TREASURE HUNT - from DIVER Magazine

DATELINE: 12th April 2001

TREASURE HUNT
Your diving may be pretty well sussed, but do your boat-handling and navigation skills cut the mustard? Littlehampton Marina's Diver Treasure Hunt, held on 12 May, will help you find out.
Sponsored by Cressi-sub UK, the fun event challenges divers to locate a series of marks placed a moderate distance offshore, with a shallow dive down at each to retrieve an item. Then it's on to a specified area, having solved unfolding riddles on where to go, and a drift-dive which, if correctly calculated, will put you in the area of the "treasure" placed on the seabed.
Organiser John Mitchell, the marina's site manager, has been a member of the Sub-Aqua Association's Arun Divers since 1979. He said: "We have a strong association with divers, with some 25 clubs basing boats at the marina and many, many more clubs visiting to launch here each year. The treasure hunt, which we've designed carefully in consultation with the SAA, seemed a really good way to get divers together for a great day of action and socialising."
The event is open to teams of six or seven divers, containing two qualified boat-handlers and all divers qualified to a minimum of SAA Club Diver, BSAC Sports Diver or PADI Advanced Open Water Diver.
John Mitchell stressed that the hunt was not a race, but a test of efficient operation. "If we race, that will invalidate insurance," he said. "Boats will be sent off at intervals and the winners will be those who operate them most efficiently within a generous maximum timescale."
Back ashore, the first, second and third prizes of a BC, fins and mask will be presented amid post-hunt fun around a marquee bar and barbecue. Air fills will be reduced to Ł1 per cylinder all day, for either participating or other divers who visit the marina.
And if the Diver Treasure Hunt proves a hit? "Well, we'd like to make it into an annual event if people enjoy themselves - which I'm sure they will," said John Mitchell.
If you wish to take part in the Diver Treasure Hunt, contact him at Littlehampton Marina, Ferry Road, Littlehampton, West Sussex BN17 5DS or call 01903 713553.