Page 11 - QARANC Vol 14 No 10 2015

Cpl Nosworthy has recently been the main driving force and organiser of a 56km running event completed by her and four other QA nurses and two civilians. She organised this in memory of her late father who died of CJD, and £3500 was raised by her and her team from this event for the Walton Neurological Fund. Further to this, on the 18 October 2014, she and 2 others will be running 85km to raise money for the NSPCC Child- line. Up until now almost £1000 has been raised.
Cpl Nosworthy has also successfully initiated a community running group in her local area of Gutersloh. She and her husband, initially through social media, have set up a forces community running group to assist and encourage both keen and inexperienced runners.
This has involved arranging regular weekend runs of varying distances and speed, including offering support and motivation for members to participate in both informal and organised events.
She has also recently started more competitive running with the 1 Logistical Support Regiment Cross Country Team, no doubt making a significant contribution to
them currently being first in the BFG Cross Country league.
Cpl Nosworthy’s recent sporting and charitable achievements are testament to her hard work and strong sense of team spirit and community. Her endeavours are especially
commendable given that she is a working mother with three young children.
She would be an extremely worthy winner of this year’s Ambrosioni Cup.
THE GAZETTE QARANC 9
EX NEPTUNE SERPENT 29 March to 5 April 2014
It is a long way to the Maldives. Long hours scrunched up in a plane watching your ankles swell before transiting through the complex series of dusty roads of Qatar’s barely constructed new airport. When you arrive blinking in blinding sunshine reflecting off a turquoise sea and get handed a real coconut to drink, you realise why so many honeymooners make the journey.
But when you get taken to a yacht, given fresh fish and a dive leader tells you what to expect; that is when a challenging week of diving adventure begins. Every day was a surreal series of perfect weather, calm seas and beautiful dives.
We began with shallow coral garden drift dives with thousands of tropical fish darting through colourful coral and turtles silently finning off into the deep blue, progressing on to wreck dives allowed depth, torch exploration and strengthened buddy teamwork for air consumption and time management. Controlling buoyancy at vital safety stops suspended in infinite blue water was disorientating, although often the ever-inquisitive Bat Fish was a welcome 3-minute third companion.
As the week progressed so the dives became more challenging but expectations were also exceeded. Sharks swam amongst divers literally ticked by our bubbles, manta rays put on a private show gliding just above our heads allowing every diver a chance to be centimetres away, eagle rays hovered, and sting rays hung around to feed.
We dived three or four times a day, always seeing something new. Night dives were scheduled in to test the resolve of the divers jumping into inky waters full of sharks and moray eels, something I never have enjoyed (and doubt I ever will) but know is a test of moral and physical
courage alongside the realisation many fish are simply asleep.
Despite never letting us down, we barely dared to hope for the dive leader’s promise of a whale shark. Yet 5 minutes after setting out we were rewarded and jumped into ‘snorkeler soup’ with fins and snorkels as our weapons to fight off other divers desperate to swim alongside. A deep breath and a duck dive down enabled a side-by-side swim with an unperturbed 8-foot shark for as long as your lung capacity lasted. Even between dives, dolphins joined us more than once, dancing in the wake from the stern as we transited between dive sites.
Despite delivering on every sea creature promised, the one thing you learn diving in the Maldives is not to trust you dive leader’s assessment of the current. If a Maldivian tells you it is ‘mild current’ it is best to get your reef hook out, be prepared for pieces of coral to hit you in the face and engage your finning legs. There is no such thing as a mild current in the Maldives.
The descriptions conveyed here are very poor substitutes for reality. Even those members of the team with extensive dive experience saw new things or ticked off their dive ‘wish lists’. Sadly, it was not all without incident. One of our more experienced divers got Decompression Sickness after a few dives and had to be evacuated to a hyperbaric chamber where he continued to receive treatment long after we had flown home. As with all adventurous training there is an element of risk you cannot control for, no matter how experienced you are. However, for the remainder of the expedition members, it genuinely was the dive trip of a lifetime.
Marion Creagh, Capt QARANC
Citation for nomination; Ambrosioni Cup 2014 Q1043297, Cpl Nosworthy