Scuba Diving Training, Trips, News and Blog
Fourth Element Dive Adventures – The HMNZS Canterbury
11 year ago
New Zealand scuba divers have been given the opportunity to get out diving with Fourth Element Dive Adventures.
Fourth Element offered 10 spaces on Northland Dive’s super dive boat to get out and enjoy the wrecks of the Rainbow Warrior and HMNZS Canterbury – all in exchange for trip reports, photographs and videos. My specialty!
And as I have been mostly out of the water for the last 5 or 6 weeks, getting the call from Pete Mes saying “girl get back in the water” was perfect timing.
Pete picked me up on Friday after work and we loaded all my gear in the car and headed up to Northland Dive, to the lodge known as “The Cowshed”. The Cowshed is famous in New Zealand – not just as great accommodation – for Shane and Julia’s hospitality and for Julia’s cooking.
When we arrived everyone was already there, except for Skip who would be joining us on Saturday morning.
The crew for the weekend was Pete Mes, Andrew ‘Simo’ Simpson, Skip, Copper Phil, GregL, DaveK and DavidH, Glen and DavidF and myself.
Yup – me and 9 guys on a dive expedition! Julia sorted me out with my own room – bliss 
5 rebreathers, 2 sets of twinnies, 3 sets of single tanks.
Then there were 7 stage cylinders. Plus 7 camera systems and DaveKs video rig.
Yes it did all fit into Sea D Sea – the RIB that we would be using for the next two days – with Shane as our captain and crew.
Saturday morning did not look too bad for our day out. It took a little creative loading to get all of the above arranged nicely and to allow for 10 bums to be situated on the pontoons but we did it. And we were off.
It only took around 15 minutes for us to blast our way around to Deep Water Cove from the launching bay and then it was time for the next logistical consideration.
Order of peoples overboard and making sure we had enough room to gear up. Not a problem!
Rebreather divers first, then myself and DaveH with our twins, followed up by DaveK, DaveF and Glen on single tanks.
I headed over and down with Pete Mes, Phil and Greg. We were headed to the bow.
Pete had already warned me that he was going to try and get a couple of well posed photographs – and here was my opportunity. Underwater modelling is harder than it looks! And I am not only talking about not having a face full of bubbles in each shot. Face to the camera, chin up, eyes to the side, torch pointed at the dome …… phew. I like the photograph from the machine gun turret room.
Dive One Details :
Depth : 29.5m | Time : 60mins | Temp : 20deg
Dive One
Getting my ass back on to the RIB post dive was a hell of a laugh.
The boys have enough upper body strength, once they have launched themselves out of the water, to then pull themselves up and over the sides of the RIB. Me, its a whole different ball game.
I can get most of the way up – and then I need to rely on Shane. Who grabs my shoulders with what seemed like a large laugh in his belly and yanks me into the boat. Hey, no one ever said that divers were all that elegant on land!!
Once everyone was back on board, we headed to a lovely sheltered beach for Julia’s huge sandwiches. And by huge I mean that their size was only restricted by the size of the mouth that you were trying to stuff it into.
Scrambled egg, lettuce, ham, tomatoes, beetroot, cheese, cucumber …… oooooh I am making myself hungry again.
After nearly 2 hours on the surface for most of us, we jumped/launched/scrambled back into the boat and headed back to the wreck. We had it all to ourselves this dive.
I dived with Greg this dive and we decided to head to the stern for a bit of a look.
Andrew and Skip were also down there and heading down into the ship. I spent some time on the railings – photographing jewel anemones. There were a lot more growing on the Canterbury than I anticipated given that she has only been down a couple or three years.
Dive Two Details :
Depth : 28.6m | Time : 54mins | Temp : 19deg
Dive Two
After dive two – it was wine o’clock!
We headed straight back to the bay, stripped out of our dry suits and back to the Cowshed.
Make sure the rose is in the fridge, rinse the gear, place the tanks in the queue for yummy Nitrox fills, clean up a little and its time for drinks – and log books and checking the schematics and generally talking bollocks.
