Andy's Blog
Lots of news from the club this time.
First of all, we are now the owner of a new boat. 8.5m long powered by twin 115 HP 4 strokes, with a built-in shade and (yes, for those like me with skinny butts) padded seats. Ex Global Scuba, it seats twelve fully kitted divers in much more comfort than we are used to and, will probably be a lot quicker. It's in good shape but is being repainted and the engines overhauled, and I hope that we will have it in the water before the end of July.
We will be selling two of our existing boats to make the deal pretty near as self financing as possible. So we will have the new boat plus boat No.1. We will need to raise a bit of money, mainly for the overhaul, and we are appealing to members (especially the regular divers) to chip in. We need to raise 2 or 3 K ideally to cover costs and leave our club finances a bit beefier, so RO 50 - 100 from as many as possible, although I stress that this is entirely voluntary. Drop me a line if you are feeling generous.
Mathematicians amongst will work out that we will still be able to run dives for 18 divers just as we used to, and we will be able to cope with most weekends using one boat only. The new boat is far better able to deal with choppy seas, so this makes regular diving to Daimanyats and Ras Abou Daoud much more feasible.
Once the boat is in our hands, we will run a familiarization course for all coxes and boat handlers.
The boat currently revels in the name of Ahlan al Muna, but if anyone has any bright ideas about a new name let me know! (Yes I know renaming a boat is bad luck, but I think we'll risk it)
I'd like to thank the committee for all the work in making this possible and Keith from Global Scuba for offering us a very good deal. Rather than post all the financial details here, I would ask any member who has any questions or concerns to contact me directly.
Next, have a look at the training section on the forum. We are getting a BSAC National Instructor out from UK in late August early September to run an instructor course and some other goodies. We don't have many active instructors these days and we really need a few more, plus (I am told) the course is challenging and good fun. Go to the forum, check out the post and let me know
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