01 April 2019 By Andy Moss
After lots of publicity around the region the function room at the Ravensworth Arms was taken over for a second hand sale. With the function doors wide open lots of kit was unloaded from car boots and arranged on tables around the room.
All sorts of kit was for sale. I came away with a chart, a DSMB with crack bottle, a knife for my travel BC (which I have not yet purchased) and an extra small BC for my son. There was so much more I could have bought including a virtually new Buddy Commando; a very nice dry suit, in great condition (I would like a spare) and some Apeks regulators which looked like they had never been used. The list goes on and clearly others too made good purchases, a wet-suit bought on the evening was recently used at a sports diver training session at Ellerton lake (it does get that warm in July).
I guess about 40 – 50 people turned up over the night, some selling to clear space in their garage; others to turn their excess kit into cash; others just wanting new toys. Whether to get them diving in the short term, or to upgrade that which they had, -hence the DSMB with crack bottle for me (I am told I will need one ?) – there was kit to buy. For others it was a combination of the two, after all you can never have enough toys ?.
It was run very informally. There was no charge for selling but the Chairman did wander around asking for donations to the RNLI, a valuable service we all hope we will never need. In the end in excess of £57 was collected (plus 1 cent?!). So later that night, a donation of £58 + gift aid was made to the RNLI hopefully giving them around £70.