Pete decided to jump in the stream and take photographs of the super-sized eels.
I think Shane and Julia must have been feeding them Open Water divers. A couple of these guys are massive!
Either Open Water divers – or the left overs from Julia’s amazing dinners. Cooked chicken, huge green salad, potato salad, corn on the cob, sausages – washed down with a healthy dose of wine, good dive buddies and silly silly silly conversation.
It was a great night but by about 10pm, I could not keep my eyes open any longer! I slinked off to bed with a big grin on my face and anticipation for the next days diving.
The next day bought sunshine – and fruit salad for breakfast!
We were ready earlier as all our equipment was in place and we just needed to load the refilled tanks on the boat and our drysuits and camera gear into the car. Heading down to Te Uenga Bay, the water was flat and blue and we were all excited.
Dive One on Sunday and Greg and I decided to do the stern again.
This time we would spend around half an hour there – I wanted to dive all around the railings from port to starboard and then into the helicopter hangar. I had planned my dive so I would get around 40 mins of bottom time on the stern before heading to midships and coming up to 20m, switching gas, photographing the crows nest and coming up the line to 9m for about 6mins of deco. As it was, the plan worked a treat and as I hit 9m, I only had 4mins of deco to finish so I did a 3min safety stop as well – showing DavidH (who had also bought a Suunto Vyper Air) what the deco screen and change gas looked like.
Dive Three Details :
Depth : 29.5m | Time : 63mins | Temp : 20deg
Dive Three
Our last dive! I really wanted to spend the last dive on the bow.
I knew that I would be limited on my bottom time by the dives yesterday, plus my mix was leaner, and I had already completed an hour at around 30m on the previous dive as well as a deco stop.
Plus I really wanted to see if the HD video would come out alright considering we were bathed in beautiful sun – and therefore some lovely ambient light.
We went straight to the bow and I started on the starboard side. I was pleased with the photographs however the video is a little jumpy. It was very well suggested that I might need a faster SD card so I will give this a go. The video is on YouTube and I will embed it below.
Let’s just say, as a summary for Dive Four – in fact the whole weekend – it was so good that I did not want to get out!
I had 14mins of deco to complete when I left the wreck.
After switching to my deco mix, this dropped a couple of minutes however not enough. I shall be completing my Advanced Deco/Nitrox as soon as possible!!
Dive Four Details :
Depth : 29.8m | Time : 59mins | Temp : 20deg
Dive Four
A big thank you to Shane and Julia for their hospitality this weekend. It was the first time I had made it up to the Cowshed and even though Darryl was extremely rude (just kidding – we had our IE together), I’ll be back sooner rather than later.
And finally a HUGE thank you to Fourth Element Dive Adventures!
The idea of getting people out diving and keeping them diving – well it keeps our industry alive! If you have not signed up online or joined the SDNZ forum, I suggest you do so. Its not all about the diving – but you definitely meet some wicked people who will share some fun times with you …. and that makes you get your butt off the couch!
[fb_like]
Scuba Diving with Sheila
02 years ago
by dive mistress
in My Students
Over the New Year holidays (January 2010), I had a great time teaching Sheila to dive.
Sheila had emailed Global Dive about obtaining her PADI Open Water certificate while her and her husband were traveling through New Zealand.
Sheila is from Scotland and had been spending some time with BSAC divers in the swimming pool – and we had been emailing before her and her husband arrived in New Zealand so I knew how absolutely keen she was.
Sheila is a lovely lady. She has a real go-get-em attitude when it comes to making the most of her life.
She had decided that after many years of pain, then an operation and recovery, that now was the time to learn to scuba dive.
The ultimate goal was to spend Friday and Saturday completing the theory and the confined water dives and then we were going to head up to the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve on Sunday and we were going out with Yukon Charters.
So Friday morning, we started off on theory – bright and early.
