Had I known the Santa dive was going to be a post seasonal event I could have bought my outfit at half the cost, or is that me just being tight. Having said that I noted my costume was simply a series of red sections cut from my Buddies trouser leg stapled on to my back and the hat super glued onto my full-face mask. Points go to Piers who, having turned up to the world record Santa dive record attempt with not one item of a Santa regalia managed, somehow to sponge and entire costume off one of the camera men….only Piers.
As expected Vobster was a sea of red and white Santas with the odd green elf dotted here and there. Are elves counted in a world record Santa attempt I’m not sure. What aren’t counted as I soon found out were 9 inch plastic dolls, I don’t know why I bothered. I noted there was a Jack Russell Santa,I bet she was include in the official figures.
After the rest of the team registered, all the Santas gathered for the dive brief and the big photo. The brief was simple, we dive in three large groups around the lake and we must ensure that as a whole, we all stay down for a minimum of twenty minutes. The more astute of us soon realised that if you were first in you would have to stay in for up to 50 minutes to make sure the world record was legitimate. In 5 degree lake water that was not particularly appealing and so there was certain amount of pretend faffing whilst the more hardy or probably cerebrally challenged divers jumped in first, ho ho.
Having taken the plunge I noticed my buddies hat came off immediately, what a loser, if only he’d super glued his hat on like I had. We dropped down into the green murk and took a cracking photo of Ricky with his “Merry Christmas from IlFSAC sign” This surely has to be the December plate for the 2012 calendar. After a bit of mud crawling we eventually found the old barge which was the planned setting for the main photo around Ricky’s message board. At this point Ricky forgetting the basic laws of physics decided to let go of said board and then had a mad scramble to retrieve the sign before it ascended to the surface faster than one of Chrissy’s safety stops.(Only joking Chrissy :)
As we gathered for the phot a photographer arrived with thousands off pounds worth of camera equipment and started snapping us. Although I have some OK shots I would really like to get hold of a couple of copies of his photos of myself, Martin and Ricky.
Photos done, we then descended to what Ricky has named the, “Love Shack”, which is an old 2 berth caravan thrown in at about 25 meters. The plan was to leave the Christmas Message board in the caravan until next years Santa dive when we can retrieve it and do the whole thing again. So if anyone dives Vobster in the next 12 months have a look at the ceiling of the inside of the van, it should hopefully still be there.
Message board left, we then continued explore the rest of the lake including the tunnel. At this point it would have been worth letting Piers know that, a)there was a tunnel in the lake and b) we were all going down it. I can only imagine his chagrin/surprise as one minute we were all with him and the next we had all simply disappeared. If you didn’t know were the entrance was it would have been almost impossible to find amongst the silted viz of a couple of hundred Santa divers.
Having done the tunnel and a couple of car wrecks we had reached 45 minutes dive time which was more than enough in those temperatures. As we came up to the 6 meter safety stop area my buddy started taking a couple of “clearish” photos of me and then suddenly I was being “papped” by a herd of now semi-clothed Santas. I can imagine lots of divers going home to their family and being asked who are the idiots with the dive doll?
Why is it some people can take their fins off in a sedate graceful manner whereas when my buddy attempts the same manoeuvre it looks like a scene from the Blue Planet series where the grey seal gets attacked by a great white. Lots of semi submerged gyrating and groaning with arms flailing and fins flopping about, randomly hitting fellow divers. With fins finally detached we emerge from the lake and receive a complementary mince pie, nice, a cup of mulled wine even better and the news that we had failed to beat the previous world record attempt of 158 Santas. We were approximately 25 divers short, ho hum Having said that we did raise lots of money for the RLNI which was the main point of the event and we also had a good laugh, mainly at ourselves.
Although the water was a little chilly it was a great day which I’m sure will be repeated next year, when hopefully the ILFSAC club will have few more attendees to try and retrieve Ricky’s sign from “Love Shack”.
Scuba Steve
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