Cozumel March 2008
This trip was booked through Apple Vacations. Accommodations were at Hotel Cozumel. Dive Operator - Dive Paradise Dive Paradise has at least three dive operations that we would stop at. One was up just south of town, Another was at our hotel Cozumel and another further south just north of the International Pier. We were on their slow boats. Renegado Day 1, Calypso Day 2 and Tonga Day 3. The quality of the boats increased each day with Tonga being the nicest and fastest of the 3. Day 1 we had 7 d...
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Australia - Great Barrier Reef - December 3rd-11th
Australia - Great Barrier Reef - December 3rd-11th, 2007 SingleDivers.Com trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We all met up in Cairns the night before. They bussed us over to the Explorer Ventures office where we dropped our extra bags before heading out for a low level flight up to Cooktown. Each person`s gear was weighed to make sure that the overall group averaged 44 lbs. After we met this requirement we took the 45 minute flight split into two planes. One a six seater, the other holding 18. It g...
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Underwater Photography Class
Last Saturday I took a class in underwater Photgraphy. It was taught by the owners of Island Photographers of Cozumel. www.photocozumel.com Holly and Armando are amazing. They really know there stuff. We spent the first two hours learning about all of the settings of our camera and what the optimal settings for shooting pix underwater. Until now, basically what I would do is take my camera underwater and shoot as many shots as I could. If I was lucky 1 or 2 would be decent. After that we then we...
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Equipment Specialty
Ok, I had the class last night. There were 3 students. We spent about 3-4 hours in total. He started with a shop overview. After that, he pulled out some lights and had us lubricate the o-rings. Then we took apart our BCDs. Cleaned the bladders. Reviewed the parts in the dump valves and took apart the inflator. Showed us places where the salt builds up from salt water diving. Next it was onto our Regulators. Took them apart to show us both the first stage and second stage and had us all read our...
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Drysuit and Deep Specialties
This weekend I completed two more specialties. Dry Suit and Deep. I did this down at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. This was my 2nd time coming down to this town that bills itself as the dive mecca of the southwest. Some thoughts.. 1) Dry Suit didn`t seem to be totally dry. between perspiration, and the slightest issue with any seal, and some type of pin hole in the boots of my rental boots assured this. Wearing socks really didn`t seem to be wise given that my feet were fairly wet after every...
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Dodging Hurricane Dean
Well, I took my first trip with SingleDivers.com this past week. And due to Dean, it turned into a 1 day dive trip. The night before I left, we could see that a named storm had formed in the Atlantic headed towards the caribbean. Flew in on Thursday. We did a shore dive off of Casa Del Mar was a tune up dive and was actually much better than I expected. There are a few of the catamarans that drop off their snorkelers, and we saw plenty of marine life. Casa Del Mar is just north of the Internatio...
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Colorado Dive Day 8/4/07
I actually signed up through Flat Irons on Friday and was provided my tank then. I dove twice, the first was the poker run. The compass directions seemed to be backwards, but we found all five cards. My pair of nines wasn`t good enough to win a price, but the water was warm and visibility was poor. There was 6-9 LDS with booths along with at least as many manufacturers as well as a couple of the trip companies (I know I saw Funjet). And of course ScubaBoard. In the afternoon I did a dive over at...
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Lake Tahoe 7/20/07
I had a trip to Lake Tahoe planned so I booked a couple of dives with Sierra Dive Center of Reno. They set me up with a Dive Master named Amy Hagen. We went to a site called Sand Harbor. It is a nice beach entry. Great visibility, the light reflects off the bottom sand which allows you to see quite well. The first dive was a wall dive, but by the time we hit teh third thermalcline, the temp had dropped to a cool 56 degrees. In my 7mm with vest and hood, it was chilly so we came back up and hugge...
