Dec 12-17, 2009 - Trimix & Advanced. Trimix training
I recently completed my TDI Trimix and Advanced Trimix training in Central Florida with instructor Richard Dreher III, from Superior Dive Training (www.superiordivetraining.com). Richard is an excellent instructor, with a great attitude and professionalism. Originally from Minnesota, he now lives in cave country. He is active with the NACD and fully dedicated to cave and tech training. At first, I was a little apprehensive to sign up with a young instructor; I was extremely pleased immediately w...
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Full Cave in the Riviera Maya
After a week of drift diving in Cozumel with my wife and Alison, I headed to Puerto Aventuras for the final portion of my full cave certification with Steve Gerrard. Steve is a great instructor with a fun personality and lots of stories... He’s been cave diving for 30 years and teaching for about 25. If you want to know about him, visit his website http://www.deephorizon.info. Day 1: 2 good dives at Dos Palmas ~35ft. Water temp is 75F. Dive 1: 1h23 following the gold line to get acclimated to di...
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Cozumel - 26 Oct 2009
The weather was fantastic today in Cozumel. Air temp mid-80 but very humid. Sunny and calm seas. The water is warm, 83F, and a 2mm shorty is almost an overkill.... Can you imagine I showed up here with a 5mm. I was told a few weeks ago that the water was getting colder and it was time to dig out the 5mm.... That was probably only for a couple days before the current heat wave... This is our first day of diving with Alison and Carlos this week. They’ve painted the Maximus earlier this month and s...
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It’s been a while. What happened?
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I last posted a blog. What happened? I became a scuba instructor... I did my IE on Nov 9, 2008 on my 200th dive at Dutch Spring and this is the last entry in my dive logbook... and last month, I logged my 350th dive in Monterey Bay. During the last 12 months, I’ve managed to fun dive in the Exuma Cays on the Aquacat liveaboard, drift dive in Cozumel, explore many central FL caves, dive the Duane in Key Largo, the Pompano wrecks, the U-85 in the OBX and dive...
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Monterey Bay - Aug 29-31, 2009
Diving in Monterey Bay area was fantastic. I rented tanks & weights, got fills and hired a local dive guide from the Monterey Bay Dive Center (MBDC.com) across the San Carlos Beach Park. DMs Chris and Tamin, and owner Jim Field are great local guides. The plan was to do 2 dives on Saturday and Sunday. I ended up staying an extra day to dive at Point Lobos on Monday and doing a total of 8 dives over 3 days. Point Lobos is booked months in advance, so early planning is necessary (not my strength) ...
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Dutch Springs - 20-21 Sept 2008
This weekend, we headed to Dutch for our last weekend of the summer... We brought the fire pit so we could stay warm in the evening. As usual, we camped for the weekend, but this weekend, the nights are high-30 to low-40. Pretty cold... I dived dry with my doubles and logged 6 dives over the weekend while divemastering with continuing education students on PPB, wreck, deep, search and recovery, and rescue and guiding tours. I also worked on my frog kick and buoyancy control in preparation to the...
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Interlude
It’s been almost three months since my last blog. Don’t worry, it’s not because I stopped diving; it’s because I’ve been too busy diving every weekend. Since completing my DM training in September, I divemastered at Dutch weekend of Sept 20-21; headed down for more cave training with Reggie Sept 29-Oct 4; upon my return I did my AI with Kevin D Oct 11-13, IDC with Kevin L Oct 17-Nov 2, took the IE Nov 8-9 at Dutch Spring; weekend of Nov 14-16, I taught an OWD boot camp; took my EFRI Nov 19-21; d...
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Divermaster Certification Completed - Sep 13, 2008
Since I am so addicted to scuba diving and want to go dive every weekend, I started a PADI Divermaster certification back in June to help on the various dive trips with Sterling Silver Scuba, a local dive shop with a great bunch of divers and staff. I had a quick start; I managed to do all my knowledge reviews during the first week. Second week, I went for various skill assessments. Then I started a series of pool and open water insternships and was done by mid-July. However, I felt that I was n...
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Haymarket - Sep 7 - TDI Deco cert
Today is my fourth and final training dive for the TDI Decompression Procedures certification that I started earlier during spring... I am thrilled! Achieving this certification has been a long journey. To put some color to the story, let me give you a little background. After a family dive trip to Cozumel in Jan 08, I had 86 dives under my belt (since my OW Jul 07) and had the urge to start learning new things. In March, I was heading to Jacksonville FL for a business trip and looked for diving...
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Dutch Springs - Aug 30-31, 2008 - deco training
I spent Labor Day weekend diving at Dutch Springs with Sterling Silver. This was the busiest weekend I have seen at the quarry. There were tents everywhere and the access ramps were always busy... Nonetheless, with the gorgeous weather and great dive team, we had a wonderful weekend! I also met a group of fellow French Canadian divers from Montreal. It was fun to speak about scuba diving in French - a new experience... Anyway, I arrived Saturday morning with my wife Nathalie and daughter Stephan...
