Dive Industry – Page 15 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

People: Errand Girl

One of our divers, Bernita, has started a small business called Errand Girl, and we thought we would give her the opportunity to tell you a little about herself and what she does:

I consider myself an avid diver, although I’m sure Tony will tell you otherwise as I’ve not been in the water much of late!I started diving in Honduras in 2003 and have more or less been hooked ever since. In 2005 I traveled to Thailand where I did my Advanced course and fun dive after fun dive. Eventually my Thai visa expired, forcing me to travel to neighboring Malaysia, where I found the most beautiful rustic island I could have imagined (the Perhentian Islands) and set up home base there. I did my Rescue and Divemaster courses and worked as a Divemaster for two years. Finally I decided to take the next step and become an Instructor (I did my IDC at FloraBay Dive Center). I spent the better part of 6 years in South East Asia, working in the industry, or going on dive holidays (some people call me a “dive-dork” but I don’t mind, ‘cos it’s true).

I decided though, in June last year, that it was time to move back to Cape Town, mostly to be near to my family. I still wonder what I was thinking, giving up a life filled with beaches, sunshine and diving, but nonetheless, here I am.Initially I returned to the advertising industry, but recently decided that an office job was just too much for me to bear. So I decided to start a small business that would keep me on my toes and take me out and about. Hence, the birth of Errand Girl.

Here is some information Bernita’s business:

Errand Girl is a lifestyle management and concierge company. We aim to give you the ultimate gift: more free time to do with as you please! We offer a helping hand, making sure all those to-do’s get done, so you don’t have to think about them again. If you don’t have the time or inclination to attend to a task, we will take care of it entirely.

The list of services we offer is vast and tailored to each client’s needs: Errand Girl can drop your lawn mower at the repair shop, pop into Woolies for the forgotten groceries, gather quotes for that long awaited irrigation system, collect a birth certificate from Home Affairs, meet the plumber mid-morning to repair the burst geezer, find a fairy for your daughter’s birthday party, pay your traffic fines – we can send, phone, research, find, quote, arrange, meet, collect and deliver – you name it and we’ll do it.

Errand Girl charges an hourly rate for services rendered (excluding expenses incurred and petrol outside of the Cape Town CBD area). We send you a monthly statement reflecting how and when your time and money as been spent. We do not charge a commission on purchases or services sourced.

If you are interested to learn more about what Errand Girl offers please go to my website, www.errandgirl.co.za.

Bernita checks out a wall in the chilly Atlantic

Bernita also told us about some of her favourite diving in South East Asia (which makes me want to pack my dive gear and hop on a plane right away!). Here are her recommendations:

I wanted to tell you about a couple of my favorite Asian dive spots, but its too difficult to name just one so here’s a short(ish) list:

Malapascua (Philippines): Here they have almost daily sightings of thresher sharks and regular visits from manta rays and eagle rays. There is also great macro diving there, although the fish population is small and coral reefs have fallen victim to dynamite fishing.

Apo Island (Philippines): A very well managed marine park with huge populations of fish, sharks and rays and pristine reef.

Coron (Philippines): This place is unique in that an entire fleet of World War II Japanese ships was sunk in this bay so this is a wreck diver’s dream destination. The dive operators there allow full wreck penetration and the ships still have a lot of equipment and artifacts to see. There is also lots of fish life at these wrecks. Also very cool is Barracuda Lake (which houses no barracuda or other fish for that matter?!) but is cool because the top 6 metres consists of cold fresh water, then from 6-18 metres is warm (28 degree) salt water and below that from 18-30 metres is hot (37 degree) salt water. At 30 metres the water turns literally black- if you stick your hand below the 30m mark it disappears. I found it cool to see the thermoclines in otherwise clear still water and to feel the heat on the way down and the cold on the way up (I would advise definitely not to wear a wetsuit). You do however have a short climb up a limestone rock face, dive gear and all in order to dive here. I thought it was well worth it!

Komodo National Park (Indonesia): “Wild” diving with some crazy currents but amazing sightings. Loads of sharks (black tip reef, white tip, grey reef), dolphins, manta rays, as well as excellent macro dives. Another great thing about diving in the area is the opportunity to see Komodo dragons in the wild. I did a liveaboard in this area, which I can highly recommend as land based diving here requires long boat journeys and grotty hotel accommodation.