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Underwater Nav Specialty
Today I hit Chatfield Resevoir to get my underwater Nav specialty. When I did my Advanced Open Water, the visibility was about 25 feet in Santa Rosa`s blue hole. When you can see all sides and have lots of refernce points, the navigation dive was fairly easy. For the 2nd two dives, I was in 20 feet of water with about 3 feet vis. You really had to rely on your compass as you couldn`t see much of anything. Objects would literally come out of nowhere. Well for my first dive, I was given three comp...
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July 4th in Cozumel
This week I headed to Cozumel for a four day trip. Originally scheduled as the first dive trip with my girlfriend, it didn`t work out that way. But it was still a great time. Stayed at the Hotel Allegro, an AI on the southern end of the island. Its a great location for diving as some of the best dive sites are just a short distance off its pier. It also has a really nice beach an decent good for an all inclusive. The only downside is that its so far out of town its a $15 cab ride each way to get...
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RMO June 07 Get together
Yesterday I had a chance to dive with a bunch of people from the Rocky Mountain Oysters on Scubaboard. This get together was planned at Aurora Resevoir here in Denver. Their is a scuba beach were we were able to get set up. About 15 divers showed up. I dove in the first group, with Frank, Linda, Steve and Jolene. We took a compass reading and headed out towards the Cessna. We missed the plane by about 10 feet and had to double back once we were past the markers. Finally we saw it, caught up with...
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Finishing two specialities
Yesterday I dove at the Chatfield Resevoir in Denver. I was finishing up two of the specialties, Peak Performance Bouancy and Altitude. It was my first shore dive and entry was relatively easy. Depth was a max of 25-30 feet. Visibility was tough, 3 feet at good times, 0 many others. Lost my buddy twice where we had to surface and find each other. My buddy was working on his search and rescue so for most of my dives, I was shadowing him. Interesting Specialty there in that in many ways its an adv...
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AOW in Blue Hole
This weekend I completed my Advanced Open Water at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa New Mexico. http://www.santarosanm.org/scubadiving.htm The place is 80 feet wide by 80 feet deep. It has two platforms and is very popular with Colorado Dive Shops as a training location. The temperature is about 61 degrees. I arrived on Friday night and showed up in time for my instructor to ask me if I wanted to get started a day early. So I quickly grabbed my gear and off we went. The first dive was my altitude div...
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My first dive
About five years ago, I was on a cruise ship where my ladyfriend at the time was looking at the list of excursions and she signed me up for my first dive. It was a discovery dive in the Grand Caymans. They started with a quick lesson, got us into our gear and then for a quick checkout. Breathing underwater was a challenge at first. The divemaster said based upon the look on my face that he thought I would never make it. I took on some salt water while doing the checkouts. Well, after four tries,...
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Christmas Cruise
After my last relationship ended, my family wanted to do a Christmas Cruise. I looked at this as my chance to get certified. So I went down to my local dive shop and signed up for the pool sessions over a couple of weekend in December. We had three couples and myself. The instructors were great. They gave me a referral and then came the cruise. Well, the first obstacle was getting to the cruise itself. A blizzard shut down the Denver airport for the 48 hours prior to my flight leaving. Thousands...
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Open Water Certification - Finally!
http://homesteadresort.com/ So, after failing to get my certification on the cruise, I decided to sign up for an open water certification through my dive shop. It was at the Homestead Crater in Utah.(see link above). The homestead crater is hot springs in Midway Utah. The water temp at the surface is 92 degrees. At 30 feet, where we were doing our checkouts, its 96. This was in February of this year. My girlfriend and I arrived in Homestead, which is just outside of Park City on Friday night. On...
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The Easter Cruise
So, now that I was certified, its time to get some real dives in. My girlfriend and I went on a western carribean cruise out of Galveston, TX. Getting there through the heavy rains and flooding was scary, but we made it. I thought she was going to lose it when the Celine Dion`s Titanic theme came on the radio, but that was the worst part of the trip. The first stop the ship made was in Costa Maya. Rather than dive, we did a dolphin swim with dolphino. It exceeded our expecations. they really car...
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