Coming towards the end of September, and the summer season is nearly over.
We didn’t get fully up and running until July really, primarily due to Covid restrictions keeping the swimming pools closed until June. Once we did, lots of people wanted to dive, and learn to dive, so we’ve kept relatively busy.
Conditions have been interesting. In July, visibility really wasn’t great. In August, it improved somewhat, and just recently, we had some absolutely amazing days. See my Daily Dive post on East Ninepins for more details! The strange thing has been the water temps; they haven’t really got up to the normal 30°C range we’re used to. Sure, surface temps have been in that range, but we’ve had 24°C at 10m, which makes exposure protection really tricky. It’s also been especially harsh on AOW students when we drop to 20m and the water is 22°C in a 3mm wetsuit! Luckily, I only experienced one horror day in the pool, where the water temp didn’t drop below 35°C all day. That isn’t pleasant!
The Autumn change is certainly on it’s way, and whilst the water is still very warm, surface winds are starting to make it feel a little chilly during the surface intervals. Hard to imagine when it’s 30°C outside, but try telling that to the cold divers on the boat. In any case, hopefully we’ve still got a few weeks before it’s drysuit season.
In terms of teaching, we now enter schools season. Lot’s of hard work, but usually great fun too. Hopefully this year is the last time we have to do domestic programmes, and by 2023 we’ll be back in Philippines or Thailand with our Open Water students.
It seems Hong Kong might finally be moving out of the drastic Covid restrictions, so hopefully 2023 will be a full and normal season.