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Are you ready to get wet????
Edited by Michael Hall and Tiree Macleod-Nolan
ESSAC NewsLetter Spring 2009
Soon it will get REALLY scary — our social organisers are planning a wet and wild water event!! This will be sometime in June at a venue in Zoetermeer. For those who dare, take a look at their website: http://www.dutchwaterdreams.com More details will be provided closer to the date.
Of course there WILL be further social events during the coming season - these will be announced in due course. The annual BBQ will be held to-wards the end of the year, this is of course assuming that enough of us sur-vive the wild water experience!
Are You Ready to get wet??? 1
Contents Page 2
Editorial 3
A True Love Story 4
Post humus Darwin award for Diver 5
Pub Quiz! 6 Competition 8 Goodbye to the De Schelft Swimming Pool 9
Cozumel November 2008 10
Grand Sale 12
Your Committee 13
Contents Page
Page 2
ESSAC NewsLetter Spring 2009
Firstly your editors owe you an apology for the delay in publishing this
issue of our club newsletter. We do have quite valid reasons for this delay, but they don’t fully excuse us from our responsibilities towards you.
In this issue, we have an article about the club trip to Mexico, a competition for a new club sticker, a salutary lesson for any “sharkoholics’ out there, and some other snippets for your enjoyment. However, on a more serious note, our club membership is in decline.
WE NEED SWIMMERS!!!!
This is a serious issue for all of us; our expenses are the same for 10 mem-bers as for 100 so let’s go for 100! Our diving fraternity are short of qualified instructors, so new students are being kept to a workable limit, pending the assistant instructors achieving full qualification - this is work in action! All of you should be active in persuading your friends and colleagues to come swim-ming – our club needs your efforts. Tell everyone that we not only have a fun time IN the water, but our social activities are very varied as well! Tell them it is healthy! Tell them anything to lure them to the pool and join our club - just DON’T tell them it is free!!! Remember, THIS CLUB IS yours! , so get proactive! PERHAPS we could consider a bottle of bubbly for the member that introduces most new swimmers (as members!)
Last but definitely not least, it is with great pleasure to announce that our chairman has bitten the bullet firmly in the butt and has been elected to the SAC; this means that , without impinging upon his obvious impartiality, we now have a voice there. However, that isn’t all! John has accepted the position of the SAC representative to the SSCC. This places him on the committee that allocates funding to all clubs - can’t be a bad thing for us! …… of course he will always exercise total impartiality when performing these extra duties.
Editorial
Page 3
A Pub Quiz
Once again we have survived – indeed triumphantly survived - the club pub quiz. This event, scheduled to become a regular in our calendar, was held on 7th April in Escape. Four teams battled it out through what seemed like hundreds of very taxing questions on a huge variety of subjects. Sometimes the participants were surprising themselves on the knowledge they managed to drag up from shoelace levels, but the reverse was also evident - how could we NOT have known the answer to that!!! Brian, the quizmaster, ran the event with the discipline of a silk hand in an iron glove but it has to be said that he must have spent many hours researching the questions, even if they did sometimes seem to be concentrating upon Mr Obama (that guy who won the elections in America) more than was considered reasonable. Considering the international mix of our community, the spread of the questions was extremely wide; even encompassing a question that ONLY a Frenchman could answer! And of course, the insistence that a kayak is not a canoe is still a matter of contention. The end results were as follows:
1st Undercurrent 50 points Joint Pussers 40 points 2nd Bouchpans 40 points 3rd Yo 34 points
All-in–all, everyone enjoyed a thoroughly good, if cerebrally challenging, evening. The quizmaster is to be congratulated on his efforts, despite a somewhat dubious rule that there was to be no drinks purchased except after the 4th round – wasn’t this a PUB quiz??? The Winning Team
Page 4
Left: Quiz Master
Below: Judge and Jury
Left: Captain of the Winning team
Page 5
Once, long ago, deep in the recesses of some older club member’s minds, we had a club sticker. UNFORTUNATELY we don’t have one now!
