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The last few weeks of the scholarship were a lot of fun, with lots to do.

In the last few weeks of the scholarship we were as busy as ever. I completed the Full Face Mask speciality, which included using a full face mask in the Andark pool first, followed by Andark Lake. This was quite an experience, and it was strange being able to breathe through your nose and communicate with the surface underwater! I also completed the PADI Deep speciality, which involved planning and diving three dives at the National Diving & Activity Centre in Chepstow. I really enjoyed this, it is eerie and breathtaking at such depth and it’s great to now be able to dive to 40m as it opens up more dive sites and new adventures.It was sad to say goodbye to many great new friends as the scholarship drew to a close. We had a ‘goodbye’ meal which was lovely. This won’t, however, be a final goodbye, I’ll continue to go back to Andark to take advantage of the great facilities, great shop and most importantly see the great people! I’m extremely thankful to everyone at Andark for such a brilliant summer, I learnt a lot and had an excellent time!

Last weekend was a busy one at Andark, with a large PADI Open Water course, a PADI Advanced Open Water course, a PADI Rescue Course and some PADI specialities such as Peak Performance Buoyancy and PADI Drysuit diver all training at Andark Lake. I was assisting on the Open Water course, which is always good fun as it’s great to take people into open water for the first time. It was brilliant to see the lake so busy and so many people having an enjoyable weekend of diving. During the week I did the PADI Enriched Air Diver speciality, which was done over one evening. The speciality was a hands on experience- we analysed nitrox cylinders, planned dives using different mixes and learnt about how to use our Suunto dive computers when diving with nitrox. Having completed the speciality I’m now able to get nitrox fills and dive with nitrox- which I am looking forward to doing soon!

Suunto Blog

We visited Suunto UK in Alton on Wednesday to find out all about their dive computers. We had a tour of the office, workshop and warehouse then a presentation from Matt and Ryan showing us how Suunto all began. They showed us the range of products that Suunto make from the Zoop to the Eon and an overview of their specs. Next into the workshop to have a go at battery changes on a range of computers. We got to watch an Eon Steel be dismantled and put back together again which was interesting to see all of the components laid out. Later we had a presentation on Suunto’s sister companies, Finnsub that make wings and a company that makes rechargeable LED dive torches.

We were incredibly grateful to be given a Suunto Eon Steel dive computer laser engraved with our names on. An amazing piece of technology that I’ve had fun testing out. We also got a backpack full of great things – a spork, dry bags, hat, polo shirt, stickers, and FogCity for our masks. Thank you very much to Matt and Ryan for a great day and our amazing gifts.