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Holiday time is upon us, and with it the dry season has arrived. Yes we still have the occasional early morning showers, but the days are dry, and the seas are calm.
Great Weather is here !!
That means we are headed into the best diving of the year. Already visibility has increased to the point that on most days you can see the Blue Hole from the surface. That’s a good 18m/60’ of viz. Fantastic. The waters are warm, as usual. And they’ll be getting warmer. So if anybody has let their dive gear dry out, this is definitely the time start getting wet again.
Get your Dive Equipment ready - -
If it has been awhile since you’ve been in the water, it would be a good idea to drop your regulators off for their yearly servicing. Getting your yearly service, keeps the regulators in warranty, and that’s important.
If you have your own tanks, the valves do need servicing too. So when you take them in for the annual Visual inspection, make sure you’re asking for valve service, especially if you can’t remember when they were last serviced.
Last thought on servicing, you might want to have the technician check out your BCD, the dump valves have an o-ring that needs to be inspected. It’s not something that needs replacement every year. But it should be checked.
The dry season with its calm waters, soft breezes, makes for awesome diving both inside the harbor and outside. That means really every weekend, and every dive site is likely to be a great dive.
Looking out for the Pelagics :-)
Recently, the Blue Hole has been host to a juvenile white tip shark. He or she, (haven’t gotten close enough to see which) is a little over 2 meters long, and has been seen several times over the past couple of weeks. While we’re often looking for the small stuff, like nudibranchs, one should take those occasional glances around, especially scanning the open blue, for the larger aquatic life, that prefers to keep its distance from divers.
Taking your next step down the dive training Ladder @ GTDS
If you are fairly new to diving, or you’ve been just the occasional diver, it would do your dive life a lot of good to consider doing either your Advanced Open Water Diver or Enriched Air Diver certifications. Both of these certifications will add a lot to your diving.
Advanced Open Water Diver
Advanced will improve your skills and knowledge to handle deeper dives (up to 30m/100’) and navigation, along with three other areas of diving. Other areas of diving to sample during your Advanced class include: Drift Diving, Digital Photography, Night Diving, Wreck Diving, Naturalist, Search and Recovery, Buoyancy, Videography, just to name a few.
That gas they call Nitrox
Enriched Air, better known as Nitrox, will provide you with the knowledge and credential needed to get the most from every dive and every dive trip. Because diving with Nitrox will allow you extend your bottom times, and, or, shorten your surface intervals.
For example, if you dive on air, and go to depths around 26m/86’ your no-decompression limit(NDL) is 27 minutes. However if you are diving with 32% enriched air, then your NDL is 40 minutes. Or even better, if you are diving 36% enriched air, your NDL is a whopping 50 minutes.
If you’ve been diving with your Open Water Diver cert, and that’s all, is it not time to consider expanding your dive options? Advanced Open Water Diver, and Enriched Air Diver both, are incredibly valuable certs, and the great part? You can take them separately or together, up to you.
We’re here for you, every day of the year -
So give us a call at GTDS, we can not only take you out diving on any day of the year, we can offer you the certification course you need, any day of the year too.