So, you are challenged to come up with a new, innovative design!
It has to be:
Representative of our club’s activities (the wa-ter based ones!)
Suitable for this century
Fit into the normal size parameters for such a sticker
Either circular or elliptical
Not too complex
Limited to maximum 3 colours
It is up to you now, send your designs to the editors, we may even manage to coax a prize from the committee for the best design, but of course the REAL prize would be seeing YOUR design being used by the club WORLDWIDE!!!!
Page 6
Competition!
As most of you will have read in previ-ous newsletters & e-mails we have had to give up the De Schelft swimming pool due to an insurance problem. Much effort & many com-mittee meetings were held by your committee to try to negotiate with the De Schelft stitch-ing to find a solution but none of our different compromises were acceptable. The SSCC was also approached in ESTEC but could give us no assistance in any way and in the end we ran out of options.
It is with great regret that the final e-
mails were sent out informing everyone of the position we found ourselves in as a club.
The last Sunday in De Schelft was well advertised by Wim’s e-mail and it was lovely to see how many people made the effort to turn up. There was a very strange attitude in that last hour, where sensible adults were seen outdo-ing the younger members for how many times they could go down the slide and as for the sign at the top of the slide stating no more than three persons together; there was an ef-fort to double that quantity at one point…. I will refrain from mentioning who the offend-ers were.
There was at one point an impromptu committee meeting in the hot water tub, see pic included.
On a personal note, it was with regret that I agreed to end our contract with De Schelft as it has always been my favourite of our two pools for cleanliness. I have over the years with all the 4 different chairmen which the club has had since I joined the committee, argued at one point to keep the pool.
I would like to think that at some point we will be able to afford another Sunday pool, hopefully at a more convenient time; though if our swimming numbers keep declining in the way they re-cently have, that will not be possible.
We are very fortunate to be a club made up of three groups Swim-mers, snorkelers and divers, which makes it possible for us to survive at the moment with the drop in numbers. So on that note grab a fellow colleague and get him or her into the pool to swim.
Myra Macleod-Nolan
Swimming officer
Goodbye to the De Schelft Swimming Pool
Page 7
Cozumel November 2008
Dive crew: Peter de Maagt (the Boss), Corien Koelman, Anthony Thirkettle, Ales-sandro Atzei, Goran Pilbratt, Michel van Pelt, Vladimir Pletser, Wim van Leeuwen, Jayne Pletser From now on to be referred to as the Intrepid 9 Aqua Safari - Cozumel: Bill Horn the really big Boss, Miguel Dive guide and leader, Jose dive guide and safety, mister BIG, the Captain and Manuel second in command. Saturday 15th November was an early start with Arke. Arke flight tips: take extra food with you and order beforehand if you are vegetarian. If you feel the cold do take a fleece and dress in layers as it was freezing cold on the way over and boiling hot on the way back. Peter was on Mission and already waiting at Cancun but continued to wait while the rest of us hit the first food and beverage joint!! A taxi ride to the har-bour found us getting into the swing of things and as you can see by the time we hit the second food and beverage joint, (awaiting the ferry) we were in the holiday mood complete with silly hats and Mar-garitas. Arrived in Co-zumel at the end of the afternoon – such heat and sunshine and the beginning of a dive trip that not only involved water but a large amount of margaritas and cool beers, not forgetting the nachos, tacos, fajitas and beans. Sunday - We awoke to wonder if during the night we had been taken back to dear old NL because it sure looked and sounded like the North Sea. We were of course blamed for bringing the weather
with us. Shame that we hadn’t brought the right clothes with us!?! However,
these intrepid Dutch divers weren’t worried; a few waves ‘No probs!’ and down to the dive location ready for an early start. ‘Come back at 10.00’, the Harbour Master (from now on to be referred to as HM) had closed the harbour. HM, I think, had listened to the wind whipping up and decided to stay in bed be-cause he kept the harbour
