DIR Diving Blog

Managed to get a friday off work to go dive the Warrior 2. I’ve dived this one before on a DIR-UK trip but it was an opportunity to get out while the weathers good so why not.

The wreck is the remains of what was an armed luxury steam yacht which had been built in 1904 which survived World War One. The 1,120 ton vessel was dive-bombed and machine-gunned in WW2 and in 1940 finally went down about ten miles south-east of Grove Point.

The wreck lies in about 55m and is still clearly wreck shaped in places. The weirdest feature is the remains of the swimming pool with the Mosaic tiles still visible. I dived with Clare and David Martin, photos are courtesy of David’s camera. We did 43 minutes on the bottom and left when the tide was running

DIR-UK weekend this time using Scimitar Diving down in Weymouth. First day was the wreck of the Minerva – I’ve not actually dived it before. The visibility was very good possibly as much as 10m and the wreck is very ship shaped. It’s a bit small for a group of 8 divers but we all managed to stay out of each others way.

Second day we dived and unknown believed to be the Ull. The Ull was a 500t Norwegian steamer lost in 1917. Nick Chipchase had given us the marks and we had the opportunity to look it on the sonar on the way back from the Minerva. Diving the wreck was actually a lot of fun. There was a lack of light down at 50m and it meant the small wreck felt much bigger than it was. It was heaving in Lobsters with so many of them you could tell it was almost undived. We spent 40mins on the bottom and had a really good look round. Clare found the helm which was cool but we’ve always said we’d only lift a bell.

Scimitar did a good weekend overall. Food and care on the boat from Gary who was acting as a deck hand was ace!

Spent last weekend helping Clare out on a fundamentals class at the NDAC. Visibility was challenging and the class had 5 students so Clare had to do double the normal dives i.e. one team in first, stay in the water and get the second team in.

It was actually really good fun, very good group on the class and I really enjoyed helping out.

Just back from an awesome weekends diving arranged by Lanny Vogel. He’s based not far from Poole and he booked us a trip on Beowolf to do some nitrox diving. With the help of his fiance Clare they also put on a bbq on saturday night and made the weekend quite an event.

Diving wise we did two wrecks – Betsy Anna and the Kyarra, and we did two drift dives. Weather was sunny with calm seas and vis was on sat 4m but 6m odd on the the sunday. Best dive was the Kyarra where we got 50 minutes on her before the tide was starting to pull.

It gave us a good amount of time to explore and we went from midships to the stern, all the way up the bow and then drifted the length of it with us leaving as we reached the stern.

Myself, Mal and Mike after the dive.

Overall a superb weekend – good enough to rekindle my desire to go UK wreck diving!

A Florida trip once again. I just love Florida cave diving. It’s challenging, hard work but the caves are worth it.

Starting off gradually we dropped the RB80’s off to Halcyon for a service. They done a lot of hours now and they recommend a yearly service to swap out o-rings check regs etc. We met Casey McKinlay and caught up. Turned out he’d brought his dive gear and was up for a dive. He asked if we had scooters and when we said no his response was “can you get a couple?”. Luckily Doug from EE was happy to help and with a couple of Doug’s scooters we went off to Ginnie springs.  Gear wise we just took 1 bottom stage. Scootering into Ginnie with Casey was good fun. He led the way in and has a degree of comfort scootering that is very noticeable. He’d got some issues with his masking fogging and by the time we got to 3300ft near the berman room he was fed up with it, so swapped it out for a backup. We turned the dive around then and shot out at a huge speed aided by the flow. It was good fun – a very easy 3.

Casey had a really useful extra for Florida – a hand truck!

We also met some members of DIR-X from Florida who’d driven up to do some cave diving. Really nice group of people and we asked them to say hi on the boards.

Following day we are back at Ginnie. We did a double stage swim dive and man that’s hard work! Jumped off to Hill400, then jumped off to double lines. We passed through a silty section where there was much less room and it needed a lot of finese and careful technique. Eventually we dropped 2nd stage jumped again. Our plan was to check out the ice room and thanks to Paul and Bryce’s directions we hit it first time. Reached the end of the cave in a new section of Ginnie which was cool. I was a little cautious on gas due to possible silt we may have stired up so we turned a little early and made our exit.  Overall it was 110 min in cave before we got back and started deco.

Given the conditions in Florida we’d already planned to head up to Mariana county and dive the Mill Pond so off we went. We would be diving jackson blue and doing a dpv class with Nick Leone whose wife kelsey joined us as surface cover on the first day.

