Julie's Boggle

Today feels like the day before school starts. Except instead of the chaotic piles of school kit to be labelled, it’s piles of dive kit. And it’s not about fitting all one’s books into one’s satchel, it’s about fitting as much dive kit as we can into the largest suitcase. And making up a little diving toolkit, and adjusting regulator hoses. All very exciting !

Quite a while ago, just after we booked our trip actually, we were scratching our heads as to what to do for regulators and BC jackets. One option was hiring from the people who run the dive trip – for £75 each for the week, which seemed rather a lot. On the other hand, brand new ones would probably set us back about £400 each – at best! Then the very day after I’d speculated that we really needed some good second-hand kit, an email came in from a fellow club member saying that there was second-hand kit available from a dive school that was closing down; and we could buy a BC and regulator set for £150 each (pictured below).

We charged over to go and try them on and after a test session with them in the pool we were happy to hand over the money. We were keen to get the regulators serviced as well, and our seller volunteered to handle this, so we left those with her.

That was more than a month ago, and the servicing proved to be much trickier than any of us had considered. It wasn’t really the seller’s fault but the detail is really tedious so I’ll skip to the part where all ended well (after quite a lot of stressing). This was when we got a message from a friend at the club yesterday morning saying he had managed to get them back and we picked them up last night. Sweet relief!

All that remains now is the clothes packing, which Tom is already well ahead on, and then tomorrow morning it’s up at the crack of dawn (05h30 – ow!) to drive our car to Gatwick where we’ll park it for the week we’re away. (This was because getting public transport at 02h00 on the morning we returned was improbable, and a taxi back would be as pricy as the week’s parking!)

So that’s me signing off for a week – here’s our itinerary (we’re doing Wrecks and Reefs), and I’m sure there’ll be lots to share when we get back!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Diving, Miscellaneous, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.