closed, for small boats the whole day. Grr! At this point we split up with some of the divers heading back to the mainland to check out Chichen Itza, Tulum and such other wonders of the Mayan world while the rest (who had already done such Mayan wonders) hired a car and visited Cozumel’s Mayan delights and beautiful, less windy beaches on the eastern side of the island. However, while Cozumel was fab it must be added that Cozumel rental cars are something else, perhaps ‘boneshakers’ would better describe these cars. Monday – still very windy and HM once more had the harbour closed first thing but did open it at 10.00. But still very windy!!! Dive 1 was on Tormentos reef. The visibility was “not as good” as it could have been at “only” around 20 meters but it was a pretty drift, coral reef dive with all the usual coral reef fishes around (from now on to be referred to a UBF’s) and a stingray and octopus. However, one member of the Intrepid 9 (guess who?) got hit by the Baker-Pletser syndrome (see earlier historical, Scilly archives for earlier refer-ences to this syndrome) and was eventually taken off the boat hours later after surviving by being tied to the boat while the Intrepid 8 did a second dive this time at Paradiso Reef complete with many UBF’s. A delight for the photographers.
Page 8
Chitzen Itza and San Gervasio…try to spot the difference!
Tuesday – still very windy and the usual; ‘Come back at 10.00’. Back they came at 10.00 am, with the ninth member de-ciding that a day on dry land was definitely needed. But dismay as the HM was not opening the harbour again. Mutiny, the ESSAC Co-zumel pirates (Somalia eat your heart out) were ready to storm HM’s office and the air was full of revolution!! However, poor Bill (the really big boss) was not ready to loose his licence and requested calm – if it happened again then revolution plans would be made! Two of the party went off to swim with the dolphins while the rest (excluding the pho-tographer) decided they were real men and dived with the crocodiles!
The photographer was hoping to get her re-venge by taking inter-esting photos but sadly came back with the whole troupe and no gory, action photos with crocodiles in. However, she did rather regret not having
had the interesting and skill enhancing experience of diving in the cenotes; the tunnels and caves made in the limestone. Wednesday – still windy but the boats go out and it is a 3 dive day: Palancar Caves, Yucab Reef and Paradiso Reef. Once more, armchair diving as the reefs gently drift by with such little effort. However, today in addition to the UBF’s a nurse shark was seen (could
it have been a plastic model for the tour-ists or was it just bored by tourists?) and a Splendid Toadfish (not just seen but severely har-assed by the local dive guide to the displeasure of our underwater photographers who claim that such harassed fish do not make for good photos) and we should not forget the Barracudas, Turtles and Rays! Beautiful, coral reef diving with some fabulous
swim-throughs!
The Intrepid 9 faithfully left their sticker where no
ESTEC divers had been before!
Thursday – much better weather with an early start,
2 dives (Palancar Bricks and El Paso del Cedral and a night dive (Paradiso Reef). An exciting morning as we spent it behaving ourselves as we were videoed as we drifted along the reef. And sun on the boat – heavenly! The night dive’s highlight was, according to one dive member the horrific attack on smaller fish by a Grouper. Friday – even better weather with 2 tanks (Santa Rosa reef and Parque Chankanaab), a rather good underwater pyramid and finally, sunbathing on the boat. Can you match the names to the divers? Saturday - sadly, all good things must come to an end and this was certainly driven home by the pilot announcing that we ‘would be landing between snow storms’. Welcome Home!
I would like to thank her dive bud-dies for a fabulous trip; the care and attention received while roped to the boat, the super dives and super eve-nings and she is thoroughly looking forward to the next trip. Palau and Yap here we come!!
Jayne Pletser
As part of the standardisation process in the club some items of equipment are coming up for sale.
