Weymouth Rescue Scenarios Weekend
06 June 2004
Trip report by Megan Peat
First published in London Diver, September 2004
In early June, a group of us made our way down to Portland, following the bouncing acid head directions from our hotel's website (to quote Joe, "it's the coolest damn map I have EVER seen (and I'm not easily impressed...)"), for the rescue scenarios weekend. Arriving at 9:30 pm, we managed to interrupt a mammoth session in the hotel bar by Tobias and Alex and gave Alex an excuse to wimp out – the only time I've ever seen him leave a pint unfinished!
The following morning, buddy pairs sorted, we headed out to the breakwater for what seemed to be a normal dive. One by one, we were called up to see Dave and Mel in the bow for our secret briefings, while Morgan 'volunteered' to be the first boat handler/response co-ordinator.
Ten minutes later, Tobias surfaced, having managed to loose his novice, Jamie, who happily carried on having an enjoyable dive on his own. Morgan ably managed to locate all his remaining divers, had some fun driving the rib at top speed [followed by a slap on the wrists as divers were still in the water at the time… Ed] and the 'novice' was recovered with no harm done.
I managed to be incredibly unsympathetic to my two divers suffering from a bad air fill and then proceeded to leave Joe floating face down on the surface for, I am assured, 4 minutes and 36 seconds. That'll be a hint to get some kit in a colour other than black, then! [Never! - Ed]
Morgan demonstrated that the hours spent in front of his bathroom mirror planning the acceptance speech will not have been spent in vain, with an Oscar-winning performance of a diver with a missing finger. Unfortunately, he not only left behind part of the finger, but also failed to bring up the lobster that removed it, meaning that we had to head into Weymouth for the evening meal.
This took a while to be served, leaving time for several rounds of drinks and much hilarity over Alex's confusion between hamsters and guinea pigs (think Richard Gere—allegedly—and you'll be in the right ball park). Following the meal we ordered the dessert to share, with 9 spoons, which came in a three gallon bucket and was demolished by the group in 10 seconds, despite Gillian Brown showing unexpected territorial possessiveness, not to mention amazing tug-of-war skills.
Gillian and I were sharing a room and she managed to alarm me by stating that she never sleeps past 6:00 am and likes to be up and out soon after for her open air tai chi. Needless to say, the stress of all the accidents managed to take the edge off Gillian's plans and I actually had to wake her up in time for breakfast—I'm sure that it had nothing to do with the bitter in the bar the night before!
Tobias, waiting for the signal to surface, gave a fantastic performance of a diver turning purple with the need to pee, and missed out on his Oscar only because there was no acting involved! Still, he now has a pee zip fitted, so we'll not have to witness the speed disrobing onboard the boat again!
Dave exhibited the patience of a saint teaching me how to reverse the trailer onto the jetty. [an amusing concept if you know Castletown beach—I assume you meant to say slipway?! - Ed] My thanks to him and also to the owner of the camper van parked directly opposite for unselfishly providing me with an obstacle course to test my to-an-inch manoeuvring. Having managed to get the trailer down to the water edge, Joe drove the boat on, managing to mangle a prop on the sea bed in the process, although apparently the engine dropped down of its own accord. Many of those viewing obviously thought this looked like fun and were later tempted to try damaging props or jockey wheels of their own. There will be some intense competition for the rubber prop award this year…
Overall a really enjoyable and well organised weekend, helped by the good weather. We all made some mistakes, had a few laughs and learnt a hell of a lot.
Posted byUnknown at 6:16 PM
Labels: portland, rescue, trip report
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