Derek’s Dive Domain

Total Dives last year: 73
Freshwater Dives: 41
Saltwater Dives: 32
Of those 73 dives, all but 2 were arranged either directly through YD, or indirectly by arranging with other YDers.

Stoney Cove 35
Tenerife 24
Gildenburgh 4
Plymouth 3
Swanage 3
Brighton 2
Covenham Reservoir 1
London Aquarium 1

Total dive time last year 48 hours and 38 minutes or 0.55% of the year spent underwater!!

An absolutely top year for me last year… I started the year with a total of 46 dives under my weight belt, most of which had been done in the mid 1990’s. My first dive of the year was the Freeze Your Bits off gig at Stoney, and my last dive was the Last Gasp gig at… yup, Stoney!
Living 10 miles and 20 minutes from Stoney does mean that you are going to log a lot of dives there, and I’m glad I got the eventual total down to under half of my dives for the year
The year was a learning curve for me, I completed my Nitrox, PPB and Deep Diver specialties, thus completing my MSD requirements, and I also had the chance to observe a lot of different divers, and pick up ideas and tips from them as I went along.
Memorable dives for me this year were the dives on the Scylla and the James Eagan Layne in Plymouth in July, and a fantastic drift dive down in Swanage in August. The strangest dive of the year was a dive in the London Aquarium main tank wearing a 12 bolt Siebe Gorman set of “Standard Diving Gear”
I have met so many great people through YD, diving with about 30 different people over the year, either by buddying directly, or meeting on boats and doing group dives etc. I’ve also attended a few YD socials, and met another whole bunch of you. Heres to meeting you all again soon and more of you this year.
The highlight of my year was managing to achieve something I have always wanted to do, to go on a Diving holiday. In fact I did this twice, with two trips to dive in Tenerife with the gang mentioned earlier on in the thread. Out of these trips, I have found my most regular buddy in Spacehopper, and we have done 35 dives together this year.
My 100th dive fell whilst on the second trip to Tenerife, and was a fantastic dive, which we celebrated along with many other things on that trip
Already for 2007, I have the Farnes trip planned at the start of June, and a trip to Appleton Roebuck to do a chamber dive to 50 metres for experience, both arranged through YD.

Anyway, it was a fantastic 2006, so heres to another great year in 2007.
Thanks everyone, and YD generally for making my diving year so great.