Into the murk.

Yesterday I went diving.  Nothing new there, but this summer has been different.  The weather has been no better or worse than previous years - indeed, a lot better than a couple of years ago when we had torrential rain almost every day - but the vis has been rubbish.

Now I don't know whether that's a cyclical thing - I haven't been diving long enough - or whether it's a freak of this year.  One of the club says it's the worst long-term vis he's ever known; another reckons it's a plankton bloom.  All I know is that if it had been like this last year I'd probably have given up diving, so I hope it doesn't put off this year's crop of trainees.

So - yesterday.  The sea was fairly calm in the bay at Catterline but as we headed north to Crawton it got choppier.  Arriving under the cliff a wall of noise and the stench of guano met us from thousands of nesting birds who dive-bombed us all the time we were above water, and the swell was very noticeable. 

If only they'd been this easy to see!

Once in the water I thanked Providence that my buddy (who was leading) had a white cylinder so at least there was something to spot.  The vis was maybe as much as 1 metre.  Looking very closely one could see that the wall would be very pretty, if only one could have seen more.  I did spot dead men's fingers, tiny anemones and a whole nursery of baby common starfish, plus a few sunstars.

I was diving with new neoprene socks in my wellies and soon started having trouble finning.  The socks are a lot thinner than my old feather-filled ones and don't fill up the boot in the same way so my boots and fins were heading south, away from my ankles.  Stopping to hoick them up, I lost sight of my buddy.  The training kicked in: look all around for 1 minute, go up a bit and look around some more, repeat until you reach the surface.  No sign of her until a flurry of bubbles erupted below me like tiny mercury parachutes and a DSMB popped up almost under my nose.  We must have been within a couple of yards of each other all along.  We gave up.  Total dive time: 10 minutes.

Three couples dived, none came up together.  I know there's no such thing as a bad dive, but some are definitely better than others!

Starfish, masks and copywriters.

It's been a while since I last posted here - I've been setting up my new website (same address as before but a very different look: http://www.greatcopy.info/), which has its own blog which has kept me busy.  Also I've decided to devote this blog to diving, so if you want to follow my pearls of wisdom about copywriting, words and life please go to http://greatcopy.info/blog/.  Actually, I've brought diving into the latest post there, too, but only because a word I came across was so appropriate to wreck diving.  I will try and keep them separate.  I knew there was a reason I called this blog "Starfish"....
    The thing is, I've become a bit obsessed with diving and I'm wondering how I can turn that into a business plan.  I did wonder about marketing under a fancy name the stuff I use to keep my mask clear, without telling anyone it's really baby-shampoo-and-water, but I'm not sure I'd get away with that!  [If you're a diver and have trouble keeping your mask clear, try it - it really works and it doesn't sting your eyes; "no more tears" is absolutely right.  I know spit's supposed to work, but I can't get enough of it together to do the job...  I ran out of the shampoo mix on my final dive last weekend, and I couldn't keep my mask clear at all.]
    Then I thought that there must be diving supply companies out there that need a copywriter. I haven't yet found a "hook" to approach them with; I'll have to think about that one. 
    The advice of everyone in the business is "You've got to specialise, find a niche to market to," and that would certainly be a good niche market.  It's big enough, though the major companies like Suunto probably have their own in-house writers, and it's something I know a bit about. 
    What I obviously need to do is get to one or two of the dive shows and meet some of the people in the business, get known (and, as it's business-related, I can put it on expenses.  I'm beginning to like this idea!).  The next one's Dive 2010 in Birmingham in October and there's rumoured to be one in Scotland but I can't find any sign of it.  It'd be fun to see all the kit, even if I can't afford to buy it, and get more of a feel for the lingo (that's one thing about a niche, you really have to speak the lingo fluently or you stick out like a little finger on a porcelain tea-cup).
    It's a plan of sorts; now to put it into action, starting with a warm-up email to all the Birmingham exhibitors.

    Ah well - I tried to keep it diving-related, but copywriting will keep butting in.  That's life!