In March we waved a fond farewell to former owner and Chief Instructor, Ian Rosenvinge, and set out to make the rebranded Sky High Skydiving the best we could make it. And we did, for three days, before Boris locked us all in our houses. But we’re back and already smashing records with a cool 27 lifts in a day, the most ever done at Peterlee.
New owners Nick Johnston, Peter ‘Taf’ Mather, Bryn Chaffe and Mike Evans, along with a few die-hard staff, spent lockdown refurbishing the DZ, and now everything’s orange. Well, not quite everything, but everyone who has come to see us has been impressed with the improvements. Our Supervan 900 has snazzy new benches, we have a bigger car park, a dedicated reception building for tandem jumpers and better signage (just don’t mention the minions, OK?) We’ve reorganised the hangar and updated our range of hire kit, including some freefly friendly gear and smaller canopies. Skydivers now ride to the plane in style in the Sky High minibus, and for advanced jumpers we’ve opened a dedicated high speed landing area. We’re also implementing Burble to speed up manifesting and make life easy for our load organisers – less queuing, more jumping. The Swoop Inn is open for take-out, with Bex and Martin serving up a new menu, and of course post-jump BBQ and beers.
We had a soft re-opening to get everyone back into the swing of things, with a couple of the office staff and cameraflyers “enjoying” being tandem students for currency jumps. Our Boogie on July 10-12 was a huge success, albeit with slightly limited numbers to adhere to social distancing on the ground. Peter Hutchinson, Taf, Elise Sharp, Phil Curtis, Matty Mitchell and Ed Cracknell organised everything from FS1 qualifying jumps to an epic 16-way track. We’ll be having more events this year so keep an eye on our social media and get yourselves up north to jump with us.
Sally
Find out more about Sky High Skydiving: https://skyhighskydiving.co.uk/
Photo: DZO Taf with legend Bill Booth and leg-end Elise Sharp
Photo: Durham University Club Members by Ian Rosenvinge