We were due to be using Silent Sub scooters something I’ve not done before. We dropped in for the first dive and Clare was due to be running the line so made her way forward and picked a good rock just before the overhead. I was hanging back a bit giving her some room and turned round to move back out of the cave and let go of the trigger. To my surprise the scooter stuck on! I’ve dealt with this in the past but as dive one on a cave dpv class it was quite funny. I palmed the rear of the prop dialing it down somewhat however that left me unable to beat the flow to get back to Clare and Nick. After some flashing they exited and I showed Nick the problem. We get to the waters edge and put the scooter out and disconnect the battery. Turned out the relay had welded. Bit a drama but Stacey from Cave Adventures turned up with a spare a N-19 so we could carry on diving. We get sorted and go for a 2nd attempt. We got much further reaching 900ft and then doing some towing exits. On the 2nd entry the mini ran out of battery power requiring us to do a towing exit for real!  Already having had two real failures by the end of dive 1 I figured I was getting some value from the class . The flow was really up in Jackson and we saw some guys swimming in which looked really hard work!

After lunch I swapped out to scooter number 1 after a repair. Clare’s scooter had the battery swapped over and we set off for another dive. This time Clare’s scooter was really slow. We did get further to around 1100ft or so. However at a fissure Clare couldn’t get through, the scooter was so under powered as she entered the narrow space and the flow picked up it couldn’t move forward. It turned out that Clare rolled off left post on the ceiling while trying but immediately noticed. We gave up and ended up doing a gas sharing exit. All ok, we had a bit of conversation over whether we should tow for air share or scooter side by side and settled on towing. We ended up doing another and the  2nd air share was quicker to get going. Deco easier now I knew what to expect from the flow.

The following day we were back at JB for more scooter class. We tried to do a more complex dive and dropped the scooter at the first T and swam right. The flow required some very careful hiding behind rocks. We completed circuit and picked up the scooters. Once again we did gas sharing exit and tried a few different towing techniques. Essentially we used the leash on the standard body to clip to the leading divers d-ring. This was a much faster way of hooking up for a tow and actually was very comfortable way of towing as the towed diver keeps their scooter in hand. Didn’t work too well for the gas share as the distance involved was too great. However for a non-gas share it was excellent.

After lunch another dive – up main line until we hit 1/4’s. Nick failed the scooters and we started swimming out. We had to contend with multiple light failures and we exited blind. All went cool, been there before on classes and it all worked OK. Nick was good fun and I enjoyed the class. I’ve done a few non-GUE classes and it’s always interesting to get another perspective. While I’ve done lots of scootering it was important to us to have some cert cards in case we were challenged.

Our next dive was at a site called springboard with Edd Sorenson. We’ve used Cave Adventures many times for gas and boats when up at the Mill Pond and Edd and Stacey are just great. Fantastic customer service and they honestly seem like nothing is too much trouble. Springboard is currently on a development site for housing. At present it’s just split into lots. We pass a sign saying “trespassers will be prosecuted” Clare laughs and says “excellent that’s better than shot”. Edd’s reply was “in jackson county that means the same thing”. We grinned but as Edd owns a lot here it’s not an issue.

As we arrived Edd is very careful at checking for Gators, luckily none can be seen! Gearing up I got bitten by fire ants after I stupidly stood on a mound of them while taking photos. We finally get into the water where I’m relieved to cool down. Springboard is a really cool cave. We had excellent vis 20+ metres. The formation of the cave is sort of triangular with a very narrow section by the roof with the lower part of the cave being much broader. We took several different routes through the cave and pretty much managed all of the back mountable part of the system. There is an ongoing passage which Edd is exploring using sidemount.

This is a very pretty cave and was great fun to dive. Edd was telling us how Wes Skiles loves to dive it because it gives such unique photos. I was eaten alive while we were getting out of the water. Geniune florida swamp!

Next day was day off having had a long day driving back from Mariana. We needed to pick up rb’s from Halcyon factory and then assemble gear for the following day. We had lunch with Jarrod which was a nice opportunity to catch up. Having built the rebreather racks and assembled all the bottles for the following day we then end out going out to dinner with Kevin. He’s good fun and it’s always nice to see him. Given our challenges with Diepolder Kevin also offered us an alternative dive. Diepolder is currently a closed shop for NSS-CDS or NACD and being GUE qualified neither Clare or I could dive there. The irony of the situation is not lost on me given some of comments around diving up at Wakulla! Anyway Kevin offers to take us to Eagle’s Nest an offer which we took him up on.

