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Huddersfield BSAC
was founded in 1955 and is currently enjoying its 50th
year of existence, which will lead to a 50th birthday
celebration dinner in February. Various activities have already
taken place during the year as a build up to this milestone event,
one of which took place on Boxing Day in a local reservoir.
The founder members
of the club started diving in this reservoir in the early years of
the club, and it was considered a bit of a challenge. The reservoir
is shallow, very silty, has very poor visibility, and is generally
very cold.
Added to this is
the fact that the divers are generally recovering from their
Christmas celebrations, therefore, it is easy to see why it is a
challenge. This has now become a tradition with the club, and the
current President Steve Hepworth has promoted it for the last 12
years.
This year we
decided to do something a little different and make it a much bigger
event. We used 2 marker buoys about 50 metres apart and tied a line
between them at a depth of about 2.5 metres. The challenge was to
set up a relay with each diver towing the 50th
anniversary balloon back and forth between the buoys for a given
number of times before handing the balloon over to the next diver.
The target was to
do 50 lengths in 2 hours. 16 divers turned up with friends and
family to support, which considering there was snow on the ground
and the reservoir had a thin sheet of ice at the entry point, was a
very good turn out. The first leg of the relay was done by the
President himself, who also got the job as ice breaker, the balloon
then got passed through the hands of every diver present with the
anchor leg being done by Steve Hill, the organiser.
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