And it was very early for Sheila! She had not long arrived in New Zealand. We cracked through half of the theory and then headed down to the pool. And the same again for Saturday.
We didnt quite get Confined Session 4 and 5 finished, however it was enough to pack the car and to head up to the Poor Knights to complete Open Water Dives One and Two.
And I think that was the result we were going for – to get out into the ocean and to spend some time diving in our most amazing Marine Reserve.
There were a couple of things that we thought might make us change things around a little – firstly, Sheila is 71 and rather slight.
But we had equipment to fit, PADI allows us to alter the skill as long as the performance requirement was met – and there was no other problem there.
Secondary to that, Sheila has an artificial hip. And where I thought this might mean that it weighed more – no.
Not one itty bit. The hip was extremely buoyant! It took us a little while in the pool to wriggle some weights around to get things comfortable – but we got there in the end.
One thing I try to convey to my students – or hopefully something that I try and help them understand – is not to put too much pressure on themselves. Just to slow down, relax and talk themselves into skills and practice – not out of it.
After finishing up relatively early on Saturday, we headed back to the shop and all took off having most things ready for the next day.
Sunscreen and Hats on 'Arrow'
We met up at Global Dive on Sunday morning at 6am – Bronson our Divemaster was driving us to Tutukaka – we loaded the truck and took off. The sun came up on the journey north and it was looking like a great day!
We arrived at ‘Arrow’ and started loading our gear.
We had a wonderful welcome from Noel and Jo – and Paulie.
And we lathered on the sunscreen.
On board was Mary – who is another older lady diver and her and Sheila hit it off wonderfully.
Tea, coffee, biscuits, lollies and we were at Marys Wall for the first dive.
While we were anchoring up, gearing up and generally mucking around, we could see the sand on the bottom – of the Sand Gardens. Dive! Tutukaka were anchored up to our port side and they had all their kayaks over board with snorkelers and divers all over the show. Oh yes! It was shaping up to be a great day.
We waited for the boat to clear and then geared up and headed over the side for weight checks.
We needed to do another weight check – for ocean diving as opposed to the pool – and also to make sure that the arrangement we had made worked well in the ocean with the floaty hip.
It took a bit of wiggling around for the descent and we headed off.
I have to say a HUGE thank you to my Divemaster – Bronson – who was brilliant! He spent the whole day right next to Sheila, not crowding her (well I don’t think so), but watching me, flicking from side to side depending on where we needed him. Hopefully he had a good dive too!
We did not make it all the way to Marys Wall. There was a little lift at the site so we spent a good half an hour cruising down and around the boulders before the wall – watching the Trevally flicking past us and inspecting the Black Angelfish.
During our surface interval we took a trip into Riko Riko Cave.
Noel blew his horn – a beautifully carved Maori horn that his wife Jo found on a dive up in the back of the cave – and he told us stories of the bands and the singers (and possible submarines) that have been in that cave.
Our second dive was going to be at Magic Wall.
When you can stand on the back of the boat and see the bottom of Magic Wall – its going to be a great dive!
We geared up and all headed down the anchor line. We settled over the rocks in the bay and then I led us down to Magic Wall.
With 15-20m visibility and hundreds and hundreds of fish, we spent a nice half an hour cruising backwards and forwards – watching all the demoiselles and the angelfish, the moray eels and the scorpionfish, the clown nudibranchs and the last remaining blue bell turnicates on the walls.
A spectacular last dive of the day followed up with steaming mugs of soup from Noel and Paulie.
A big thanks to Bronson for carrying everything – and I mean everything! And driving.
Sheila said “for a scary tattooed man, he’s a gentle soul” and thats true, he is. But I also know that he really enjoyed spending time with Sheila too.
Thank you to Noel and Mary for being so welcoming. And to Paulie for all the space he made for us.
Some more photographs from my iPhone on the day – and some of the scenes and sea life that we saw are in the Picasa Slideshow below :
 |
 |
| Sheila Dives the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve | Sheila dives the Poor Knights |
