all love about the 24 Hour Dive Challenge.