Bali (Indonesia): Bali has a lot of good and varied diving to offer. I dived the USS Liberty wreck in Tulamben. This dive sight is great as its only 30 metres off shore and max depth is 30 metres. The visibility is generally 15+ metres and the wreck is home to a huge variety of life from pygmy sea horses and ornate ghost pipefish to giant barracuda and schools of surgeon fish. I also dived off Nusa Lombongan and was lucky enough to see quite a few manta rays and sunfish (mola mola).

Lembeh Straights (Indonesia): if you like hunting for the weird and wonderful, it just does not get better than this! Lembeh has huge numbers of nudis, wonderpus, flambouyant cuttlefish, blue ringed octopus, pygmy sea horses, bobbit worms, hairy frog fish… the list is literally endless.

Sipadan (Malaysian Boreneo): Clear warm waters (visibility of 20+ metres), pristine reefs, loads of fish, turtles and sharks, lots of schooling barracudas and bumphead parrot fish.

(If you’re if heading to Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia and would like advise on dive spots, places to stay, food or other, please email me on bernita@errandgirl.co.za I’ll be happy to help if I can.)

Bernita now braves the relatively cool Cape Peninsula waters as often as her (busy) schedule allows. Why not check out the Errand Girl website to see whether she can help free up some of your time… To go diving of course!

Group buying websites

The growth of group buying websites in South Africa has been on the increase of late and I think the almost worldwide squeeze on disposable income has contributed to their success.

The concept is easy to understand. The website operators arrange a huge discount from a supplier, add a commission for themselves and then promote your product or service. For some of these sites the number of views per deal offered is staggering. The deal goes live on their website for seven days with a minimum number of purchases required to make the deal work. If not enough people buy, the deal falls away.

Dealio is a relative newcomer to the arena and was therefore my choice for running a diving promotion. The bigger the company the harder they squeeze you for a big discount and the greater the commission the make. Whilst our promotion was on the front page of Dealio they had a radio advert where the deal, and therefore Learn to Dive Today, was mentioned on radio.

We track the number of visits to our website and on the day the deal was opened we had a jump to ten times the daily average for the month. In total 29 people bought a Discover Scuba Diving experience and I was extremely happy with that number, not to mention the radio air time, web advertising and traffic to our website. To top it all, the first to people to arrive for their diving experience had decided on an underwater proposal so this made it a very special occasion.

SimplyScuba.com: the online option

We were recently approached by an online scuba store in the UK called SimplyScuba.com to review their offering for the benefit of our blog readers. I have spent some time on their website and discovered that apart from a very large range of gear and diving equipment they also have exceptional prices. The website is very easy to use and the pages all have pictures of the items you are looking for. Furthermore they have a nifty facility that tells you if they have stock and if they don’t, just when they will. They accept all major credit cards and most other modes of payment.

I took a random selection of items, the kind of things I would buy as well as a few items Clare and have purchased in the last year and done a comparison.

I recently bought a Mares Nemo Wide at a good price locally, but a month later decided I wanted the download cable to update my logbook. I paid R1 500. This item from SimplyScuba.com costs half of that.
Clare bought a Suunto D6 recently: the local price is around R10 000. From SimplyScuba.com it costs R6 000.
The make of fins I use and have used for many years (I buy a new pair every few years) are Tusa Imprex. My last pair cost R1 200. SimplyScuba.com would charge me R600.
A 10 or 12 litre cylinder here in South Africa will cost between R3 300 and R3 800, yet their price is almost half of this.

I could go on but a visit to the website and a good browse will show you just how much can be saved.

You can also pick items on the SimplyScuba.com website that should be more expensive to purchase from them rather than at home. Sometimes the results are surprising. For example, we have gloves and hoodies and wetsuits manufactured right here, less than 10 kilometres from my home, yet the price for a local pair of 3 millimetre gloves is 50% more that an equivalent branded glove in the UK. It’s important to research your options thoroughly!

There are shipping/postage costs (and these are very steep, given that SimplyScuba.com, like Amazon, does not ship standard mail to South Africa but only courier – the minimum postage charge is about R550) and import tax (14% VAT plus a search fee to be paid when the parcel arrives in South Africa) for anything bought abroad. These costs are high, but in some instances – when you wish to buy something big and expensive, for example – you may still find that buying the item online with SimplyScuba.com is cheaper, even when you factor in shipping and VAT.

Something you must be careful about, and research thoroughly, are the warranty and repair implications when you shop online. If there isn’t a local agent for your product, you may have to send it overseas for inspection and repair if it fails. This can cost money, so remember to factor it all in.

