Leeds SCUBA Club (BSAC 115) NEWSLETTER: JANUARY 2025
Hi Everyone,
Happy New Year! Here’s to a safe and exciting diving year for us all!
As your Committee Secretary, I would like to keep you up to date with what’s going on with the Club. This newsletter covers updates/news since the Open Forum we held on September 18th, 2024.
As you may be aware; the committee meets once a month. All of our members are welcome to attend these meetings. Meetings are now held online so it would be easy to just ‘pop in’. Check the Calendar for the next meeting.
Training
Working towards ‘Ocean Diver’
In late September, a new cohort of Ocean Divers trainees started their training. They are now moving on to ‘deep’ pool training and this starts on Weds 22nd January. The pool is available for all our members to use. The only exception will be on 5th February where the pool will be set to ‘shallow’ for one night – and only Try Divers will be in the pool.
Ocean Diver trainees have recently completed theory sessions OT1-4. Sessions 5 and 6 will be delivered online. Once these are complete, the trainees will do their theory test.
Working towards ‘Sports Diver’
Sports Diver lectures were recently held at Leeds University campus. Practical lessons and open water training will continue at the beginning of the dive season.
Working towards ‘Dive Leader’
Dive Leader lectures were recently held in-house. Practical lessons and open water training will continue at the beginning of the dive season.
Skills Development Courses
Some of our members have recently attended SDCs that have been offered in collaboration with Leeds Uni SAC and Sheffield BSAC. The courses – O2 Administration and Practical Rescue Management – were well attended and enjoyed by participants. On 26 January, six members of our Club are attending the ‘compressor operator’ SDC. If you signed up for one of these courses but were unable to attend please speak to one of our instructors and they will add you to the next wave of training.
Try Dives
In 2024 we were approached by some local Scout groups asking for Try Dive opportunities for scouts. As we are very keen to involve the local community with our dive club, we thought this would be a good way to do so. As a result of that we ran two try dive events just for scouts on 27th November and 4th December. Both events were successful, and the scouts had a wonderful time. These events also bring in funds for our club, which is great. Thanks to everyone who helped on both nights, especially with the added pain of the pool maintenance that was going on at the same time!
We have two ‘general’ Try Dives coming up and the first is on 5th February – which is now full. The next is scheduled for the 14th of May. We would be grateful if any of you could help again on the Try Dive nights – it makes things so much easier for Louise and the Instructor team.
I have been approached by two more local scout groups re: Try Dive opportunities, but we are going to delay these until much later in the year so that they do not impinge on members’ pool time.
Diving
As you will see from the schedule that I sent out recently, there are some dives already planned for 2025. In the meantime, some of our members went up to dive Dunoon in December, and others were away in St.Abb’s (Scotland) last weekend (18/19 January). Great that folks are in the water already this year….! Keep an eye on the calendar for upcoming trips, we hope to keep up this momentum all year!
Equipment
You may have noticed that a rather neat and tidy looking compressor is now installed in the kit/compressor room. Thanks to Simon Clark and Anthony Davies for their time in getting the compressor installed and operational. The compressor, (aka ‘Lily’ (named by Louise)) is a refurbished ‘450e L&W’ with only 537 hours of use from new. It is now being used on a regular basis to fill cylinders. Please understand that only trained operators can use the compressor. There are now 6 members of the club that are able to operate the compressor. Members are not charged for air fills.
Club equipment was tested and serviced very recently -thanks to Louise for organising this. Chris (the engineer) found a crack on one of the club’s regulators’ first stage. This can occur if a regulator is not purged after you have turned the air off. Please, if you are using club cylinders (well, any cylinders for that matter!) make sure that you do this.
Finally, Louise was successful in securing a couple of grants (around £300 total). The funds will be used to buy necessary equipment such as BCDs.
Social Events
Over the last few months, there have been opportunities for members to meet up away from water! There have been a few meals out (arranged by Vicky) and on 29th November we held our annual Pool (with balls!) tournament at 147 Bar in Pudsey. This was well attended by old and new members, and we raised quite a bit of money for the Club! Thanks to Vicky and Val for organising. On 11th December a few of us met up in the Broadway for an informal Xmas get-together.
Vicky has already organised some social events for the next couple of months. It is nice to meet up and get to know folk – please come along – partners/friend are welcome too. Please check the calendar for them.
Calendar
I recently shared a link to the club calendar through the What’s App ‘Broadcast’ and ‘Social’ channels. If there are any changes I will update and send out a new link on What’s App. We are hoping to add a ‘live’ calendar on to our website soon, so that changes can be seen immediately. I will let you know when it is uploaded.
Committee news
Sadly, due to work commitments, Alex (Comms) and Darren (Safeguarding and Welfare) have had to step down. If any of our members would like to step in to the Comms role, or would like some more information about it, please contact Jo.
In the meantime, S&W is being covered by Yas.
Social Media
Don’t forget we have a Facebook page, ‘Leeds SCUBA Club’. If you are on FB, then please try to share our pages to get us more ‘out there’! We also have the members only area of our website. The password for the members’ only page can be requested from a member of the committee.
Well, that’s it for now! If any of you have any questions at all about any of the above or anything that is Club related, please ask any of our committee members, or just ask on our What’s App channels.
Until next time,
Jo Courtney
(Committee Secretary)
