After the previous attempts being thwarted by Mother Nature (Oct 07 being blown out by a force six wind and Jan 08 extremely poor visibility caused by severe heavy rain leading to wash-off from the land) finally we had a break through in the weather and last weekends dives at Chepstow confirmed everything was looking like we would finally be able to complete this deep challenging dive.

With a frosty start and the scraping of my car windows clear, my mind was beginning to wonder to how warm the water would be, knowing full well that it would be warmer than where I was standing but not by much! By the time I'd got there the sun was out :o)

After a long chat, catching up with an old friend over a great hot mug of tea, it was time to kit up and hit the water. Thankfully we also had surface cover, which really helped with the numerous deco stage tanks. With the twinset on, a powerful torch in place, stage bottles secured and all checks complete, time to jump in and start our long decent.

Using the 75m trapeze line, we began our decent, nice and smoothly, lights on around the thirty meter mark, continuing on down to just over sixty meters. Total travel time only four minutes, knowing full well that we would never be able to ascend at that rate! With our buoyancy being neutral we tied off from the shot line and headed off into the slightly dark atmosphere, half expecting to find a shopping trolley, don't ask why but they always turn up everywhere :o)

All too soon our bottom time had been used up and the start of the very long slow ascent to the surface began. At twenty one meters, time to switch from the tri-mix over to the first deco bottle, all was going well or so I thought until what felt like somebody hitting my purge button on my reg briefly. Now with the regulator slowly letting out my valuable deco gas, after checking the gauge my initial thoughts being that I'd still have enough gas to safely complete all my stops but with the partial pressure on us, it was soon apparent that this was not the case! As we've always been taught in diving, panicking is never the answer, so the simplest solution that came to mind was to keep switching the stage tank on and off (which was really easy, seeing it was right in front of me) safe in the knowledge that my buddy was right in front of me with his bail-out gas. With this going on (and off :o) my deco time seemed to fly by and we arrived at six metres (after safely completing all deco stops) and I switched to my other deco gas, pure oxygen for the final stage. A total of seventy seven minutes later and having completed a dive to over 200 feet in water around 6-7c, we were safely back on the surface with a truly great feeling inside that not only had we completed this challenging dive but raised £349 for "Child - Victims of Crime".

I'd just like to stay a personal big thank you to everybody that sponsored me, my buddy and the surface cover!