8 Acre Lake

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Last night we were busy sorting out kit ready for the first dive trip of the year, up to the Farne isles in Northumberland, when we get a phone call from one of the other divers who was going up there to say the trip has been cancelled due to bad weather. Later on I made a call to the organiser of the trip to see what was happening and he told me he had tried to text me earlier in the night, I received his text while chatting to him.

Now I’m not one for diving inland dive sites but with the Farne isles trip cancelled we looked for an alternative inland dive site. We did consider Capernwray dive centre in Lancaster with a 100 miles drive there and back or alternatively Stoney Cove with around a 80 miles drive there and back we looked to a more local site at the side of the M62 / A63 road near North Cave in East Yorkshire. After all we only wanted to check out kit after it had been serviced, so we headed for the 8-Acre Lake dive site near Hull.

We arrived at the 8-Acre lake site just after lunch and immediately decided to park the car away from the car park but with an easy access to the water, because we were arriving late in the day, this wasn’t a problem and after a wave from the site owners, I parked in a prime position close to the entry/exit point to the water.

My kit was already assembled ready to dive and all I had to do was get changed into my dry suite and kit up so I was soon ready. I walked the few metres to the platform after doing some basic kit checks, then made the giant stride into the water (but in my case it’s more like a bunny hop), and made an immediate descent to the bottom. Once on the bottom, the visibility stirred up easily so I needed ascend a little to avoid kicking the bottom up so I deployed my DSMB and let the reel hang in the water at around the 11-mtr depth as a reference point. Buoyancy control came naturally in the dry suite and all 3 regulators performed well. The kit felt comfortable apart from the way the stage cylinder was mounted and my old fins felt strange as if they were trying to pull my dry suite boots off my feet.

I chose this pair of fins because they are much lighter for travelling than my regular pair and I know they’ll be okay on my neoprene boots out in the South China Seas. The stage cylinder mounting is a easy thing to sort out back home by just adjusting the fittings. All in all a good day for me at 8 Acre Lake, knowing my kit for 2006 will be okay and no major problems.

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