Agenda - 1 February 2005

1. Welcome
2. Minutes of last meeting
3. Matters arising
4. Officers’ reports

- UK dive coordinator
- Overseas dive coordinator
- Other trips
- Webmaster
- Membership secretary
- Treasurer
- Other reports

5. LIDS - 5/6 March 2005
6. Any other business
7. Date of next meeting - note that meeting date has been changed to 8 March and that we will be having a presentation from Peter Hughes Diving

It’s Business as Usual for Phuket’s Drag Queens…

“You don’t expect to find a croc in your pool…”

Scottish Natural Heritage are developing a new Marine Wildlife Watching code.

The Red Sea Association for Diving and Watersports have brought in new rules for liveaboard and day diving charter boats, and for divers who use them.

Among the new rules for divers on Liveaboards:

• Divers must have at least 50 logged dives
• Each diver must carry an SMB, and each buddy pair must carry a torch - even on morning dives
• Divers must possess diving accident insurance from “a reputable company”

In addition, all divers (dayboats or liveaboard) must produce medical certification of fitness to dive, issued within the last year.

You can read the full story on the Divernet Website.

The London International Dive Show will be held at the ExCel centre on March 5th and 6th.

Tickets are £7.00 in advance from the LIDS website, or £9.50 on the day. They’ve also pledged to give 50p per ticket for all advance bookings to the D.E.C. Tsunami appeal.

If you’ve never been before, it’s well worth a visit - there are hundreds of exhibitors: Dive shops, Travel companies, Dive resorts, Equipment manufacturers, etc., etc. It’s also a great place to pick up discounts on kit (although check the price of what you want before you get there - sometimes the discounts aren’t quite as good as they seem!).

Mutant Aliens are attacking Hawaii !!

I’m planning to produce a new GLUG newsletter sometime in January, and so I need something to put in it!

I know that at least a few GLUG members have been away on Dive trips over the last 2 or 3 months, so why not jot down a few words about your experiences?

Alternatively, if there’s anything else that you think might be interesting to other club members, let me know!

If nobody sends me anything, then it’s going to consist of one very long story about the trip to Tobago which Gary and I have just returned from - and, while it was certainly interesting, it’s probably not interesting enough to fill the whole newsletter!

All submissions should be sent to the newsletter email address - you can find it on the “Contacts” page (only visible when you log in). If you have any photos to accompany your story, please send them too.

Scallop Dredgers are ‘laying waste to a spectacular reef‘

GLUG members from the Manchester area may be interested in dives being organised by Pink Tank - a Gay & Lesbian Scuba club aimed specifically for those in the North of England.

They’ve sent us their current 2005 Events list - you’ll need Adobe Acrobat viewer to read it.

Pride London 2005 are looking for volunteers to be one of the multicultural self-confident fun-loving men and women to be featured on the forthcoming Pride London 2005 publicity. The main requirement is to have an expressive happy face, and be comfortable being exhibited around London, as it were…

The photoshoot will take place at the end of January - probably Thursday 27th between 6pm to around 9pm - in London, under the direction of photographer Michael Cheetham. Everyone on the production team is donating their time so we will not be able to pay you for time or travel, but you will get a Pride Card giving you wondrous benefits including reduced entry into many of London’s clubs & bars as well as discounts from a wide range of the UK’s premier LGBT retailers. With plans for some of the posters to be on tube platforms around town, how cool will it be to hang out alongside one and see who does the double-take? - what happens next is up to you!

To get the ball rolling, please drop Michael an e-mail with your name, address, contact phone number(s) and a couple of recent photos (head shot and full length if possible) for the initial selection - camera phone pictures or small digital image are fine at this stage.

Diving For Life will be held at Habitat Curacao from 10-17th September 2005.
Registration forms will be are available from the Diving For Life web site shortly now!.

The GLUG webmaster will be sunning himself on a Liveaboard in Tobago from Jan 15th-23rd! All emails will be answered on his return.

Please consider our affilate links when looking for new Scuba Equipment, or Travel Insurance. These appear in the affiliate box on the right of this page, and the club can earn commission from any sales they make, but only if you click through to them from the GLUG website - If you go straight to their website, we don’t get the commission.

We currently have three affilates:

TravelFirst - Travel Insurance. They cover divers to 50m, unlike many other companies, and will also cover HIV+ divers.

Divingshop.co.uk - Dive Equipment Supplies. Their prices are pretty competitive, and you can get next day delivery, if it’s urgent.

Simply Scuba - Dive Equipment Supplies. Also with competitive prices, and a slightly different range to Divingshop, so it’s worth checking both.

Don’t forget - if you’re going to buy from them, please come to the GLUG website first, and click on their link - if the company you want isn’t in the Affiliate box, then hit the “Refresh” button on your browser until it appears, or go to the Links page, where they’re all listed.

Alternatively, you can store the links permanently in your Favorites/Bookmarks by right-clicking on the links above, and selecting “Add to Favorites…” or “Bookmark this link…”.

Neil.

I received the following from the DFL (Diving for Life) email group on Tuesday, and thought it might be of interest to any GLUG members considering a trip to Cuba. Jim kindly agreed to let me publish it.

Well, I am spoiled for everywhere else in the Caribbean now. This was the spot I’ve been looking for.

40 miles south of the south coast of Cuba out of a small fishing town called Jucaro (pronounced HUKaro), after a four hour boat ride to the small islands, completely uninhabited with nothing but our permanently anchored liveaboard and a second smaller liveaboard for the extra staff.

The routine was up at 7 am, breakfast together, then off for most of the day, every day was at least three dives and three were four dive days, sometimes we ate lunch in a cove, sometimes made it back to the mother ship for lunch, with the day done by about five pm.

Sharks were so commonplace that they were a part of most dives, both big ones and smaller silky sharks that hung around the boat in numbers that were a little nervewracking….try stepping off into the water trying to remember to hold everything and NOT step on a shark. These schools are quite accustomed to the boat and the snacks the divemasters provide and come close enough to actually touch and CATCH!! I had the pleasure of lying on my back after a dive just off the boat and having the divemaster pass me a five foot silky shark to hold across my chest….very briefly, it decided to take off after a short rest, sort of like holding a nervous fifty pound cat. I also found it was a good idea not to hang around too long in the water after the dive playing tag with these ‘brown sweeties’ as the divemasters were rather blase about tossing chum into the water….being in the middle of a feeding frenzy was interesting. Watching the divemaster catch a double armful of shark, pass it to the divemaster on the boat, who then gave the rest of us a closeup before dropping it back in the water leaves me wordless to describe.