Divers Down

This morning we've had Apex Divers at station. They were here to carry out the annual inspection on our moorings and also to replace the pickup ropes on the main mooring. The annual inspection isn't quite due but because they had to come and change the ropes it made sense to do the inspection at the same time. I bet the diver would have rather waited until a little later in the year!

There are 4 of them. The diver, standby diver, boat man and the dive master.

The first job was to inspect the main mooring and replace the pickup ropes. The main mooring has 2 anchors that run aprox East/West. These are connected by a heavy ground chain, a riser comes off the centre of the ground chain up to the buoy.

The breasting buoys were checked next. The Western one was moved back into position as it had been washed in to the West by the waves in the latest round of strong Easterly winds. The breasting moorings only have a single anchor and are designed so that we can pull towards the slipway. Unfortunately this means that the Western one is prone to getting washed out of position. The RNLI are looking at making this mooring more like our main mooring to stop this.

And the results? Good news is that the main mooring and Western breasting mooring are fine, the bad news is that the Eastern breasting mooring is badly worn. The anchor is OK as is the buoy but all the chain and shackles will need replacing. I guess we'll be seeing the divers again sooner than expected!

New beginnings

You may have wondered why my blogging has been somewhat intermittent of late. Unfortunately I have been somewhat busy preparing for a new job. Sadly this change of employment has meant a move out of Swanage to work so I will no longer be quite so available for shouts as I was previously. Still, as my new head Andy Browning pointed out in assembly this morning, there are only 175 school days in the year so that leaves plenty of time for other things! Nevertheless, this is for me a very exciting change and one which I have a feeling I will come to be very glad to have made. Even more exciting is the fact that my two young girls will also go to school at the same school so they will have the pleasure of being taught by Daddy. Though perhaps not for a few years yet!

Anyway, now that my legs are under the desk I will do my best to do more in the way of blogging from now on. I certainly have an awful lot of photos from the summer months to share.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
(Simon & Garfunkel)