The following day we hit Ginnie with freshly serviced rb-80 and scooters. The plan was to try out the units and also to have some fun. I have to say it was damn hard work. On a scooter in flow the loop flapped aroun in my mouth shredding my gums. The Rb in a frame is like having a huge sail strapped to your back. Clare was clearly as uncomfortable as I was. We progressed further in but my back hurt and we kept stopping. The only nice thing was we had lots of time as the 30/30 seemed to last forever through the breather. We got to hinkel but it took 50 mins, on OC we’ve done it in just under 30! We dropped scooters with a plan to look at mainland, but having run a jump and started in, it looked pretty small. Given how little fun I was having I decided we had done enough time and exited. Clare swapped scooters with me at maple leaf and hers was a Mark Messersmith who was at EE running a class when he got back and he made us feel a lot better. Apparently it happens to everyone!

I should mention that during the trip we met the two cave 1 classes. On one class was one of Clare’s fundamentals students Michael Griffin. We went out to dinner with them and tried to give them some advice about Ginnie. Must have helped a bit we got a nice text from Michael later in the week when he passed cave-1.

Next day and we are at Alachua sink with Bill Main. The Bill Hogarth Main who is credited with the Hogarthian config. He was a really nice guy – southern gentleman was my impression. He is absolutely fascinating to talk to, having started cave diving in 1969 he’d got a wealth of experience. He was also very comfortable in water. The dive went very well its a really nice cave and not commonly dived. We hit 54m max depth before turning although i thought it was a 45 average. Cave was very unmarked from diver traffic with some amazing stratified clay banks which were pristine. The passages were small but kept opening up into larger rooms. The rock itself was very sharp and intricately formed. All too soon we were exiting. Deco in the cave mouth was quite cool as we started our stops right at the base of the cavern. As we moved up I moved my 50% to being hip clipped which was much more comfortable when it was a little lighter. We had one minor issue in that Bill’s computer stuck on 21% and wouldn’t acknowledge the gas switches to the 40 and 80% he carried. That resulted in a very long deco!

The next dive was at Eagles Nest with kevin. We were due to be diving a 4 but Kevin’s buddy Freddie had a dead scooter once he got in so we ended up as a 3. Kevin dives a KISS rebreather but has the right mindset and Clare’s dived with him a couple of times. The basin at Eagle’s nest is quite broad but very pretty. We drop 02 at 6m by a log and start into the system. The cave itself starts almost like a plughole with the basin being a sink. It’s a narrow passage only big enough for one diver and it opens out into the most enormous chamber. The debris mound is vast, truly the scale of the cave is awe inspiring. We descend on 35/25 dropping our 50% bottles in some loops on the line. As we reach the top of the debris cone we plug in the trimix bottom gas and stow the 35/25 on the line. Some big ok’s and off we go.

The cave is absolutely vast. We duck under an broad ledge at 80m and set off down a passage the size of a motorway. It is simply a huge, huge cave running at 75m. The vis is excellent and I get the most amazing view with the 3 of us abreast, I can see Kevin’s light on the right wall, Clare in the middle and me on the left. The Rb80 worked perfectly, truly this is what its for. My gas usage was tiny even at these depths and Doug’s scooter was perfectly weighted. We passed through some enormous chambers large enough to park a plane in and I’m just uttlerly blown away by the raw power of the water that carved away such a cave.

We keep the hammer down and pass gigantic line markers which are about 6 inches long (normal ones are 1 inch) which are needed due to the size of the cave. We end up turning the dive at 2250ft at the end of the upstream line. Kevin’s whooping into his loop and its just one of the most memorable dives I’ve ever done. We begin our exit and while on the way back Kevin comes off the trigger, somewhat surprised I work out he’s stopped to look for fossils! With the deco building up we get going. We do all the deep stops and soon reach the deco gas at 38m. All of the intermediate stops happen in the cave before the chute narrows and we spend our time following kevin around looking at the cave. Kevin is exceptionally solid in the water and follows the floridian cave approach which includes things like a long hose for donation rigged the same way as our rb80. The Deco was long at 145 mins but the dive was worth it. We whiled away time at the 6m stop looking at a catfish which was swimming up and down inside a hollow log and peeking out at us. We finally surface 200 minutes after we left the surface and chill out in the sun for 1/2 hour on the surface.

