This is one of those subjects that will probably get a fair bit of feedback and if not I will be very surprised.
All the time I have been diving there has always been a situation of the ‘Them and Us’ syndrome, basically I am talking about who you learnt to dive with. I personally do not care as long as the people who are teaching are well qualified and have the experience to do the job, and that at the end of the day when you finally have the instructor come up to you and say ‘well done and congratulations’, you have deserved the qualification.

While working one day a guy came up to me and asked if I would be interested in any diving kit, to be honest I was not at the time very interested but after 5 minutes I was a little more that interested.
It turns out this guy thought he would love to dive but had never tried before. Now the interesting bit is that the people who he was talking to basically talked him into buying everything and I mean everything even down to BCD wash and anti fog for his mask in a tube.

Ask any group of divers and they will all say that the regs they are using is great. I am the same having used a Poseidon Jetstream for the last 7 years with no bother. But when I dived with the Beuchat VTR80 I could not believe how bad they were. Maybe I am missing something with the description as it says they are made for cold water, but does that exclude temperatures above 18º, maybe they are not made to work in temperate climates.

If the reg has one saving grace its small compact and light, but after that it’s all downhill.

You’ve just emerged from a long, deep dive. The gear is heavy and you can’t wait to get it off.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And someone wanders over and starts to ask you questions!

Know the feeling?

If you are lucky enough, you will spend at least a week of your precious summer holidays diving or even better get the other half involved and make it a two week trip. If you have any sense at all you will have taken a bit of time out on the computer and planned where and who you want to dive with, this makes a lot of sense and takes the slog out of going from dive centre to centre trying to get the best deals.

There is not a diver out there who when arriving at there chosen dive centre has not thought ‘Lucky sods’ I would love to do there job and have here lifestyle.

It should be:

• Four wheel drive for finding new dive sites off the map
• It needs a tow bar for the rib
• It must have room in the boot space for two sets of diver’s kit
• It should have wide opening doors to provide some cover when changing
• And a wide opening tail gate to shelter from sun or rain
• There needs to be a “non chip” key that you can take diving with you
• It must have a “wipe clean” boot floor
• It needs strong air conditioning and heating to cool or warm

Divers have pretty unusual needs when they are on a trip focused on getting as much diving in as possible. Somewhere quiet to rest, plenty of space to chill out, kit cleaning and drying areas, and a decent breakfast!

All of these are available now at Dangerous Pete’s!

Pete is a very experienced diver who has been coming to Lanzarote for years. He has a villa in Las Casitas de Femes, which he’s turning into a perfect venue for divers heading to Lanzarote looking forward to their sun holidays.

The villa has two sets of accommodation – a large room that sleeps up to four people, and a smaller, twin room. The former has en suite facilities, and the latter a nearby bathroom. There’s a whole area with wet room for kit washing, and a fabulous huge sun terrace with pool and jacuzzi.

I am a huge fan of AP Valves and the famous Buddy range of diving equipment and in particular there range of BCD’s and Wings. Within our small diving club I can count 4Commando Jackets and 5 Tek Wings, you may ask why and the reason is very simple Buddy have a reputation of being tough, well made jackets that are not going to fall apart after a couple of years hard diving.

John Rayner, who is a member of the internationally famous FCDC dive club in Lanzarote, submitted some excellent images from recent dives on the island and he’s kindly agreed to share them with us.

The local visibility and abundance of sea life seems to produce some of the best diving photos you can see on the web.

It’s good to be back, people are always asking what’s the reason for coming back. Well it’s very simple, I love living in Lanzarote and I did not like living in Australia, it’s as easy as that, although I would give a great deal of money to see my Granddaughters every day, but thank whatever god for Skype.

Since arriving back in Lanzarote things seem much as before just a few of us getting a little older and things not working as well as they did but that’s a story for another day.