Lleyn Sub Aqua Club Annual General meeting Thursday 8th March 2012
Held at: Glyn Garth Country Club, Llanbedrog commencing at 7:30pm
Committee Present:
| Name | Position |
|---|---|
| Dewi Jones | Chairman |
| Dave Jones | Diving Officer |
| Mike Duke | Membership Secretary |
| Rhian Jones | Social Secretary |
| Vi Duke | Treasurer |
| Peter James | Boat Officer |
Apologies:
Hugh Evans
Gwynfor Dafydd
Steven Leslie
Tracey Gillespie
Julie Holland
Lee Calderwood
Irfon Jones
The Chair thanked everyone for attending.
| Name | Position |
|---|---|
| Dewi Jones | Chairman & Assistant Boat Officer |
| Chris Green | President |
| Dave Jones | Diving Officer |
| Irfon Jones | Training Officer (DO’s voted post) |
| Brett Garner | Boat Officer |
| Melanie Roberts | Equipment Officer |
| Rhian Jones | Social Secretary |
| Mike Duke | Member Secretary |
| Vi Duke | Treasurer |
| Wyn Jones | Grants & Press Officer |
| Andrew Scott | Webmaster |
Ocean Diver
Andrew, Pete, Brett, Nia Lowri and Iorwerth all qualified as Ocean Divers during last summer, with Ian, Steven, Emma and Catrin yet to complete the open water dives.
Sports Diver
The sports diver course is underway with seven of the original ten ocean divers having signed up. By the AGM the lectures will have been completed and hopefully all will have passed the exam with flying colours. Dives occur if and when students and instructors are available.
Dive Leader
A few of the current sports divers have dives or marshalling sessions left in order to complete their DL qualification, Namely, Anja, Brian, Kirk, Julie and Tracey. These will be completed if and when students and instructors are available.
Advanced Diver
There are five trainees in this group; Peter, Stephen, Dewi, Lee and Irfon. Lectures have been completed and hopefully by the AGM all will have passed the exam as well. Dives will be done with David Jones as he is the only instructor suitably qualified to undertake them. The rescue scenarios will be done soon as well as the minimum two day expeditions (Irfon’s Scapa trip counts as his, so we should be diving away from home a minimum of four times this year!).
Instructor Training
Peter and Irfon passed their OWI exams and are now fully qualified, Dewi, Wyn and Stephen went on the Open Water Instructor Course. There were no takers for the IFC, however hopefully Andrew and A N Other will take the plunge next autumn as there is still grant money available for this.
Boat Handling
David Jones has proposed to run a BH course in the spring, so watch this space.
Irfon Jones,
Training Officer.
LLEYN SAC
I do remember saying at the last AGM that we were due for a good season. Well, that remains the case, as the weather during much of last season was wet and windy. However, by including the days we were out in Mike’s rib, we managed to get out on about half of the planned dive days, which is actually better than was managed in the previous season. It would have been slightly better had the rib not been out of action for parts of April, while the trailer brakes were repaired, and June, when the hull needed repair and the keel guard was fitted. The season though was again accident free.
Boat diving took place on only 18 of 37 planned dive days, 11 times using the Club rib alone, 3 times using only Mike’s rib, with both ribs out together on 4 days. There were shore dives on 2 days when the Club rib was out of action and on 3 days the weather caused us to relocate to the quarry, leaving 14 days on which there was no diving. The bank holiday weekends again suffered disproportionally with diving on only 2 of the 8 days planned. The bad weather was spread fairly evenly throughout the season with April being a washout while May & July were the better months. We did manage to dive most of the usual dive sites, getting out on the north coast 11 times, to Bardsey twice, with 5 outings on the south coast. The Slate wreck off Porth Dinllaen was rediscovered after a period of more than 10 years and was visited 3 times, but the undoubted highlight for Mike was to discover that Maen Mellt is a half decent dive. The number of divers out on any one day averaged 6, and peaked at 10 on the afternoon of 7th October.
2012 was by some distance the poorest midweek diving season on record, with almost half of the planned 28 outings being cancelled altogether. Of the 15 dives that did go ahead only 4 were from the shore around Pen Llyn, 3 were in the Straits, 3 from the boat and 5 were at Vivian. This compares with a few years ago when we missed out on only one evening all season. Nevertheless, the boat dive on the evening of Wednesday 20th June provided the highlight of the season for some as we unintentionally rounded Pen y Cil on a flooding Spring tide at varying speeds and varying depths. The down side was that Mike burnt out his clutch getting the boat off the beach at Aberdaron.
Most launching was done from Porth Ysgadarn as the state of the beach at Morfa Nefyn proved to be very difficult at all stages of the tide due to soft sand below the slip and boulders exposed lower down the beach. Porth Colman was generally avoided, mainly because of the conditions in the bay. As a consequence the boat was occasionally launched from Nefyn beach. Following Mike’s problems recovering at Aberdaron we did look into buying an old tractor but instead took up an offer from a contact of Wyn’s to launch there using his tractor. This was done successfully in early September and will hopefully be available to us for the coming season. All launches on the south coast were from either Castellmarch or Pwllheli.
We will keep the faith by developing dive programmes as usual for both weekend and midweek diving, but having a group of OD trainees should keep us on our toes for the early part of the season. There is a dive trip planned to Loch Fyne in early April for which 7 members have signed up and it is hoped that we can get a trip to the Red Sea or somewhere else interesting arranged for the autumn.
David Jones,
Diving Officer,
March 2013
