G'day members,
We've just kicked off the new UWAUC membership year, so I thought I'd do a bit of a round up of what's been going on!
As expected, winter has been a bit quiet on the diving front - at least locally, but we've still managed to get a couple of trips further afield; a week-long trip to Exmouth/Ningaloo, plus a long weekend liveaboard out of Geraldton to visit the Abrolhos Islands, which were both epic trips (read more about them elsewhere in the News section).
We've also kept the social events ticking over, with monthly pub nights, a fundraiser quiz in the UWA Tavern, plus a great talk on grey nurse sharks & the new Rottnest Fish Book...and a BBQ/shore dive last Sunday at Ammo Jetty.
Last summer season was a bit hit-and-miss - we did have some fantastic Rotto dives, but were routinely thwarted by the weather which was usually lovely midweek and blowing a gale on weekends. This season is shaping up well so far, the club has already got to Rotto a couple of times with another trip going out this Sunday, and we're towing Chromodoris up to Mindarie to visit the Gemini wreck on the 17th Dec. Volker has also booked the boat for the traditional Orphans Christmas on Rottnest; you'll have the place to yourselves, so get signed up!
UWAUC are now taking bookings for the usual Australia Day weekend trip to Dunsborough to dive the HMAS Swan and have a nice chilled couple of days down south, see the calendar more more info.
The club is actively taking steps to train the next batch of skippers; we're currently running a skipper apprenticeship program and we'll soon have an extra 4 or so skippers raring to go, so there should be even more boat trips in the calendar!
A slight change with boat trip logistics that should benefit everyone...we're keeping some tanks down at Divetub/Arc Subsea where the boat now lives. This means that you can book tanks online at the same time as you pay for your dive - we'll put them on the boat for you, plus fill them afterwards, which should mean less people having to make a special trip to the shed.
Just like last year, we're going to be running regular night dives and shore dives so keep an eye on the calendar for those.
On behalf of your wonderful committee, have an awesome dive season and see you in the water some time soon!
Alistair
President 2017/18