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Dutch Springs - Aug 1-3, 2008
Sterling Silver Scuba was at Dutch Springs August 1-3 weekend for its 4th seasonal trip. We had three students taking OW, five AOW, two rescue and a couple of divemaster candidates doing internships. The water temperature was 78F at the surface, 72 at the platform (27ft), 65 at 30-50ft, 60 from 50-70ft and 44F below 70. The weather was fantastic; sunny during daytime and cool at night... My objectives for the weekend were 1) to assist with the AOW or Rescue as needed, 2) do a couple of fun dives...
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Voodoo Gas Blending - Jul 26, 2008
I took a TDI Nitrox Gas Blending course today along with others at Sterling Silver Scuba. Our instructor was Danny Donnegan (Kemperite) who was also certifying KevinD as an instructor for the same course. This course complemented well the Advanced Nitrox and Deco Procedures that I recently took since I’m now able to plan my mixes, optimize the blending to minimize cost for the fills (e.g., there are different ways to blend a given mix and I can figure out the best blend so that the overall fill ...
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Nassau, Bahamas - Jul 9-13 2008
I just came back from a trip to the Bahamas (Nassau, Stuart Cove’s dive operation) booked through PADI travel. What started as a group of two couples turned out to be four couples of divers: KevinD and Carmen, Jason and Melissa, Carl and Maggie and Nathalie and myself, all from Sterling Silver Scuba in Northern Virginia. We landed as planned at Nassau International on Wed at 12h30pm and headed for our hotel, Orange Hill Inn on the west side of New Providence Island. As soon as we checked-in, a g...
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Dutch Springs - July 3-6, 2008
Sterling Silver Scuba was at Dutch Springs July 4th weekend for its 3rd seasonal trip. We had a dozen students taking OW, AOW and Divemaster training (myself included). On the staff side, we had Kevin, Carl, Jason, Rob, Jeremy, Annette and JF. Melissa, Nathalie and JP were also part of the logistic team helping with food, tanks, and so on. Despite the occasional rain, we had a great time certifying 8 OW (our youngest was 11yr old) and 5 AOW. We did several deep dives (~90ft) for AOW visiting the...
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USS Oriskany Pensacola, FL - June 20-23, 2008
We finally made it! We are in Pensacola, FL, for a weekend of wreck diving on the USS Oriskany, aka The "Mighty O". We are here for fun dives, dive buddies reunion and to visit the area in preparation for a fall trip with Sterling Silver Scuba dive shop. This adventure started a few months ago when Kevin and I got the urge to dive the "Mighty O". Our first attempt to dive the wreck got cancelled due to very bad weather (tornados). This time, Derek, David and Duncan joined us for the adventure. D...
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Sterling Silver at Dutch - June 13-15
Sterling Silver Scuba is going to Dutch Springs this weekend. We have much less students than last month which will give the staff some time for personal diving. Personally, I’ll be trying a new Torus 35 wing from Deep Sea Supply and training with deco bottles. We’ll be easy to spot; we have a new trailer (big black with our new logo on it) and will setup at the peninsula area near the refreshment center. We’ll have BBQ/grill all weekend! Stop by and say hello if you are around. Cheers, JF....
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Dutch Springs - May 23-25 - DM internship
Sterling Silver Scuba had its first weekend of the summerfest at Dutch Spring during Memorial Day weekend. More than a dozen new OW students were certified. In addition, we had a few AOW and several specialties: wreck, DPVs, Drysuits, etc. The water was in the 60’s up to 30ft and 45-50 below the thermocline. The visibility was about 30ft. On Friday, the SSS staff (KevinD, Jason, Carl, Dan, Larry, Jeremy, Annette, JF, Melissa and Derek) left Sterling as a caravan around 10am. The caravan reached ...
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Haymarket - May 10 - Drysuit cert dives
A few divers from Sterling Silver Scuba (Nathalie, Kevin, Austin, Jason, Kyle and I) went to Millbrook this weekend for some training dives. The water was warmer than a couple weeks ago, 50F at the surface, 45F on the platform at 30ft, 42F at 80ft. Vis was less than 10ft from the surface down to the platform at 30ft. As soon as we reached 40ft, the visibility improved to about 25-30ft, but it was very dark. Without light, it was like a night dive... The layer of algea was so thick (30ft) that it...
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Millbrook - Apr 27 - Nathalie’s drysuit
Today, Nathalie and I went to Millbrook, a local quarry in Haymarket, VA, to try out her new drysuit. She received it earlier this week after a few weeks with the manufacturer for the wrist seals to be replaced. She had a couple of wet experiences in the pool back in March so she could pinpoint where the water was leaking in... We went to beach 3 as there was an open water class on beach 1 and lots of silt... It was Nathalie’s first dive in a quarry and in a drysuit. Water was a mere 40F at 70ft...
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Murrells Inlet, SC - Apr 18-21, 2008 - Wreck dives
Sterling Silver Scuba organized a wreck dive trip to Murrells Inlet, SC with Express Watersports dive operation. This was my first Atlantic Ocean wreck dive trip. We went to 4 dive sites and visited 5 wrecks during the weekend: the Hebe on Friday, 11 miles (tugboat and A-7 plane) on Saturday and USS Vermillion and City of Richmond on Sunday. I had 3 goals for the weekend: 1) get comfortable with my new gears in drysuit: a Dive-Rite dual bladder classic wing, a set of twin Faber LP 85 with a Dive...
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