Dive season is in full swing here in St Abbs with flat seas and great visibility. Today we were delighted that Chelmsford Scuba Diving Club chose to visit us during their dive weekend to present a very generous donation to the Lifeboat.
Despite being based some 350 miles away, the Club jump on the A1 once a year to come to St Abbs to enjoy our toasty waters and go looking for wolf fish. As a thriving BSAC training club with over 60 members, the Club dive all over the UK in far flung places such as Eastbourne and Brighton, but St Abbs is obviously their favourite location! As is the way with Dive Clubs, they are a very social bunch and they raised most of the donation at a quiz night in their local pub…….but they also secured funds through more unusual eco-friendly methods. The local canal – the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation – might not sound the most glamorous place to dive, but the Club regularly does canal and river clean ups in bodies of water like this. Recently they saved a motorboat owner a considerable amount of money by retrieving the boat’s window from the bottom of the canal and getting a £60 donation for doing so. I forgot to ask how the window came to be at the bottom of the canal……there’s maybe a story there to tell.
The Club welcomes new members and if you’d like to check them out, take a look at https://www.chelmsforddiveclub.co.uk/ where they advertise their try dives, dive trips, club competitions and social events.
We are very grateful to all the members of the Club for the donation, and we must mention Diving Officer Neil Barker who sadly passed away this year and is sorely missed for the enormous contribution he made to the Club and in making donations such as this one possible. We will use the donation in memory of Neil to continue to provide a first class rescue service around the coast of St Abbs. Thank you to all.
