The last 2 years I have missed out on the Reservoir jumps at Skydive Headcorn, as they are so popular I have never booked on to them quick enough, but this year I got on it!
What is a Skydive Water Jump?
It's the one time a year that we are granted permission to land our parachutes into the the Bewl Reservoir, Kent.
Bewl Water is a reservoir in the valley of the River Bewl, straddling the boundary between Kent and East Sussex. It is about 2 miles south of Lamberhurst, Kent, England. The reservoir was part of a project to increase supplies of water in the area.
To a Whuffo (a non-skydiver) , it may not seem that exciting, but to skydivers it gives us a few fun options:
Practice swooping our little canopies above the water without the risk of hitting solid ground if we cock it up.
An excuse for fancy dress!
The chance to 'cutaway' above the water, this is what we would normally do if we had a malfunction we are unable to resolve in the air, we'd cut away our main parachute and then pull our reserve.
In this case however, we would not want our reserve out, we just want to cut away our main parachute at about 15 - 20ft above the water and freefall into the water. DO NOT mis-judge the height or you could end up in the shit.Accuracy! We have an inflatable Whale in the water that we must all aim for and hit. I love a bit of healthy competition.
CRW! Canopy Relative Work, we can land a stack into the water!
Jumpers can practice cross wind landings if it's something they struggle with.
These are just some of the things you can try.
We exit the plane from 3,500ft, which allows us a maxiumum of a 10 second delay, although most like the idea of a Hop n Pop (jump then pull straight away).
DZ Control have smoke canisters set up so we can see the wind direction and the target area, as we are not used to the LZ (Landing zone). We would usually jump over the Drop zone (DZ) and the entire area would be familiar to us.
Here is a landing from last year's water jump:
Here are a few of the jumpers getting excited for the lift:
We have Gaz in the spiderman outfit, wearing an impact vest underneath for floatation, so was getting very hot standing around.
We then have Stevie-5-spins in the stockings, he actually only started sky diving mid way through this Summer and managed to obtain his 'B' licence just in time for the jump, as that is the minimum requirement for the water jump.
A few other jumpers who came to visit from other DZ's around the country getting involved too.
I dressed as a Wakeboarder, so wore my summer shortie wetsuit and some board shorts hahaha, took the easy route!
This was the shitter I was given to jump, I have no idea what it is or what is in it, but the DZ told me that it had no AAD so they were happy for it to get wet.
I didn't want to use my own equipment as I don't have the space to dry it out at home after the jump. I paid £45 to use theirs, it seemed like a fair deal.
They had a load more old rigs like this to rent out for the day. Some people used them, some used their own.
So we had a 1 hour window in which we were allowed to jump, this was to do with the licence the DZ owners needed to obtain for the jump, I believe from the CAA.
The winds were on the limit and were getting gradually worse as the afternoon went on.
The jump was planned for between 1pm and 2pm.
We got kitted up at 12pm, and made our way to the plane at 12:45pm only to be told to stand down for 30mins and the winds were now over the limit.
Fuck sake...
30mins later we heard 'BEER' over the speakers in the packing shed.
Yep, jump cancelled until next year.
Some poor bastard has had this happen to him 3 times now. The last two times he actually went up in the plane, watched the first load jump and then got told the plane was coming down as it's too windy for loads 2 and 3 to jump.
So, although we were all gutted, we felt bad for this other dude.
We will try again next year!
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