Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa

[aquarat]

Hi

I just thought I'd introduce myself, if anyone ever wants to know more about me.

I reside in a town called Durbanville, near Cape Town, South Africa. I qualified for my OWD at the end of June 2016 and two days ago I completed my 13th dive, which also happened to be my "Deep Adventure" AOWD dive... in the worst weather I've dived in so far haha.

I have so far dived a combination of boat and shore dives near Simons Town in the False Bay area, including A-Frame, Windmill, Giant's Castle, The wreck of the SAS Pietermaritzburg, Shark Alley, Atlantis Reef, Peter's Pinnacle and Patridge Point.

I had always wanted to learn to dive but never found the right moment to do it, then one of my friends started talking about it and it suddenly dawned on me that "this could be a good time", especially given that he is an experienced instructor and passionate about diving. My only regret is that I didn't learn sooner; I've come to realise that the waters surrounding the Cape are filled with life of many sorts... and I haven't even dived the Atlantic side of the Cape yet. On my second-last dive I heard whales... that was unexpected, at first I thought it was another diver being funny haha. It's all really exciting.

I have the OSTC Sport, Galileo Sol and Suunto D4i, which I use with Subsurface. The D4i was acquired in a second-hand kit locally and currently serves as a redundant air pressure indicator (I don't have an SPG).

Outside of diving I do a combination of software development, electrical engineering, aviation and TV commercial production.

And I think that's about it .

 

[RainPilot]

Welcome! Man, had some of my favourite dives at the swimthrough at A-frame. I dont miss the 10mm wetsuit though....
Who did your certification?

 

[aquarat]

haha, only the jacket part (plus underlying wetsuit) is 10mm . I haven't had a problem with the wetsuit or the cold so far, which is great . The cold was my biggest fear before starting but so far I've barely noticed it (except when I hired gloves and didn't notice the hole in them until I hit the water... I bought gloves when I got back to the shore). One of my training dives was at A-Frame but a friend of mine hadn't dived in a while, so we went back to A-Frame (after Windmill) as a mini-refresher dive for him.

I did my OWD certification through Orca Industries, but my instructor (and friend) is independent, his name is Alex. He's not a full-time instructor, I think he just wanted a buddy to dive with lol.

Are you South African ?

 

[RainPilot]

Yes i am, did my OW through to NAUI Instructor with Alpha Dive centre in Strand. The 10mm really came in handy on the Atlantic side, 8 deg at 10m will make your day...

 

[BenjaminF]

Welcome. I haven't dived the sites on the west side of Cape Point. Only near Simonstown and on the other side of Gordons Bay. Not too long after that I moved from a 6.5mm to a drysuit

 

[iamrushman]

howdy and welcome from southeast Florida USA......