Newsletter: Crystal clear water

Hello everyone

I can confirm, with pictures, that the clean winter water has arrived and to top it all the water has held its temperature well and we had 14 degrees on the weekend. Cape Town is an all year round dive spot and winter is by far the best season as the southeaster that blows in summer is the cause of many cancellations in the dive industry. Winter also opens up the possibility for dive sites like Sunny Cove near Fishoek, the North Battery Pipeline near Simon’s Town and Windmill Beach. Windmill is an amazing dive but seldom if ever with good viz in summer.

Past dives

On Saturday we started with a dive to the SAS Fleur. A navy frigate scuttled in 1965, it lies on the sand in 42 metres of water. The site is out in the middle of False Bay close to Seal Island. The water was so clean that at 20 metres if you looked up you could see the dive boats on the surface and if you looked down you could see the wreck. I had no idea False Bay could get so clean.

We dived the Clan Stuart wreck and A Frame on Sunday and the pictures below tell it all. Clean water with great visibilty.

Whilst on the wreck Clare found a small onefin electric ray. Besides give us a chance for a few good photos before burying itself in the sand I also had a chance at making a short video and discovered that as soon as I came within a metre of the ray my screen developed a series of lines on the video and these cleared when I moved away. I moved closer again and had the same thing, so clearly they send out some strong electrical charge… They are called numbfish locally, I now understand why!

Boat dives

The weather this weekend does not look as great as it should and Grant will only launch tomorrow and Sunday. Tomorrow’s weather looks really great so take the day off and get some aquatic therapy. Remember with boat dives the spots fill up very quickly so it is important we book early.

Training

I am often accused of not being very aggressive with marketing of training courses. When I started diving I remained an Open Water diver for 10 years before I did another course and this was partly due to the feelings I always had that the dive schools I dived with tried to shove a course down my throat every time they saw me and every time I went diving. I resisted this and had done almost 100 dives before I did an Advanced diver course. Now that I make a living from this industry I am meant to be pushy in selling courses but I still feel that divers should make the decision to do a course on their own. There is a link at the bottom of this mail to our blog where you can read all about the different Specialties and types of diving if you want to know more or you can just mail me with any questions.

Once you feel its time to do something then I will be there like a shot to tell you what I believe the next best step to be given the type of diving you enjoy, until then I really enjoy the fun dives I do with many of my ex-students and casual diving is also very appealing to me as I can then take my camera. So if you just want to get some diving done to expand on your experience then the casual shore dives, night dives and boat dives we do every week are a good way to do this.