About six months ago I wrote a review of the Extreme regulator, in fact quite a glowing report. Six months down the line I am afraid it is quite a different story,
They have gone wrong no less than four times, the most recent potentially, and I don’t say this lightly, life threatening to a less experienced diver than myself.
I would be the first to admit that I have a “childish” streak in me, but then again don’t most men? What’s that got to do with diving? Well it will, I hope become apparent soon.
After all these years of diving here in Lanzarote, we went to try yet another new dive site, it was at a small fishing village called Playa Quemada. Looking on the Marine chart, it showed a 500mtr contour line about 300 to 400mtrs out, so we decided to use the underwater scooters as these are highly maneuverable and you can almost fly underwater.
Living on Lanzarote is great. If you are a diver living here, it doesn’t get much better, and I recently discovered that on our nearby Island of Fuerteventura, there is an institute for the mentally disabled, and on Lanzarote there is a newly built residential care home, either of which this week I considered checking myself into.
You see, a friend of mine has come out for 10 days diving, she is 23 and sickeningly qualified for a girl of that age, but as it is with a different organisation to mine I can live with that.
Divers in Lanzarote have been waiting years for the opportunity to dive the waters of La Graciosa, which is the spectacular island off the north coast of Lanzarote. It has been protected for some time, but is known to be somewhere where you might catch a glimpse of with Hammerheads and also to offer some great drift diving due to the strong currents in the straight between the islands known as El Río. The island has tow villages, and miles and miles of golden sandy beaches
Poseidon, mythical Greek God of the Sea, also of Earthquakes. I would like to think he was a good old boy and prevented them, however he was also known as The Earth shaker!
But do you know what? I reckon both those titles could apply to the Mk 3 Extreme deep.
Experienced Divers?
Most of us motley crew that dive around Lanzarote are quite experienced divers, but things can go wrong, even for BSAC qualified divers!
It was a Sunday, the Sun was shining, nothing could go wrong. Four of us went for a dive, but we were using underwater scooters, these are the type that you hang on to the back of, not sit on the front, they are however quite powerful.
Two of the group had not used them before, so I gave a quick briefing: “Hang on the back, press start and go!”
And there I was thinking I might have to admit it was an age thing, until I found out that the copious amounts of green tea that I was drinking is actually a powerful diuretic!.
Now this is not a problem in a wetsuit, but in a semi dry or dry it does become a problem.
So I did some research and came up with a couple of solutions, or rather not solutions.
Do you believe in ghosts and spooks? No, me neither, or rather I didn’t, but now I am not so sure. I am going to tell you two occurrences that have made me think twice, one non diving, one diving.
The non diving is just to get you into the “spirit” of things.
About 5 years ago I was on a TV reality show, 8 blokes and 8 girls dumped on a remote deserted island in the South China Sea. We were divided into two camps of 4 blokes and 4 girls and the mechanics of what happened over the next 2 months are not important to this story.
Ok I guess its about time to come out and admit it, NO not that, "that" would be the subject of an altogether different web site.
The thing is that for some time my mind has been telling my body that its 25,well actually probably since I was 25!. I am actually double that and a bit more, and that’s as far as I am taking that!
This results in my mind writing out cheques that sometimes my body has trouble cashing, resulting in spectacular sports injuries.
Did you know, there are no Flamingos in Lanzarote, I mention this as you may wonder why it is so named, I haven’t a clue, but there again there is another diving area at Playa Chica, which roughly translates to beach girl, the mind boggles, but I digress, which for all you Sun Newspaper readers means I have wondered off and lost the point, which is the dive at Flamingo Bay.
This dive is like no other on Lanzarote, it is relatively shallow, 19 mtrs at high tide, there are no drop offs, but I can only liken it to diving in an aquarium.
