Road Trip!
Dive HQ Wellington’s first dive was planned the Waikato River – this is an awesome dive starting in town by Cherry Island and finishing down a Reid’s Farm. The river drops away in parts to 15m before rising back to 2m around the islands which makes for some wicked current and eddies. The rock formations make for some interesting viewing and the trout and koura were particularly friendly on this dive. After a quick visit to the hot pools the divers cruised back across the river to the exit.
After the Introductory session where we got to meet the large number of divers that were arriving from around the country and overseas, the divers split into various groups for their first dive briefing.
We had divers keen to try CCR Rebreathers & Scooters and students completing the TDI Intro to Tec (ITT) course. This course was offered to keen students free thanks to TDI and the students had completed their online theory prior to TecFest. Claire received her TDI Instructor Certification and a little light reading with her new Instructor Manual!
Divers then got to head down to the beach and ‘Tecsplore’ the underwater world. The ITT students focused on fin kicks – sounds easy? Maybe not – especially when you throw in helicopter turns in both directions and the student’s favourite – the back kick! They also got to deploy an SMB – Surface Marker Buoy whilst underwater.
One of our Instructors took the opportunity to take her daughter for her first deep dive – once you swam out over the 4m platform the edge just dropped away to well over 21m which is the Junior Deep Dive limit. After this dive she got to complete her DPV Adventure Dive with Jamie from Tech Dive NZ. The scooters were nearly as big as she was but apparently they are “Awesome”.
After dinner we all gathered back in the auditorium for presentations on Decompression Theory and the Shearwater Petrel as well as Cave Diving Expeditions both here and in Australia. After a busy day and with lots of diving planned for Saturday it was an early night for all.
The next morning we all cruised back down to the beach for more diving. The ITT divers need to use independent air sources so divers took the opportunity to dive in twin tanks on dive 2 then used a sling on their final dive but passing it to another diver is not easy. Students continued to practice some fin kicks and the proper use of an SMB and completed some skills while hovering over the drop off. This course highlights the need for good teamwork and buoyancy control – especially when task loaded. All skills that need practice for all divers.
With so many try dives on offer we ran out of time to do everything – but there is always next year!
The event finished with presentations by Lamar Hires on the history of sidemount diving and from Matt on maritime archaeology. In particular their project on the Norwegian Whaling Station on Stewart Island.
After presenting the students with their certification cards it was time for everyone to relax and mingle and talk about diving -the experiences they had over the weekend and now what they are now inspired to try.
Bring on TecFest 2015!