Tuesday 22 December 2015

Water Sports Activities in Goa














If you are an adventure seeker, then one of the best places to experience ultimate adrenaline rush, with all the water sports activities, is in Goa. The land of “Sun, Sand and Sea” is surrounded with adventure sports where you can have a lifetime experience. Goa has some world famous beaches where water sports are the main attractions.
Windsurfing
Windsurfing in Goa is an extremely popular sport among tourists and also locals. The Dona Paula bay is known to be the ideal destination for every beginner according to Windsurfing trainers and experts. However, a number of beaches in Goa such as Bogmalo, Miramar, Calangute, Arossim, Uttorda, Benaulim, Vagator and Baga also attract visitors to carry out this adventure.

Jet skiing

Jet Skiing is one of the most thrilling and adventurous water sports in Goa. It is preferred during the winter season and is enjoyed by many tourists who try this sport to set their adrenaline rushing. It is simple to operate, however for a while the high speed may be a bit difficult to control. Once it is mastered, one can have a great experience skiing around. Jet Skiing can be enjoyed at many beaches in Goa such as Aguada, Colva, Candolim, Calangute, Miramar and Benaulim.

Scuba Diving & Snorkelling

Scuba diving has been growing popularity in Goa. Amateurs should never dive alone and should always take at least one partner (trainer) with you who can get help when in need. The underwater visibility in Goa ranges for five to ten meters. Ensure that you are completely fit, physically and mentally, before you go diving.



Destination Goa!


While beaches in North Goa steal the limelight, South Goa beaches are less crowded. Arossim Beach and Utorda Beach near the town of Majorda are nominated for the best South Goa beach award. For North, Baga, Calangute and Anjuna bag the ‘people’s choice award’! Water sports on these beaches include jet skiing (water scooter as we know it), parasailing (the view from the top is worth it), scuba diving (the scintillating undersea life compensates for the missing corals) and falling from a banana boat (most adventurous of the lot).
Visit a spice plantation in Goa!
Spice Plantation in the Ponda area called Sahakari spice plantation and your nostrils will remind you why Europeans came to India! This largest spice farm of the region lets you pluck and taste pepper, bite a Peri Peri (hottest chillies of the world), bathe through an ‘elephant shower’ and feast on a traditional Goan lunch cooked with farm spices. While not many visit spice gardens plantations in Goa, those who do, praise them no less than the beaches.

Famous for the architecture, Goan churches are worth a visit
In Panjim, history comes alive. This is Old Goa, the state capital for the better part of three centuries and known as the ‘Rome of the East’. The cavalcades of churches, convents, museums, art galleries, government buildings, bungalows and bakeries together make it tough to suggest what to not see in South Goa. Yet, Basilica of Bom Jesus (for its architectural magnificence) and Sé de Santa Catarina (largest church in Old Goa) are the most visited ones. Not to forget, Old Goa is currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A wildlife sanctuary in Goa
Yes, Goa has wildlife much more exciting than its nightlife! The Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park have animals like the panther, sloth bear, mouse deer and even barking deer. Then there are 200 species of birds including the Indian great black woodpecker, Malabar pied hornbill, paradise flycatcher, fairy bluebird, emerald dove and kingfisher.
Take a dolphin cruise in Goa in the afternoon.
The dolphins are a way better sight in reality than on Animal Planet! A dolphin cruise in Goa is therefore exciting for the old and the young alike. Dolphins pepping out of the sea around your boat in a graceful motion is best savored by eye and saved on camera. The dolphin cruise trip is flanked with a day-long tour
Relax with food and drinks at Maggie's Haven Boutique Guest House at Candolim Beach
Maggie’s Haven Boutique Guest House is a subtle blend of ecology, elegance and comfort in an ambience that succeeds in being both contemporary and timeless. Located just 500 meters from the Candolim Beach and 3 km from the Calangute Beach, it’s a unique retreat, where the serenity takes you over the moment you step in from the bustling Candolim – Aguada road.

Scuba Diving For children


According to PADI (the Professional Association of Dive Instructors) children can be certified as Junior Open Water Divers as early as the age of 10. Children develop physically and mentally at different rates, making it difficult to define an age at which all children can safely dive. A child's maturity, reasoning skills, and physical limitations should be taken into account when determining if he is ready to begin scuba diving.

Hyperbaric scientists cannot take young children diving and expose them to various dive profiles and risk factors just to see how many get decompression illness or dive-related injuries. Such experiments would be unethical. Much of the debate about children and diving stems from the fact that there is no concrete experimental evidence to prove that scuba diving is either safe or dangerous for children.

Scuba diving certification agencies allow children to enroll in scuba classes, but not all kids and teenagers are ready to handle the stress of the underwater environment and the theory work required for a diving course. PADI suggests that if the following questions can be answered in the affirmative, a child may be ready to enroll in a scuba diving certification course-
• Does the child want to learn to dive? (This should not be the merely desire of his parents and friends.)
• Is the child medically fit to dive? See the basic diving medical requirements.
• Is the child comfortable in the water, and can he swim? He will need to pass a swimming test. 
• Does the child have a sufficient attention span to listen to and learn from class discussions, pool and open water briefings and debriefings and other interactions with an instructor? 
• Can the child learn, remember and apply multiple safety rules and principles?


Monday 21 December 2015

Scuba Diving Equipment



Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving in which a scuba diver uses a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba) to breathe underwater. Unlike other modes of diving, which rely either on breath-hold or on breathing gas pumped from the surface, scuba divers carry their own source of breathing gas, usually compressed air, allowing them greater freedom of movement than with an airline or diver's umbilical and longer underwater endurance than breath-hold.

Scuba Diving Equipment:

Rebreathers
The closed-circuit rebreathes were first developed for military use, due to their stealth advantages. The first commercially successful closed-circuit scuba was designed and built by English diving engineer, Henry Fleuss in 1878, while working for Siebe Gorman in London. His SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) consisted of a rubber mask connected to a breathing bag, with (estimated) 50-60% O2 supplied from a copper tank and CO2 scrubbed by rope yarn soaked in a solution of caustic potash; the system giving a duration of about three hours.
Sir Robert Davis, head of Siebe Gorman, perfected the oxygen rebreathe in 1910 with his invention of the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, the first practical rebreather to be made in quantity.
Rebreathers have been increasingly used by civilians for recreation, especially since the end of the Cold War. This reduced the perceived risk of attack by Communist Bloc forces, including by their combat divers. After that, the world's armed forces had less reason to requisition civilian rebreather patents, and automatic and semi-automatic recreational diving rebreathes started to appear.

Open-circuit scuba

The first commercially successful scuba sets were the Aqualung twin hose open-circuit units developed by Emile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1943, in which compressed air carried in back mounted cylinders is inhaled through a demand regulator and then exhaled into the water adjacent to the tank.
The single hose two stage scuba regulators trace their origins to Australia, where Ted Eldred developed the first example of this type of regulator, known as Porpoise scuba gear. This was developed because patents protected the Aqualung's twin hose design. The single hose regulator separates the demand valve from the cylinder, giving the diver air at the ambient pressure at the mouth, rather than ambient pressure at the top of the cylinder.