But Indian Valley Scuba still has three more weekends to spend there before we put the virtual cover on the pool for the winter.  And this weekend was a great one to enjoy at the local pond, with 55 degree air in the morning, warming up to nearly 80 each day.  The water is still great, at 75 degrees down to about 40 feet, so the diving is as good as it can get there. 

Both Saturday and Sunday saw some huge IVS crowds there, enjoying the return of Bev to the grill, cooking up some beer-steamed chicken, fresh Amberjack from North Carolina, and the usual menu of dogs, burgers and salads.  Team IVS does eat well, that is for sure!

Congratulations to Jarod Rodgers, John Zyskowski, Brenden Malloy, Brad Creveling, & Rob Lunny, on completing their Advanced Open Water certifications this weekend. 

John Glodowski, lead designer on the IAHD back-mounted scooter, was on site both days tweaking the development of our third generation scooter, designed specifically to allow handicapped divers with little or no use of their legs to be able to motor through the water alongside the rest of us.   This is a phenomenal product that opens up the sport of scuba diving to so many of our less-than-able-bodied friends.  Make sure you stop by the shop and check out the IAHD scooter.

It’s that time again, time to visit our favorite local water-filled hole, Dutch Springs!  And we did it this weekend, in spite of hurricane/tropical storm Hannah raining on our parade!  We were hammered by the weather today with up to 6 inches of rain falling in the area, but did that slow us down?  Not one bit!

The IVS crew sailed into the eye of the storm, without a moment’s hesitation, cause we heard the call of the quarry (and also cause we didn’t hear the call of Key Largo or some other palm-tree filled place this weekend!).  Our team headed in early on Friday to set up the road show tent and secure our space for the weekend, and we are glad they did, cause it was hopping there!!  Amazing with the weather how busy it was at Dutch this weekend.  Our gang showed up bright and early, with the typical myriad of classes to complete, fun dives to take, great barbecue to enjoy, and friends to meet.  All good!

Our own Ray Graff and Richie Kessler manned the grill this weekend, and although the’re not Beverly, it sure beats cold cereal for lunch!  Realistically, both Ray & Richie are great on the grill, and no one walked away hungry.

As usual there were lots of revelations this weekend, but perhaps the most telling was Julia Tate, remarking when our own Aussie staffer Rob Tenille slipped off his drysuit  - “wow, you are completely dry!’.  Hmmmm, did we miss something here in our open water class, Ms. Julia???? 

We want to welcome Tom & Crystal Colleran, Rob, Don & Janet Filson, Ian Matthews, and the lovely Ms. Julia as our newest PADI National Geographic Open Water Divers!  Way to go team!   And as always, not only did our divers complete their open water certifications, they also earned the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy and Coral Reef Conservation specialties.

We also want to congratulate Art Poontang & Steve Holak as our newest PADI Advanced Open Water divers.  Nice job guys!

Overall we had 32 members of the IVS dive family out with us over the weekend, and it just keeps getting better, with several new faces joining us from North Jersey and New York, and more of our local divers making the switch to the IVS brand of Kool-Aid.  We’re all about diving, training & having a great, safe time while doing it, and it shows in every one of gatherings!  We’ll be back in two weeks to dip our toes into the near-balmy waters here again - hope to see you there!

If it’s Labor Day it must be time for IVS to visit the St. Lawrence Seaway!  And visit we did, with a contingent of eleven Americans and nine Canadians converging on Caigers Resort in Mallorytown, Ontario for a four day dive-a-thon.  James Dahlberg, Sherwood Probeck, Csaba Lorinczy, Sue Douglass, Donna Raleigh, John Glowdowski, and I, as well as John Scott, who was traveling under a one-day pass from his lovely bride, Theresa, enjoyed motoring up in a convoy Thursday evening.  We stopped off at Bingham’s Diner and enjoyed a great meal, even buying up a few loaves of the fresh baked banana-nut bread to enjoy between dives later in the weekend.  A hundred miles later, Csaba was our driver and designated speaker with a heavy Hungarian accent as we passed through the Canadian border patrol station, and let’s just say we should have rehearsed a little bit before letting him lead us into Canada.  Maybe the first hint was on the way up, when he said “We are going to Canada?”.  When asked by the border agent where we were going, he drew a blank on the resort name and town.  When asked where everyone was from, a second blank.  Hmmm…not off to a good start.  He did finally get it figured out and we passed the test, being allowed into Canada, in spite of the fact that we were carrying weapons (dive knives) after Csaba assured them that they were “very little knives”.  Note to self:  team briefing before the next border crossing!  We finally arrived late that night at the resort and were greeted by some of the friendliest resort staff we have ever encountered.  The folks at Caigers are unbelievably accommodating, and we are thrilled already with our lodging choice.  And to top it off, they have some fine imported beer on tap at the bar, Coors Light!!  I’m in heaven!

