Andy Torbet is back at Spring Lakes. And under them, and about 4,000 feet over them – welcome to the unholy union of parachuting and skydiving
Mikey Lovemore sky-snorkelling over the festival
TORBET ON THE TUBE
Air delivery
Andy Torbet is back at Spring Lakes. And under them, and about 4,000 feet over them – welcome to the unholy union of parachuting and skydiving
Hopefully some of you will have heard of last year’ s‘ Skydive to SCUBA’ project. Myself and Ally Milne jumped from around 2,500 feet over Diverstime in Spring Lakes, Nottingham at the inaugural, BSAC-supported Scoob & Snork Fest. This year, with BSAC promoting snorkelling as one of its core activities, we were asked to jump again. This time in snorkel kit. And a parachute, obviously.
No turning back now!
To ramp things up from 2025 we boosted the buddy team from two to five and took a larger plane from nearby Skydive Langar. The safety protocols involved in a display jump such as this are, unsurprisingly, a little more involved that your usual snorkel trip. Not only did the team members have to be experienced skydivers and display jumpers but, in order to be ratified by both British Skydiving and the Civil Aviation Authority
PHOTO: ALLY MILNE
( the same people who police the likes of Heathrow) a mountain of paperwork has to be completed by a qualified Display Team Leader. Fortunately, I handed all this off, as I did last year, to Ally. We also required not one but five dive boats, as you must have one boat per parachutist in the air and we’ d all be jumping close to each other.
The winds were strong. Borderline but still safely in bounds for the experienced team
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PHOTO: ALLY MILNE
Andy’ s patriotic parachute flag