I know that there are a whole lot of reasons why we pay more in South Africa for goods: not least because of the smaller market, shipping costs, and so on. I spent several years of my life in the import business importing motor spares from many countries (China, Japan, the UK and the USA). Shipping in containers (of all different sizes) with the correct mix of goods is very cost effective. The steel cylinders we buy here are Faber, made in Italy, which means the UK also have transport costs. A vast majority of dive goods are made in Taiwan, China and similar areas, so if suppliers in South Africa bought directly from the manufacturer why does our price need to be so high?

I am not suggesting you now disown your local dive centre but before you rush out and buy expensive dive gear do some research, make sure you know what is available as we have very limited options in South Africa, make sure you check prices and then armed with this information choose where you buy. It’s very important to shop around – dive gear is an expensive purchase!

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.

Blue gas flame nudibranch inside the swim through at A Frame

Yours in diving

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

To dive, or not to dive?

Becoming a qualified scuba diver is for some people a dream, a huge achievement, for some just another minor achievement and for others a piece of cake. Irrespective of your comfort level when trying something new, the level of enjoyment is largely dependent on the rate of progress you make and the diligence of the trainer.

I tried skydiving once and had my first jump cancelled several times, not by the instructor, but by the pilot who refused to take-off in poor conditions. I tried microlights too and had the same problem. Diving is no different. The Instructor or Divemaster should cancel the day’s diving if the conditions are less than optimal.

Unpleasant surface conditions at the Clan Stuart

It is true to say that once below the surface the conditions above don’t always have too much bearing on the dive. Choppy surface conditions can soon be forgotten once at depth. For a seasoned diver the surface conditions are seldom a big issue but new divers and for students slowly coming to terms with a host of new skills, equipment, and the recent dive briefing are very susceptible to panic on the surface.

A stressed diver on the surface, being battered by choppy seas is often encouraged to descend: “Descend quickly and then you will feel better.” This is far from the truth. Descending a near-panicked diver or even a highly stressed diver is the wrong choice. Put them back on the boat or take them back to shore.

The same is true for poor visibility, which can often increase stress and lead to panic. Diving in bad visibility is a skill that will be learned at a more advanced level – an Open Water diver should not have to contend with pea-soup on their first sea dives.

Chocolate-coloured visibility in False Bay

A new diver has many new things to think about and to ensure they get the pleasure from diving they should it is important to move at a pace that maintains their sense of achievement and that they are ready for the next step before you proceed. All too often time and money influence the decisions to dive or cancel, and new divers end up going into the ocean when they honestly should not, and if they were given a choice they would not dive. A Divemaster or Instructor insisting that “the water will be fine when we are in” is doing the dive industry a disservice as most new divers never dive again if their qualifying dives were a nightmare.

Discounted DSD on Dealio

How’s that for Monday morning alliteration?

Learn to Dive Today is offering PADI Discover Scuba Diving experiences at a huge discount on group buying website Dealio – if you’ve been thinking about scuba diving but not quite sure what to do about it, why not sign up and use the opportunity to try diving! The weather in Cape Town has just turned and we expect fantastic diving conditions from here on through to next summer.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of group buying, it’s a fantastic concept that enables customers to harness the power of bulk buying to obtain good prices from goods and service providers. Provided a minimum number of people buy the deal (in our case, six), the merchant agrees to offer the goods at a huge discount. If not enough people sign up, the deal falls away. Check out the How it Works page on Dealio for a much better explanation than this!

Top up my cylinder… and win a repeat customer

Your day’s diving is only over once you are home, equipment rinsed, dried and stored and your cylinders are full. If you own your own gear and live on a coastline like we have in Cape Town then diving is a very cheap sport or hobby. You only expense, other than the trip there and back, would be to fill your cylinders.

Popular cylinders are 10 litre and 12 litre cylinders and if you dived at one of the multitude of easy shore entries around the Cape Peninsula where depths vary from 3 m to 12 metres you can quite easily end up with 100 bar in your cylinder at the end of a 50 minute dive.

If you dived at home in your pool to test your gear or work on buoyancy you would likely have 150 bar after more than an hour in the water. The same cylinder on a 30 metre deep dive for a total dive time of 30-40 minutes including safety stops would be at around 50 bar if you followed your dive plan.

