A morning in Zeeland

8:30 on a dike at the Oosterschelde : life is peaceful and quiet ....only fishing birds looking for some birdy delicacies at the uncovered shore at low-tide, can be heard.







9:00 - 9:30 AM: some cars stop and park along the dike....The majority of the cars are Belgian. By 9:45 the dike is full of activity : Divers set-up their gear and take a briefing about the dive

10 - 10:15 AM: Different groups of divers head to the water and go in.


10:15-10-45 AM: the piece returns and the land ruled by the fishing birds and rabbits...and 3 horses coming by.


10:45-11 As if they have trained in synchronous swimming, most of the divers start popping up along the shore again within 15 minutes time and head out

11:20: Most are packed and the cars disappear.


Drift dives in The Netherlands are tidal dives in the tidal Oosterschelde river, that need to be timed at the turn of the tides to avoid strong currents, resulting in an unorganized yet almost synchronous activity. Funny to watch.

Comments

Luisa Perkins said…
It looks so peaceful! Lovely.
Snooker said…
Great pictures, lovely story which was well told...
But one question.
WHY WEREN'T YOU IN THE WATER TOO?

Captcha - "login" - funny!
Snooker said…
Darn, forgot to tell it that I wanted to read responses, so you get another comment from me.

Hey, and another captcha.
"untoma"
hmmm... for those days that you just don't want a REAL toma... we have the UNtoma.
(what is a toma?) (Don't ask me, I don't make up the captchas)
Goofball said…
@snooker: hehe I was wondering already if you'd come back a couple of times to see if I had responded. I forgot that you can actually indicate getting them by e-mail.

Ok I stayed dry online for several reasons
1) I have no experience with the tidal diving yet and as a matter of fact it scares me. So although I do want to try and learn it soon, I want to have a good experienced buddy to do so who is aware of this. (being my husband or one of the divemaster/instructors...who were not available since they were instructing other people in their AOW course).

2) our club policy is that we always dive in pairs in the Oosterschelde (as opposed to Grevelingen lake where we do sometimes dive per 3)....Saturday we were 3 experienced divers and 3 less experienced divers (2 in training for their course) and I would have been number 7.

3) I still have a non-curing stubborn surgery scar: the less I dive the better....although I do sometimes take the risk. Hell this wound takes forever to cure and the doctor didn't entirely forbid me to dive as long as I disinfect. But staying on land would be safer to avoid infections I'm sure.
Snooker said…
OK... OK. So all reasons are good. I can understand number 1 completely though. We did lots of drift diving in the Maldives which scared me something horrible. There is just something about being pushed one way so fast that you know if you turned around and tried to swim back somewhere that you would never make it.

Anytime you would like to come explore Berlin/Brandenburg lakes, just let me know, we would love to host you!
Brian Miller said…
wonderful pics...sorry you had to stay dry. would love to try diving sometime.

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