Next up was hauling all the kit out where we met Curt Bowen, the owner of Rebreatherworld forum. After packing away for Eagle’s Nest we took Kevin to dinner. For me Eagles Nest was the best dive I’ve ever done, so Kevin thank you once again. We did have another diving day planned but after such a good dive decided that we’d done the last one of the trip. When you can’t top it why try!

One of the things that really made our trip wasn’t just the caves but the friends we have out there. Casey took us for a dive and then lent us gear for the week. Paul and Doug at EE sorted out every issue and always made sure we had what we needed. Halcyon, particulary Corey Smith who serviced the rb’s were superb. Edd and Stacey up at cave adventures were incredibly helpful and make it a pleasure to visit and a must stop on any future trip. Then you had the guys who went diving with us Casey, Edd, Nick Leone, Bill Main and caver kevin. So thank you guys we had a blast. Back soon.

Went diving at the weekend, given the weather this time of year it meant a trip to Vobster and a quarry dive. The water was about 6 degrees but it was still fun, mainly due to the company. My old buddy Fraser is back in the UK after his monster bike tour. We did a couple of good dives and had a thoroughly good time despite the cold.

I’d managed to squeeze in another cave diving trip this year, after several trips to Florida & France it felt only right to go back to Mexico! My buddy Clare Gledhill and I arranged a 9 day trip with a day off in the middle. We stayed at the Dreams Hotel in Tulum which is a 5 Star all inclusive hotel, a bit of a luxury but we’ve found it reduces the time you spend sorting food and makes the cost of the holiday very predictable.

I’ve been to Mexico several times, not as many trips as Clare but we still arranged guided dives for the majority of the trip. The guys at DIR-Mexico know the caves so well you get to places you wouldn’t have even known existed. Places like this:

Our first day started off with the traditional waste of time spent renting a car, I’ve tried booking online but it’s doesn’t seem to speed the process up whatever you do. Once sorted, we popped into Zero Gravity, said hello to everyone and grabbed some cylinders.

Our plan for today was a simple warm up dive in Carwash. It was actually the first cave I ever dived and as such I’ve got great memories of the cave. When we get to the site we run into some fellow DIR Explorers members and got chatting. It was great to meet the Nick and his buddy and put some faces to names but I was rather keen to get in the water. We jumped in and as I stuck my head under the water to see the amazing crystal visibility and the start of the cavern I started grinning. Clare and I discussed the plan which was a 1/3’s dive jumping off to the room of tears. I always reckon I know my way into carwash and then end up wondering if the reel will run out before I hit the mainline. On one past occasion I ended up with the guideline somewhat taught in order to tie into the mainline! No dramas on this occasion so we tied in and set off down the mainline, one of the big changes from last time was that the cave seemed darker and siltier. Some locals had been trying to dig out Luke’s hope (cenote) and in the process seem to have chucked a load of particulate into the cave. We pass the first cenote and somehow overshoot the jump to the room of tears.

Clare is leading the dive at this point and we both decided to just keep going, and see how far we get. We pass through Adriana’s room which is section of the cave with beautiful formations. In some ways I’d forgotten just how pretty the Mexican caves are and marvel at the formations. We kept going and the cave starts to get tighter and tighter. Eventually I see Clare skimming the floor and ceiling with her drysuit and tanks and I’m glad she decides it’s just too tight and thumbs the dive. Exiting is un-eventful but as we reach the cavern zone I pause enjoying the view of daylight streaming in. We sit at 5m for a couple of minutes and watch a cave class doing various drills before surfacing. A great start to the trip and a really nice warm up dive.

Next day we were diving with Danny as a 3 person team at Taj Mahal. The plan was a 2 stage dive plus 50 bar of backgas. At the depths of a lot of the Mexican caves that would allow us a 3 hour dive. We headed into Taj Mahal and the initial part is now familiar cave having dived it on both my cave-1 and cave-2 classes. Clare loves the size of some of the rooms in this system and we headed straight up the mainline and through the vast chambers. The visibility extended as far as your light would travel.

We went right at the T in 2nd enormous room and dropped our first stage. We carried on before a jump to the left side and headed on to the end on towards Boxk cenote, where we dropped our 2nd stage bottle about 10m before the cenote. We surfaced into a breakdown area where the cave has collapsed preventing further passage by water. There are some gaps in the ceiling and shafts of daylight light up the cave.

