Before I answer the question above (and, no, Chris R, it’s not that they’re all a bit ‘saucy’!),
I just wanted to say a very warm welcome to all of the new members who have joined SCDC over the last couple of months.
A special congratulations must go to Laraine, Dion, Alex and Ryan who have recently completed their Ocean Diver course (and to Paul who will shortly join them). To them and all our other recent new members, I hope you enjoy a long and happy association with SCDC and we are very privileged to have you join us.
Ok, back to the headline, and the answer, of course, is that all three have an interest in adding variety to our lives! Heinz is famed for its “57 varieties”, and I was once given a copy of the Kama Sutra by an anonymous admirer, which put me in a very difficult position! But I digress. Those who’ve read my recent posts will know that the SCDC committee has established 7 Goals under the three themes of Variety, Growth and Community. (You can read more about them in a previous post here).
One of our ‘Variety” goals is to “Enhance the variety of diving experiences offered by SCDC in Hong Kong, whilst maintaining a focus on safety”. One of the strengths of SCDC is our regular opportunities to get underwater through our core programme of ‘standard’ offerings - Diving Adventure days from Sai Kung, Island Junk trips to explore the South side, and zipping around Mirs Bay in Mr Choi’s speedboats. We spice the programme up with dive camp, training-focussed trips, some social dives such as the birthday dive, environment-focussed dives such as reef check, and other ‘specialities’ such as the recent hugely successful deep dive. In addition, the recent Advanced Diver course has focussed the minds of some of the more experienced members of the club on providing a range of innovative expeditions and experiences, which will only serve to strengthen our dive programme even further. However, it is clear that there is room for us to build on this already strong foundation, to provide an ever more varied programme to suit the interests of our diverse membership.
At the next SCDC Committee meeting, a main agenda item will be to begin to develop the dive calendar for 2022. Early discussions have already begun about how to add a new ‘twist’ to some of our regular dives and a number of completely new experiences have also been suggested. Some of these are...
Thursday night dives from ABC
Dive days with more flexible options - e.g. longer dives, 3 dives, the ability to manage your own day - dive when you want etc
Restore having 2 dive camps per year - Spring and Autumn
Family days where the boat would drop off families / kids for snorkelling at a suitable beach and the divers then head off for a dive. The divers would then come back to the beach for a picnic or BBQ together with family members
Guest divers day - appeal to local experienced divers who are diving regularly but may not have experienced the club. Enlist 12 experienced SCDC divers and offer 12 spots to guests to come and have an ‘SCDC Experience Day”
Afternoon and night dive trip(s)
Dive Safari with overnight sleeping on the boat
Explore different boat options - e.g. boats more suitable for non-diving guests / families
One dive and Seafood lunch day(s)
Dive and Dine day where everyone brings food to contribute to a shared lunch on the boat
Training / Skill focussed days - e.g. rescue refreshers, lift-bag exercises, shot / trapeze deployment etc
These are just a few of the ideas that are being considered. But we know there are more out there and we would love to hear your ideas. We would like to invite you to spend 5 minutes letting us know what you think about the ideas above, and telling us about any other new ideas that you would like to see in next year’s calendar. Please click this link for a very brief survey to share your thoughts. The next committee meeting, when we will start to consider next year’s calendar, is on Wednesday 29th September, so please complete the survey as soon as you can!
Happy diving!
Andy
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