On Sunday the 23rd of October Rachel, Tomo, Shane and I (Jacob) packed the Navara with dive gear and headed to Taupo to dive the Rena the following day. I must say I was very excited and I bet everyone else was too! It was a long drive towards Taupo and I just couldn’t wait for the next day to come. The following day we got up nice and early at 5.30am and got ready to leave to Tauranga. We shortly arrived at the meet up point were we meet Auckland Scuba Dive and their huge boat! We got all our gear on the boat and made our way to the Rena. The trip was very bouncy for Shane and I (being at the front of the bow) for a estimated time of 50 minutes. We tied up to the stern of the ship which sat in 36metres of water, Sadly I wasn’t certified to that depth. We all rolled off to boat into the blue ocean, Tomo and I were buddy’s for both dives. We slowly descended down to 30metres where we could see the ship in front of us but since I cant dive to 40m we had to turn around and have a look at the Reef. The Reef was amazing and full of color, there was schools of fish and sections of steel from the Rena lying around. We spend most of the dive around the 30m-20m mark for quite some time having a look. The second dive we moved over to “Dive site 1” were the Coast Guard was happily enjoying the day in the sun fishing. We dived down to 29meters where we had seen a big section of the wreck. We explored around the wreak and had a look inside. I nearly put my hand on a scorpion fish, thankfully it seen my hand coming and swam away. Sadly I may have been slightly narked and when I saw a huge puffer fish swimming around I must say it was hilarious. We hovered around a sting ray while Tomo took pictures, luckily he didn’t mind our presence. We were coming close to our no Deco limits and our air was getting low so we made our way to the safety stop and warmer waters. It was a great experience and possibly the best dives I’ve ever done. I would like to thank Auckland Scuba Dive and Dive HQ Wellington for this great opportunity and I would definitely recommended diving the Rena for anyone interested in […]
Is it safe to get back in the water this summer?
There we were at Kau Point getting set up for an enjoyable dive (just like we had many times before). Then out of the blue (greenish if you are going by the water colour) we were informed that there was a lost object that needed to be found. Little did we know that our lovely […]
Club Dives
Spring is finally here and the dive club had a busy weekend with a variety of dive activities planned. Saturday morning saw us dive over at Whitireia Park with some new divers experiencing their first fun dive after completing their Open Water Course. The sun was shining as we entered in at the point and […]
Niue 2016
Each year the dive club aims to escape winter and heads overseas for some amazing diving. This year we headed over to the tiny island of Niue. Three and half hours northeast of Auckland, Niue is a rugged coral atoll with an amzing coastline with caves, chasms and lagoons to explore. The diving is fantastic with clear waters, […]
Sidemount Diving
Sidemount diving has been around for a long time. It has always been used in the secretive world of the extreme cave and wreck explorers, allowing them to get into tighter restrictions inaccessible to back mounted divers. Nowadays sidemount is becoming popular with open water diving for several reasons. […]
PADI Women’s Dive Day 2016
It may be the middle of winter but that didn’t stop our female club divers getting together and enjoying a dive at Mahanga Bay to celebrate this worldwide event. It was a lovely day with no wind (a shock to our system) and lots of sunshine […]
Adopting a Dive Site
Why adopt a dive site at all? This is Project AWARE’s latest campaign to tackle marine debris and track the amount of debris that enters a dive site over time. We have committed to dive at our adopted dive site every month for a year and submit data on the rubbish collected. We have selected […]
TecFest New Zealand 2016
On Friday the 6th of May Rachel and I (Jacob) headed to MiCamp for TecFest which was at Lake Taupo. It was a long trip and we had the music blasting, I even managed to get a quick snooze before all the diving started! We got to TecFest just after the first talk and we got our goody bags. We were entered into spot prizes and had […]
Coastguard Raft Race
Five years ago the team at Dive & Ski HQ decided that the Volunteer Wellington Coastguard deserved our support. They provide a great service to divers and others that love the ocean and spend a lot of time out on, in and under the water. Our biggest fundraising effort occurs in November when we run […]
Poor Knights 2016
The Poor Knights Islands are rated in the top 10 dive sites world wide and they definitely live up to their reputation. So it was with great excitement that a group of club divers headed north for a 4 day liveaboard adventure with Oceanblue. Our dive gear was set […]