I was very happily meandering along on the canals around Birmingham when I heard I was down to do 3 hours underwater as part of DiveStyle’s event for Sport Relief.  Excellent I thought, come home and with me doing 7pm, 9pm and 11pm and Clare doing 8pm and 10pm, I should 5 hours of peace and quiet!! Well I guess I was wrong there, read on…

DiveStyle, in the vain of the previous Dive:24 that the club did for Mencap (sorry I wrote Cancer Research in a post elsewhere), organised a Dive 48 event at Crosfields School. The idea being to keep at least one pair of divers under the water for the full 48 hours, with the time being split up into 1 hour slots.

By the time Clare, Benjamin and I got there the event had been underway for over 24 hours, and there were some sleepy eyed folks sitting on the side of the pool. We put are gear together, then Clare went home again to fetch her twinset back-plate rather than mine since we planned to give Benjamin a try dive and he is rather closer in size to Clare rather than me. By the time she returned Andrew Askwith and I were a fair way into a game of chess having roamed around the pool looking for things to do. Neither of us being great chess players (well I at least haven’t played for at least 30 years), we fumbled our way through the game with some rash moves being made as the hour came to a close. Not sure who really one in the end…

Then Clare and Morag jumped in and got ready to do a re-run of the Dive:24 Underwater Knitting. Clare had been once again busily preparing the logo in the traditional Sport relief red and white. With plastic chairs weighted to the bottom, and then Clare and Morag with weights all over them, they removed BC’s and masks and started to knit. This was then topped off with regulators being held on poles with people at the side putting them in their mouths when needed. A good photographic opportunity! A minor hiccup though, Clare’s reg was inverted and after a few times in and out of her mouth she was only getting water. A quick dash to the surface now ensued, a struggle since she still had weights on her. However Dave Cock came to the rescue. (Something to think about here though, Clare commented afterwards that she should have released her weights but didn’t. The non release of weight belts is often seen as a contributor to dive related deaths…) The photos for this run through were to be honest poor due to use of flash, and camera movement. So we did it all again at the end of Clare and Morag’s second session. The attached photos are the result of the second attempt.

So the knitting occupied nearly another hour out of the two hours Andrew and I had to occupy. The other hour involved games such as playing ‘egg and spoon’ with a badminton racket and a golf ball, trying to  hover whilst sitting in the chairs, and racing chairs down the slope in the pool. All in all a fun way to spend the evening. We finally finished at the pool about 12.30am, drove home and collapsed into bed very tired.

There were of course those who were doing early morning sessions who stayed overnight. A tent was set up at the shallow end allowing folks to catch a bit of sleep between swims. Thanks must of course go to John Campbell for organising the event and laying on drinks and nibbles to keep people sustained.

If you haven’t sponsored the event yet, or want to give to Sport Relief anyway and help deprived children both in the UK and across the globe, you can do so by going to the DiveStyle Dive 48 sponsorship page.

Thanks to everyone who took part for making it a fun event!!