We spend some time just enjoying the view before we exit the water for some hardcore bouldering (while wearing double AL80’s). The ground is very slippery and it’s hard going. After about 10 minutes of scrambling I re-entered furthest point and chilled out. Danny did relate the tale of someone spraining their ankle in the boulder section and then needing to struggle through the hour long exit dive – certainly made us cautious! Once we were all across and relaxed we started our next dive. We went through some beautiful cave and Danny took us on a tour of some of the least visited places. We head right at a T and run out of cave in a room with the most amazing white limestone and reluctantly begin the trip back to Boxk. Once there the process reverses and we get back into the first part of the cave and begin our exit. All told I think it was about 5 hours by the time we exit the cave, a truly stunning dive and an excellent second day.

Next up was a dive in Naharon and we were diving in a slightly bigger group as we were diving with Dan Lloyd. Descending into Naharon it’s a big black cave reminiscent of some of the WKP caves. As you head down the line your light just gets sucked up by the walls and you don’t get a huge view of the cave – it’s more a case of seeing little parts of it. We jumped left not long after reaching the mainline.

The cave now narrowed bringing the walls into view. The cave was filled with lots of dark formations, which looked like wax dripping down the walls, and then stained black with soot. It’s actually tannic staining but it does give the place a different feel. We went up through two breakdown domes where a collapse had caused some narrow spots. We descend deeper below the halocline into some amazing cave. The salt water had bleached the limestone and the dark nature of the cave begins to change. We reach the jump Danny had in mind and we then drop our 2nd stage as a marker and jump left. This section is about 3m tall but narrow maybe 1m wide. We’re now a bit deeper and in the salt layer so everything is white and blue coloured. We’re passing lots of limestone with intricate formations and finger walking through the narrow passage. Clare had brought her little camera and it actually managed a couple of photo’s, the light reflected by the limestone from 4 HID’s actually did quite a good job in such a small space. We reached the end of the line and turned the dive. It felt almost like 3 separate dives as the cave changes so much as you progress. As we reached the cavern zone we saw some snorkelers peering down at us. We did 5 minutes of deco and a slow ascent with the opportunity for a few more photo’s in the shallows.

Diving with Dan was a pleasure – once again we just turned up, ran through a basic plan and went diving. It’s still really nice when the DIR just works as it should and lets you go diving in a safe manner.

Next up was Grand Cenote, as Danny pulled the map out of the car he explained that he’d been one of the principal explorers in the system and sure enough he’s listed on the map as having found huge sections of the cave system. As such he knows the cave incredibly well. Our plan was for a complex navigation dive with 5 jumps and a T heading down into a section called La Boca. We descended and found the cavern line but came across a class making a dive. We made it past them but I was then on the back foot when running the jump as I’d not started getting ready before I reached it. We jumped off at the stop sign (English version) and onto the white mainline. There were lots of pretty formations with white and green being the dominant colours. We identified the jump to Kalimba (we’d discussed it in the pre-dive plan) as it was right next to a change of direction marker. We dropped a cookie to reinforce our exit and kept going. Next jump was at the end of the line and it was a big one so Danny used a reel. The cave now started to narrow a bit, the formations got even prettier. We took a shorter route past a cenote and kept going. I actually ran out of cookies at the last jump – I only had 5 on me so I had to use a line arrow (I’ve since added a few more to my pigtail). We eventually turn the dive on gas and exit. Despite a 3 hour plus dive we had no deco to do since we were on nitrox 32 and the average depth was 7m!

Next up was jailhouse, one of Danny’s favourites. Our plan for this one was a photo dive, with Danny bringing his new SLR camera. This site is part of the Mayan Blue system but is further up the road next to a ranch. As such it doesn’t suffer from the break-in problems that Mayan Blue itself struggles with. For those who don’t know Mayan Blue is in the jungle way out in the middle of nowhere and a lot of cars have been broken into while the divers are in the water. Fred has lost his shoes and his lunch in the past so it’s an indication of the poverty that some people are in.