This is a GOLDEN opportunity for new students to equip themselves (partially at least!) with quality, tried and tested equipment for reasonable prices. Of course, this offer is also ex-tended to the all members who wish to change or upgrade their equipment.
Items going on sale will be:
Regulators – Aqua-Lung Spiro (with octopus)
BCs – Buddy TEK Wing
If you are interested, get in touch with the equipment officer (Mike Hall).
Page 10
Grand Sale!
Sure, you know there is a club committee and you know who they are, but do you sometimes wonder what they actually do? Well, they are regularly active researching all sorts of things that might be of interest to the club and its members. As you can see from these action packed pictures, your committee are busy checking out all sorts of poten-tial activities - all, of course, with a wa-ter based theme! You can see the majority of the com-mittee giving the whirlpool a THOR-OUGH check - unfortunately this did coincide with the last day of use at the Schelft pool, but this should not de-
tract from their dedication to the club and to you, the members. (page 9) In addition, following on from the wa-ter theme, some stalwarts of the com-mittee even ventured onto hard water to test it’s suitability for club use. Un-fortunately in this case it was deemed to be unacceptable for the club’s use during the summer months. However, there are quite some events coming up that committee members
have arranged for all of us - the wild and wet trip, the NEMO trip to mention just the tip of this iceberg of ef-fort. A list of the latest committee members can be seen on the last page of this Newsletter.
Your Committee
Page 11
Your committee:
John Nolan - Chairman [email protected]
Wim van Leeuwen - Treasurer and Club secretary, Snorkelling officer [email protected]
Myra MacLeod-Nolan – Swimming/Pool officer [email protected]
Nicolas Le Gallou - Diving officer [email protected]
Michel van Pelt - Training officer [email protected]
Mike Hall - Equipment officer [email protected]
Tiree MacLeod-Nolan – BSAC secretary [email protected]
Valerie Le Gallou and Peter de Maagt- Expedi-tions officers
Brian and Wil Hedley – social secretaries
Page 12
Club Websites
External: http://www.geocities.com/estecessac/html
Internal : http://w3.estec.esa.nl/sscc/essac/
A “strange but true” story - perhaps a salu-tary lesson for those self confessed “sharkaholics” amongst us?
Arnold Pointer, a professional fisherman from the south of Australia set free from a certain death a big female White Shark that was caught in his fish-ing nets. Now the fisherman has a problem; He says “It’s been 2 years now and she doesn’t leave me alone! She follows me everywhere I go and her presence scares all the fish. I don’t know what to do anymore/ it is hard to get rid of a 17 foot long shark. Especially as Great Whites are protected by the wildlife conservation group”
However, a mutual affection seems to have been estab-lished between Arnold and “Cindy” Arnold says “ Once I stop the boat she comes to me, turns on her back and lets me pet her belly and neck; she grunts, rolls her eyes and moves her fins up and
down, hitting the water happily…”
AMAZING!
A True Love Story
Page 13
Page 14 Page 14
Post humus Darwin Award For Diver
Named in honour of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who im-prove our gene pool by removing themselves from it. Here is a tale of a diver who qualifies for a Darwin award. Rickey, a 38-year-old experi-enced diver, drowned when he jumped into the Gulf with his weight belt on to retrieve a floating boarding ladder.
He had headed out with two friends on his 35-foot powerboat for a day of diving and spear fishing. The friends said Rickey had taken off his mask, fins, tanks, and buoyancy vest when an er-rant boarding ladder floated out of reach. He jumped in to retrieve it. With no fins to propel him and no vest to help him float, he sank so quickly his two friends could not
reach him until it was too late. His weight belt, left on the floor of the Gulf, was estimated to weigh 12 to 15 pounds. Since the belts have a safety "quick-release" lever, it is a puzzle to friends and family how the experi-enced diver could have made such a mistake. Rickey's grieving widow Do-reen said,
“My husband was a man of the sea. Sometimes he'd got too excited when he was out there."
.
