Category: Life jacket

Newsletter: Testing 123

Hi divers

Weekend dive plans

Saturday: Two launches from False Bay Yacht Club, meeting at 8.00 am

A long period 3 metre swell arrives tomorrow, drops on Saturday and then builds again on Sunday. I am planning two launches early on Saturday morning as I have several students to certify. We will meet in the car park at False Bay Yacht Club at 8.00 am. Destination unknown and weather dependent. If you’re keen on a magical mystery tour, drop me an email, text or Whatsapp.

The boat from underwater
The boat from underwater

Keeping busy

In case you missed it on the blog this week, we tested one of our self-inflating life jackets in the pool, to see what would happen when it got wet. It works!

Maritime archaeologist John Gribble is speaking at the auditorium of the South African Astronomical Observatory on Wednesday 17 August, 4.30 for 5.00 pm. His talk is entitled “From Shipwrecks to Hand Axes: An Introduction to South Africa’s Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage” and is described as follows:

South Africa’s maritime and underwater cultural heritage is surprisingly diverse and extremely rich. Although shipwrecks are the most obvious elements of this rich heritage resource, there are a range of pre-colonial maritime heritage resources that are less well known. This talk will introduce South Africa’s maritime and underwater cultural heritage, highlight the archaeological importance of this resource, and touch on a few examples of interesting, local historical wrecks.

There is no need to book, the event is free to the public.

regards

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

Diving is addictive!

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Testing a self-inflating life jacket

If you’ve been on our boat, you may have noticed that I always wear a life vest. It’s a slimline one that we purchased in Denmark a few years ago. The vest contains a small gas cannister with a pellet (looks like a headache pill) that releases the gas in the cannister and inflates the jacket when the pellet gets wet enough to dissolve.

Tony's "don't take my photo" face
Tony’s “don’t take my photo” face

When we went back to Copenhagen between Christmas and New Year, we purchased replacement cannisters, thinking that for safety’s sake it would be wise to service our life jackets to ensure that when we need them, they’re in tip top condition.

The question then arose as to what to do with the existing, unused cannisters in the life vests. Since you can repack the vest with a new gas cannister and dry pellet after deployment, and neither Clare nor I had seen one of these life jackets in action before, we decided to let it fire off in the swimming pool. Here are the results:

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iusc5FNKxFs&w=540″]

It definitely renewed my confidence in the life jacket, an important component of our safety gear, and (as you can hear in the video) provided some significant entertainment for my camera person Clare.