Millers Point launch After a day of intermittent and at time torrential rain, Sunday dawned and it was a pearler. We met Barry at the slip at Miller’s Point, which is just outside Simon’s Town, and with five divers in total we launched at around 11.30am and drove to a dive site close to Outer Castel.

The visibility was good, around 15 meters, although quite green, and around 14 degrees Celsius. Barry, who was top manning for this dive, anchored up and we bailed over shortly thereafter. The reef profile was fantastic, huge boulder like structures covered in all sorts of sea life, with plenty of red roman and smaller reef fish to keep things interesting.

 

Outer Castle RockCape waters really are a whole new playing field for me, and I’m really looking forward to exploring the massive diversity that the southern cape has to offer. Its going to take some time to get used to stalking and taking images on SCUBA and on the Inspiration, but the access that these technologies promise for certain subjects, particularly the Inspiration without the bubbles, is incredible. We’ve agreed to aim for a pool session on the Inspiration on Wednesday, which means I need to get in some time with the dry suit that Sijmon has kindly lent me - either way I think its going to happen this week. For more pics from the dive, click here.

 

This weekend there was plenty of diving taking place in False Bay thanks to the ScubaPro Dive Feastival which was held at the False Bay Yacht Club. This annual event creates the opportunity to for divers from around South Africa to get to meet old friends, make new ones and get in some great value for money diving.

Dive Action was one of the dive shops and schools operating a boat, and Aqualibrium did a total of six launches over the two days, four on Saturday and only two on Sunday due to the strong wind which picked up and made the topside conditions unfavourable.

Divers launching on the fourth dive on Saturday also witnessed one of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines leaving the harbour just before the start of the England Australia Rugby clash, which England won, much to Nick’s delight! For more images, click here…

Yesterday Aqualibrium launched twice from Miller’s Point, first to Deep Photographers and then to a secret reef of Barry’s close to Outer Castle. Although the weather was slightly overcast and the wind had begun to pick up by the time of the first launch at 8.30, the proximity of the reefs to the launch site minimized the travel time, and within a few minutes after launching the divers were kitting up and descending to Deep Photographers. The site features some really impressive drop offs, with hundreds of pipe fish communing on the edges, as well as a relatively large amount of old ammunition cartridges dumped years ago by the navy.

But it was the on second dive of the day that the divers were treated to some fine False bay SCUBA diving, As we launched, we spotted three southern right whales right next to the launch site, and watched them for ten minutes from a safe distance as they slowly made their way out to sea. Then the divers bailed over the side on one of Barry’s favourite dive sites, followed about fifteen minutes later by the Rebreather divers, who were held up by a Cell Error message. The site featured large boulders covered in life, as well as pajama sharks, and was truly spectacular! Well worth getting out of bed for, and of course followed up with a lunch at the Southern Right!

Yesterday the Dive Action boat Aqualibrium was busy, with three dives taking place on a flat False Bay in around 10 meter visibility. The first launch, at 8.30am,  headed out to the Smits wrecks, and spent close to an hour on the wrecks, with divers reporting good viz but quite a bit of surge on the bottom, despite the flat surface conditions. The second launch headed out to Roman Rock, where again the visibility was a good 10 meters. The third dive of the bay took place at around 2pm on the Barge in the Simons Town Bay, were the Inspiration rebreather students got their first taste of diving in the ocean on a rebreather.

Underwater photographer Ken Strickland was on board experimenting with one of Alex Mustard’s ‘Magic Filters’. The magic filter enables one to shoot at depth without strobes and still reveal the colour of the subjects - in essence they add in the colour that has been lost from the light as it moves deeper into the water column. Hopefully Ken will send some of his images through so we can get a better feel for the ‘real’ colour of the reef at depth.

 

Yesterday Dive Action owner and IANTD instructor Barry Bey-Leveld took students Andre Reynolds and Roger Horrocks to the Seapoint pool in Cape Town for their first underwater session on the Inspiration CCR. It was an exciting moment for both students as they started the process of practically mastering the unit, and developing the skills necessary to dive safely with this phenomenal piece of diving equipment.

Perhaps the most important of these skills is that of constantly monitoring the p02 of the air in the breathing loop and knowing exactly what to do when an unacceptable variance emerges. Another rebreather diver, Carl joined the group on SCUBA, and using Roger’s camera took some great pictures of the moment. To see more, click here.