Derek’s Dive Domain

Well it would had I have bought the drysuit…

LIDS 2006 at the London Docklands ExCel centre has come and gone. I went down for the Sunday, travelling down by bus and hopping on the underground to get there, which was a much cheaper option than driving and parking (My bus and underground tickets cost less than the parking at ExCel!!!). Although not the greatest of shows, I enjoyed a pleasant day wandering around, and I did get to meet a couple of YD’ers namely Hellvet who I met on the train on the way in, and And who was promoting the spidge.com website. (When are you going to tell me I’ve won the niknotes Andy??)

Not those kind of lids!
I finally bought myself the pony rig that I’ve been saying that I needed for so long, from the Stoney Underwater World stand as it was 15 pounds cheaper than the on site shop at the Cove. Apart from that, most stands seemed to be offering the things I was interested in at their normal store or website prices, so there didn’t seem to be that many great deals to be had. I tried on a couple of drysuits, as I am after a thinner version of neoprene suit, and fancy a 4.5 compressed suit with a thinner lining, and a decent undersuit. I tried on the Northern Diver Divemaster suit, which was a good fitting suit, but I thought that the fact they would charge extra to put the size of boots that I want onto the suit was a bit much. Fair comment to charge extra for having a cuff dump fitted though. So I went and had a look at a suit on a stand for a company that I had never heard of but have entered the market with a suit which appears to be getting some good reviews. The suit is a “Outer Edge” one from Sports Components who are based somewhere near to Brecon, and is a 4.5 mm compressed suit with latex seals on the cuffs and neck, which I quite fancy. The suit was a great fit apart from the shoulders feeling a little tighter than normal, which may just be because I’ve never had a properly fitting suit before, of course. I wasn’t sure, so have left the purchase for now, althoughSteve, who was at the show with me bought one as he was very happy with the fit. I am going to be getting in touch again though in a couple of weeks as they are bringing out another size between the one I tried and the next one up, so that might work out to be a great fit.

Apart from wandering around all the stands, I went into the talk by John Chatterton and Richie Kohler about their TV show Deepsea Detectives, which was quite good. They gave a bit of a background to how it works behind the camera sometimes, and the way in which the show is put together. They also showed some footage of a show yet to be aired which was filmed in the Channel, which I am looking forward to watching in its entirity when it makes it onto the television.

There were an awful lot of holiday stands at the show, all trying to get me to book exotic diving trips… if only the credit card were a lot bigger! I’ve got Tenerife to enjoy though