Mark's Dive Log

I haven't written anything in a long time (over a year), so this is just a summary of the intervening time.

2008 was a busy and exciting dive year. At the time of my last entry I had just picked up my Master Scuba Diver certification. Since then I've earned several new specialties and certifications.

2008 started off with a trip to Bonaire in January. The whole family went with others from the shop for a week of diving. Michael, being 7, spent the mornings in Sea Camp while Tracie and I did the morning boat dives. We also did several of the afternoon, evening, and night dives. The last day of the trip was spent driving around the island on ATVs and dune buggies. I used the trip as an opportunity to pick up the PADI Boat Diver and Peak Performance Buoyancy specialties.

A month later a group of us went up to Twin Quarries near Columbus, Ohio for the PADI Ice Diver Specialty. I bought dry gloves for the experience as well as an argon bottle for my dry suit. I never did get the gloves working correctly and wasn't able to get my argon tank filled before the trip. I don't think it would have made it that much warmer anyway.

Also in March I started working towards Divemaster. Let's just say that this was a lot more work than I expected. It was a very good course and I learned a lot. I think it was the most fun dive course I've taken.

May marked the beginning of the dive season. I met up with Mike Gifford to do some acclimation dives in our doubles. I also started working on my Divemaster open water dives (assisting instructors with dive classes).

June was the big month. Mike Gifford and I headed to Florida with Steve and Kelly Oborn and Mike Havlin for our DSAT Tec Deep Diver certification. This was a seriously intense week. I can't think of anything I've ever done that was this intense. Even bootcamp was easier than this. After two days I was asking myself what I was doing there. But by Thursday I was starting to feel pretty comfortable and by Friday Mike and I both felt confident planning and leading the last dive. Our instructors apparently felt pretty comfortable with our abilities too because they didn't change anything in the dive plan. Once we completed the last dive, there was a conflicting feeling of relief that we were done and wanting to do yet another dive. It was a most excellent course.

July gave Mike and I an opportunity to try out our brand new Tec certification diving the USS Oriskany. We flew to Gulf Shores, Alabama to meet up with Steve and Kelly (and a few others from the shop). We made two dives on the Oriskany, although we aborted the second dive after we got blown off the descent line. We both want to make that trip again.

August was a family vacation to Hawaii. Tracie and I did a boat dive off of Honolulu and I dove off of Kona on the Big Island. The Kona dive was spectacular. I had planned on diving the Molokini crater, but the arrangements were more complicated than I wanted to deal with (renting a car from the cruise ship before 9:00am wasn't possible). So I'll put it on my list for next time.

In September I finished my Divemaster open water assistance dives by assisting with a Deep Diver Specialty class and doing a quarry tour with some divers who hadn't been in the water since their certification class the year before. It was a nice dive and they all seemed to have fun, so I guess I did OK.

October and November I was busy working on refinishing my basement, so no diving. In December, however, I went with Steve and Kelly Oborn on their annual winter Florida trip. They were certifying several Open Water and Advanced Open Water divers as well as doing a Cavern Specialty course (more about that in a later post). The trip ended on New Year's Eve swimming with manatees in the morning and a drift dive in the Rainbow River in the afternoon. Steve had me teach tank matching to the Cavern class and Kelly had me play Divemaster for her on several training dives. She also asked me and Joe Tumeo to lead the drift dive. All in all a fun trip with several opportunities for teaching/assisting. I also used the trip to do my mapping project for the Divemaster course, so I'm finally finished with that.

So that was 2008 in a nutshell. I'm looking forward to 2009. My goals are much simpler: Wreck Diver Specialty and DSAT Tec Trimix Diver. Steve asked me to help out with his next TecRec course as well. I'm really looking forward to that. Assuming the shop accepts my Divemaster application, I'll be doing some Divemaster work as well. Since my goal is to move on to Instructor in the next couple of years, I want to make the most of this to learn as much as I can before starting the IDC (Instructor Development Course).

Dive safe and don't hold your breath!

One type of technical diving is cave diving. The thought of cave diving has never really appealed to me. I got into technical diving to dive wrecks. Yes, I know wrecks are more dangerous than caves, but psychologically being in a hole in the ground several hundred or thousand feet from the entrance just didn't sit right in my brain.

Then I took the Cavern Diver Specialty course. Cavern diving is similar to cave diving, but you need to be within sight of the opening and within 200 feet of the surface. Even with that restriction, you can experience quite a lot. You can do cavern dives with basic recreational gear, but I did the course in my tec rig, more for the practice diving in the tec rig than any other reason.

So I made the long drive to Florida just after Christmas to join Steve and Kelly Oborn on their annual winter dive trip to Florida. There were several classes going on during the week including some Open Water certifications and an Advanced Open Water class. The Cavern class consisted of me, Dave Brown (who got his OW certification the same weekend as my wife), Joe Tumeo from the shop, and Ed and Darcy Smith who got their OW certifications on this trip last year. Having five people was a little awkward, but it gave us the opportunity to practice working in teams of more than two.

We started the dive week at Devil's Den near Williston, Florida. The first dive was mainly an acclimation dive for most of the divers (although it was a training dive for the Open Water students). I dove in my rec gear the first day because doubles would have been way to bulky for the entrance to the sinkhole. During subsequent dives we practiced running lines and then following them out with our eyes closed. It was a relatively easy day. The real work started on day two.

The second day of the trip was spent at Blue Grotto, also near Williston. Blue Grotto is more of a cavern dive. We did more line drills including following the line out with mask off and eyes closed. This was probably the most disconcerting dive experience I've ever had, although I never felt uncomfortable. I knew I wasn't in any real danger, since in a worst case scenario I could just open my eyes and swim out and up, so I there was no anxiety, but I felt like I had somehow managed to get turned around or that I was sliding backwards down the line. In the end I made it out of the cavern area with no problems. It was a very good training exercise.

Our third and final day of cavern training was done at Ginnie Springs near High Springs, Florida. The first dive was to a cavern called The Ballroom. The entrance lies in about 10 - 15 feet of water. You pass through the upper chamber and a narrow opening down to The Ballroom. We practiced running a line from the entrance down to the back of the cavern even though there is a huge line permanently run there already.

Sitting (floating) in the Ballroom was incredible. Facing the back of the chamber our flashlights lit up some of the most beautiful structures I've ever seen while diving. It was incredible. Facing the front of the chamber you can look all the way up to the surface of the spring and the light filtering in reminded me of my first dive experience in the kelp forests off of Catalina Island in California.

When we came up from the first dive I turned to Doc and said "I'm hooked". The rest of the dives in Devil's Eye, Devil's Ear, and Little Devil only served to set the hook.

So now I'm going to start looking into getting full cave certified. I want to get some more tec experience first, but cave diving, once on my "never in my life" list is now on my short list.