Many divers dive all year round. They will book sea dives throughout the year in the knowledge that some will be blown out by the weather but in some cases they will be lucky and get a great dive with potentially good visibility due to the lower levels of plankton in the cold water. For other divers, inland sites provide an opportunity to keep their skills sharp during the winter. The Diving Season On the other hand there are some divers for which there is a definite ‘diving season’. They are unlikely to dive before May and the first or second May Bank Holidays are often the first planned dives. Others leave it until June, when the sea has warmed up even more and the May bloom has dropped off to plan their first sea dives. These divers will then start cutting down their diving in late September or October and will hang up their kit for six months until the diving season starts again. For these divers this six month lay off means that skills levels have lost their edge, equipment has been unused and the diver is not considered “dive fit”. It is all to easy for the first dive trip of the year to creep up on us. One minute it’s New Year and the next it’s the day before our first dive trip. For these divers an annual service before they restart diving is a good idea and this article suggests some steps that can be taken to ensure that the re-start of your diving activities is safe, incident free and enjoyable. Equipment Servicing When does your cylinder need testing? Does your reg need servicing? If you leave it until the week before your first dive trip and then rush down the dive shop with a request to get it done by next week then you will be out of luck. Check the test dates – and O2 clean dates on your cylinder this weekend and if they need doing get them tested in March ready for when you need them in April/May. Same thing goes for regs. Check that they work and think about when you last had them serviced. If you dive a lot then ever year is a good idea but certainly every other year. The last thing you want is to jump into refreshing water and find that your reg free flows due to a lack of a service. Diver Servicing Most of us service our equipment every now and again (I did say most, not all) but how many of us put our diving skills through an annual MOT. If you dive regularly then your skill stay sharp but if you last dived in September then you are probably a bit rusty. Before jumping into the sea for a real dive then try some practice dives. If you are a member of a club with access to a pool then make use of it. Your local dive shop probably has pool evenings where you can go along and practice. The following is a list of skills that will test whether you are still sharp or a bit rusty after the winter break; -         Put your kit together without anything going wrong or free flowing -         Buddy check -         Fin pivots -         Float stationary 0.5m off the bottom of the pool for 1 minute -         Swim a circuit of the pool without touching the bottom -         Remove and replace your mask -         Remove and replace your mask while hovering 0.5m off the bottom of the pool -         Switch to your backup regulator and then back to your main regulator -         Practice an out of air drill with your buddy and then swim a circuit of the pool breathing off their regulator -         Send up a delayed SMB on your own -         Send up a delayed SMB on your own while hovering 0.5m off the bottom of the pool Into Open Water A month or so before your first ‘real’ dive trip you might want to think about a trip to an inland site. Most people have an inland site with an hour or twos drive and these are an ideal spot to brush off the winter cobwebs. Try the pool drills above in the inland sites. It might be a bit trickier in drysuit, hood and gloves but once you are happy in the pool it shouldn’t be too difficult. You can also add on the following open water skills; -         Ascend at as close to 10m/min as possible -         Perform a safety stop at a chosen depth -         Try to stay within +/- 0.5m of the chosen safety stop depth -         Time yourself ascending from 6m to 3m, it should take at least a minute with a further minute from 3m to the surface. If you can do all of these then you are ready for that first open water sea dive. The above article was written by Mark Powel, one of only a few full time Technical Instructors in the UK. If you would like to discuss any aspects of Technical training with Mark, please contact him direct on 07770 864327.