The site is called jailhouse as it originally had a barbed wire fence around it so when the original explorers surfaced in it they were penned in. It’s now been well setup for divers with a path down to the Cenote. The cave starts off as a dark cave with lots of stained black rocks. We passed through that section with Danny only taking a couple of photos. We then reached a section where we descended below the halocline and found the big white Mayan blue style cave. The dive itself was absolutely stunning. Huge big cave passage, fantastic visibility, lots of big formations. We passed a fossiled tree root where dripping water had deposited rock onto the root freeze framing it as a rock structure. All the time Danny was shooting pictures. A simple stunning cave – I can see why it’s one of Danny’s favourites.

Another notable one on the trip was Dos Pisos, a relatively newly explored cave. It’s a bit of a longer walk to the water and it doesn’t smell nice but the cave makes up for it. The first section was tight narrow cave which required careful progress. Our tanks were on ceiling, chest on the floor and with gentle finning as there wasn’t always anything to use your fingers on. It was a white green cave, a little like grand cenote. After a short distance Danny flashed from position 3 and indicated that his stage was free flowing. We stopped and he tried to fix it. It worked for a little while but played up again so we dropped it and carried on with only back gas. Lots more formations and again very striking. We turned it on gas and began our exit. Right back near the entrance we made a jump to a stretch Danny hadn’t done before. We found a circuit which looped back onto the mainline nearer the exit. Amazingly we went past a lot of roots which look almost spooky underwater. When we jumped onto the mainline we turned right and reached our first jump. We removed the first jump, returned down the mainline removed our second jump and carried on exiting. It did prompt a conversation around markers and that on re-finding our first jump and our own cookies that we had re-confirmed we were on the mainline.

On one of the days without DIR Mexico we went to Grand Cenote. Once again we started off on the cavern line with a jump onto mainline. This time though we took the jump off towards Kalimba into a section called Pasa Delagato. This was still big passage but very pretty. Along the way we stop to take some pictures and drop stages at 40mins in. At 60 mins we reach the jump to Bosh Chen and keep going to the T. It also represents a change of direction so we cookie it and head right to Kalimba. The cave now becomes very tight and squirrelly. Often the line doesn’t seem to follow the cave and you end up heading up into the ceiling or down through a hole. We pass several very close-in jumps which I’m careful to study carefully on the way in and out along with some amazing formations. We hit turn pressure at 90 minutes and began our exit. The exit is a little quicker than the entry and all too soon we are back in the cavern.

I found this dive fascinating given the fatality that happened within this stretch of cave. A group coming from Kalimba swam in, turned left at the T and within 20m reached the jump to Bosh (which they took). Coming back from Bosh they then swam for close to 40 minutes down the wrong direction heading towards Grand Cenote rather than Kalimba. The caves are totally different style and would have been impossible to confuse. They should have expected a T almost immediately yet didn’t seem to notice. They should have marked the jump (it was a snap and gap but should be treated the same as any other jump) to Bosh. They should have recognised the fact they were seeing completely different cave. Having dived it I could see there were lots opportunities to avoid the incident. It was a very sad situation but a reminder of how important it is to really pay attention to the cave.

Overall a totally superb trip which left me very dived up. Being able to do a load of 3 hour cave dives where our longest deco was only 5 minutes is just amazing. Danny did us proud with some jaw dropping dives and of course the photos left us some fantastic pictures. Hope you liked them.

Meant to put a picture of the perfect RB80 cylinders online. They are 8.5L cylinders which are taller than the RB and therefore keep the unit off the boat bench when kitting up. With 17L of backgas it works very well for a good range of ocean dives.

Well just back from the DIR Explorers get together at the NDAC in Chepstow. Only just back from Mexico so it was hard work dragging myself in UK cold waters in December. In the end I did a couple of dives. First one was just a fun tour around with Howard and Wilbo. Second one was a DIR skills demo dive to a couple of interested people.

Clare was busy duirng the day doing a fundies re-eval dive and her crossover to become a GUE Open Water instructor.

In the evening there was a dinner which was great fun. Some really good presentations, I loved Bob and Renato’s. Renato is the native from Bosnia who put together the divers and the trip yet when they got filmed by the national media they decide Bob was in charge, the way he got Renato to translate it had me in stitches. Really good presentation by Jesper about the new GUE open water course. I have to say I really felt he’s pulled it off. Excellent materials, solid course and Jesper is so clearly engaged with it I think GUE have made a fantastic choice in getting him to lead the program.

I missed the sunday as I needed some time off having been in Mexico for a couple of weeks. Bit of a shame to miss it, overall I was very glad I went.

Off to Mexico for 9 days of cave diving of the 28th November – can’t wait! As to why well here’s a photo from last time.