29 January 2010

With the cushions crumbling and the sun cover shredded it was time to finally admit we needed to do something to the boat. Hussain, Paul, Artion and Petra stripped the boat of anything that could be removed this morning and Mike has already taken the trailer to be mended.

Unfortunately this means that the boat will be out of action for a couple of weeks until the seats are back in place and the steering has been fixed.

January 2010

Pete and Petra led a much more comfortable course than the August one last year. With only three trainees and with temperatures a much more pleasant 24 degrees we even managed to finish on time!

16-17 October 2009

The club has just returned from a trip to Hurghada. Fourteen of us flew from Kuwait, meeting another ex-Manta there for two days of diving and a very welcome break from Kuwait.

Highlights of the trip included the fabulous underwater vistas, blue spotted rays and the wreck of a minesweeper in the harbour - El Mina.

It has whetted out appetite for more trips...

21/22 August 2009

Our Area Coach, Peter Bolton, flew in from Qatar to teach six of our members on the BSAC Boat Handling Course. Three were long established members, with a reasonable amount of experience under their belts, but three were new members who want to put something back into the club

The weather was 40+ degrees, horribly humid and unfortunately coincided with the start of Ramadan - but that did give us the water to ourselves. The trainees were put through their paces, learning to drive the boat, setting shot lines on transits, anchoring, doing 3 point turns in confined spaces and retrieving divers.

But it was the high speed manouvering that got every really smiling - especially turning at speed, which caught out our Lead Instructor, who was for some reason not holding on at the time... are we really allowed to bend our Area Coach?

June 2009

Fourteen members and friends of the Mantas headed to Oman on 18th June for a one week dive holiday out of Muscat. The aim was to dive the Damaniyat Islands and to explore the wreck Al Munassir.

The diving was superb - with zebra sharks, about 5 species of morays, sting rays, large shoals of fusiliers, manta rays and a whale shark!

The Al Munassir is a 84m long ex-naval vessel sunk deliberately for divers, not far from the coast near Muscat. She lies on the seabed at around 25m, with her highest point abut 10m from the surface making it ideal for both the most experienced and newest members to dive. Plenty of safe swim throughs kept everyone happy. Where next boys?

On a beautiful afternoon 13 friends and members of the Kuwait Mantas met up on the small beach just south of the Messila Beach Hotel to collect the rubbish.

It was soon clear that Petra had vastly underestimated the number of bags we would fill - and a trip to buy more was necessary (any excuse to shop...)

Now we have cleared up the place, we hope to have a BBQ there one weekend soon - maybe when the boat is out of action - shore dives and snorkelling for the brave!