Indigo Scuba does some hoovering!

This weekend was spent vacuuming a swimming pool.

We’d heard that a newly-built municipal swimming pool was unable to open to the public due to a large amount of sand and fine building rubble lying on the bottom that could not be picked up by the filtration system.

This was one of those typical situations where the local municipalities spend millions of Rand building facilities for the public, only to refuse additional funding for the cleaning and upkeep of these facilities once completed…

So, we pitched in, donned our diving gear and spent Saturday hoovering the bottom of the pool.

Hoovering was not an easy task as the make-shift “hoover” we’d been given to use comprised on big, heavy pipe with a life of its own…

Kate spent most of her time swimming on the bottom, picking up bits of gravel and stirring up the sediment in the hope that the lighter particles would be sucked up by the filters. The others "manned the pipe”.

This was slow and arduous work, but we were cheered on in the knowledge that soon, the locals would be able to use the 25m long pool for much-needed swimming lessons, swimming galas and family outings.

Who knows, perhaps one day the pool will be used for teaching confined water classes to scuba diving students!

Another great dive at Castle Rock!

Yesterday morning we met with some of our recently qualified Advanced Divers at Long Beach in Simon’s Town, and drove through to Castle Rock, where we had decided to dive.

As it was still early in the morning (8 a.m.), there were very few scuba divers out and about. After kitting up alongside the road, we took a gentle stroll down the cliff path to the beach. It was low tide and there was much hilarity in getting into the water, but eventually we were all ready for the short surface swim before descending.

Our divers had just returned from a diving holiday in Madagascar where Ella (real name withheld!) had gotten so used to diving without a hoodie, that she totally forgot to pull hers up until just before we descended, when we reminded her that the water temperature was 14 and not 26 ˚C!!

When we reached the bottom, there was a bit of surge, and we spent the dive being gently washed to and fro on our swim around the main rocks. Water temperature stayed at a warm 14˚C (yes, there is such a thing!) and visibility ranged between 5m and 8m.

We finned past Red Roman and were followed by a few of the more inquisitive ones; came across beautiful orange noble coral on the rock walls, huge orange wall sponges, brown and yellow elegant feather stars, beds of dark, banded brittle stars, purple, green and red Cape sea urchins, thousands of small red-chested sea cucumbers with their bright green feeding tentacles extended and beautiful salmon gas flame and chocolate-chip nudibranchs. We discovered a huge octopus hiding under one of the overhangs and found a very large evil eye blassop resting on a rock.

There was so much there, that it’s hard to remember everything that we saw!

After our dive, it was a short climb back up the cliff to our cars. The sun had come out and after we’d packed away our gear, we headed for a toasted sandwich and cuppacino at Dixies where we enjoyed the springtime sun and watched a huge flock of cormorants skimming over the surface of the water. Another great experience!