The whole thing is that if you arrived at a dive centre, with a tiny 7 litre cylinder that needs 50 bar (350 litres of air) or a huge 18 litre at 50 bar – requiring about 3000 litres of air to fill to 220 bar – most, but not all dive centres will charge the same flat fee for filling. I understand that everyone has their own business plan and set of procedures but in reality this does not bode well for customer retention

A dive centre that is quick at filling, or that charges less if you only have a “top up” will foster good relations with customers, and if you are happy in their space you will probably buy from that shop

The dive centre that is slow, or charges you full price in fact forces you away as you now go to a different centre to fill, and ultimately make other purchases there too. I drive past three dive centres on most diving days to end up at centre number 4 to fill my cylinders, why? Dive centre 4 is friendly (so are the others), but if I need a top up that’s what I pay for. The staff will always talk diving and show you the latest gadgets, and this fosters good relationships and this is where I shop.

As a diver with your own gear you will always attend to any faults with haste otherwise they spoil the diving experience. As an independent instructor I have eight sets of gear. The gear works harder than the average diver’s gear so a fair amount of maintenance is required. Almost weekly something needs to be fixed: reels wear out, torches get dropped, gloves become holed, fin straps break and the list goes on. Students need everything to work properly if they are to have a good experience so this constant expenditure is necessary.

Where do I buy all of these consumables? Often at the same centre that fills my cylinders. It’s the same place you will go when you need an expensive item such as a new BCD, a download cable for a dive computer, and it is most likely the place you will drop off your regulators for service when the time comes. It is also the place you will buy a bargain from as being a regular customer means the centre knows how you think, the type of stuff you most often buy, and what you do, so when a bargain arrives that they know is just what you need they will do their best to put you and the item in the same area, and hey presto they have a sale…

Like this one!

But more on the new compressor in another post…

15 minutes of fame

Handsome husband Tony is featured on The Dive Site this week in their new 15 Minutes of Fame section. Check out the article here.

Magazine: Submerge

Submerge is the other not-for-free South African diving magazine, alongside Divestyle. (The Dive Site is the free one, and is preferable not only for the reason of its cost…)

The Submerge website is smaller and contains less current diving information than that of Divestyle, and while the Current Affairs section on the website is interesting, the absence of dates on the posts makes for frustrating reading. The same section in the magazine is far more useful.

The magazine itself has a more dated look than Divestyle but I find it to be more content-rich and the photographs are more numerous and in general magnificent. Valda Fraser is a regular photographic contributor. She’s the co-author of More Reef Fishes & Nudibranchs, a stalwart on our Sodwana trip (the book, not Valda).

Regular sections include an Ask DAN column, in a sort of agony-auntie format, and the magazine seems to have a close affiliation with DAN. There are also regular Instructor Diaries (often more than one), and a double page spread of Current Affairs. For those who like to (or bother to) tweak their photos after the fact (clearly I am not one of them), there’s a regular Photoshop section that demonstrates simple effects and adjustments for underwater photographers.

One of my favourite sections is the Portfolio section, where an underwater photographer gets to show off a sample of his or her best work. There are the usual features on gadgets and gizmos, including lots of photographic gear.

There are several regular sections that make Submerge a magazine you want to keep:

There’s a regular Dive Sites section, with photos and useful facts about dive sites all along the Southern African and Mozambican coastline.
Species Focus is a short one or two page bullet-form article with photos, concerning a particular species
There’s a “collectable” fish ID section of which Dennis King is often co-author and photographer. This is very useful for distinguishing different types of ray, butterfly fish, nudibranch, or other marine creature. There are sometimes multiple fish ID sections per issue.

Submerge does sometimes have a column or two on technical diving, but it’s much less of a feature than it is in Divestyle.

Like Divestyle, Submerge comes out six times per year, lagging Divestyle by one month.

Latest issue (February/March 2011)

The latest issue is rich on dive travel features, something at which Submerge is very good. Adam Cruise writes an article on diving in Pomene in Mozambique – seahorse heaven apparently! – and there’s a gorgeous photo spread by Valda Fraser of creatures seen on a night dive in the same location.

The featured underwater photographer in the Portfolio section is Mark van Coller, and the cover image (a beautiful seal) is also his. There’s also a feature (with lovely photos) on the destructive crown of thorns starfish. Species Focus is on batoids (skates and rays). Unfortunately our own giant short-tailed stingray was missing!

Submerge is running a series on shipwrecks at the moment, compiled by Wreckseekers. It’s more about the legends and history than about diving the wrecks, but interesting nonetheless.

If you had to choose between Divestyle and Submerge, I’d subscribe to Submerge, particularly if you have a special interest in underwater photography, dive travel or species identification.

Past dives

Boat dives

Training

Latest issue (Summer 2011)

Latest issue (February/March 2011)