Friday started off with us getting our tanks filled first thing in the morning at Divetech, in Mallorytown.  Owner Dan Humble and his staff turned out to be a tremendous asset on this trip!  This is a technical dive center in the middle of Ontario province, on a country road, fantastic service, great inventory, with no water in sight - an amazing resemblance to Indian Valley Scuba.  Multiple compressors, over 200 bank bottles for gas storage, two Haskel pumps to top off oxygen to 3,000 psi - these guys are VERY serious about filling scuba tanks with everything from air to trimix to argon.  We really feel at home here with this group.   Before we knew it our 20 tanks were filled with Nitrox, analyzed, and loaded back on the truck for the 20-minute ride back to the resort.  Sweet!

While we were hard at work, John Scott was on the phone for his 11th? 12th? 13th? call to his wife, and got the green light to stay and do the afternoon dives too, rather than just the morning!  Way to go John!

Back at Caigers, we loaded the boat with our tanks and gear, and then reviewed the manifest which had been electronically forwarded to U.S. Customs.  This is an amazing complicated and absolutely BS-laden process designed, I hope, to protect our borders from those invading scuba divers, but alas it really seems to simply provide a job to a lazy civil service employee, specially selected from a special genetic pool to ensure they have zero personality, zero incentive and zero motivation to get things done in any fashion other than slower-than-molasses.  Once we ensure the manifest is correct, we fire up the engines and head over to the US Border Patrol station located on the dock at Boldt Castle Island.  Our captain goes to the window, they bring up our manifest on the computer, print out the obligatory multiple copies, and then, with their official GSA-issue little black pen, they make the official checkmark on multiple official copies of the manifest as each diver stands before the agent and holds up their passport to match the face and name with the divers listed on the manifest.  Amazingly, each of us looks like the diver listed on the manifest so we are allowed to re-board our boat and head out to dive on a wreck which happens to lay on the US side of the bottom of this riverway.  Friggin amazing, but sadly, true.  And, it gets even better!

Once we have been cleared to transit from Canada into the US to tie our boat to a mooring in the middle of this river that just happens to be on the US side of the invisible dotted line that runs down the middle of the river, we can do the dive.  However, when we are done, and start to head back across that dotted line again into Canadian waters, we must stop, and the captain needs to call the Canadian Customs from a “designated phone” and let them know they brought us back into the country.  So if dive #2 is on a Canadian wreck, we need to travel to a dock where one of those “designated phones” are located, make the call, then head back out to the dive site and do what we came to do.  And of course, the borders have been kept safe for all!   

OK, I feel better now…let’s talk about diving!    

Back to Friday - our boat is loaded, manifest checked, customs paperwork is reviewed, and we are ready to head out.  Our crew for the day is Captain and owner of Thousand Island Pleasure Diving, Wayne Green, assisted by his young and wonderful captain-in-training, Chantal.  This team was perfect and sync’d with the IVS gang within moments.  This was going to be a good day.  So we motored out, and stopped at US Customs,   processed through quickly, and headed out to the wreck of the Keystorm.  This steel canal boat, measuring 250 feet long and 42 ft wide was built in 1910, and was less than two years old when she ran aground on a foggy night at Scow Island Shoals, and sank with no loss of life.  She sits nearly upright in 118 ft of water, and her tall intact profile and easy penetration makes this a great dive for all advanced and technical dives alike.  The wreck provides lots of opportunities for penetration with minimal entanglement issues.  Our second location was also in US waters, and was the America, a former drilling barge that flipped over and sunk in 1932 while it was drilling and blasting the rocky shoals to widen the shipping channel.  As it blasted the rock one of the four legs that were extended down to stabilize the barge was kicked out, and the barge capsized and ended up settling up inverted on the bottom at 78 ft.  This wreck sits right in the shipping channel so the entry is on the shoals at 30 ft and then follow a permanent guide line about 100 yards to the wreck site.  A good wreck for fish, with lots of walleye, perch, and large sheepshead.

Back to the dock, we make the required call to Customs, and disembark to unload tanks and grab some lunch.  A quick run over to Divetech, filling 20-plus tanks, and back to Caigers.  For lunch we stop in and meet Darlene at the Mallorytown Diner, a Canadian version of a greasy spoon sort of diner, suffering from some identity confusion about whether it is a diner or a pizza parlor.  Let’s just say we enjoyed Darlene a lot more than the food.  After lunch we re-board the boat and head out at 6:30 for our scheduled 1:30 afternoon dive , this time to dive on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence, negating the need to involve U.S. Customs and all that goes along with it.  Felix Gryn has arrived and  opts to join us on our night dives.  Our selected dive site was the Kingshorn, a wooden sailing barge that sunk in 1897 while being towed as part of a convoy of seven barges loaded with grain.  Only three of the barges actually made it to port, with the others lost somewhere in the dark abyss of the main channel which is in excess of 300 ft deep in places.  Some of you may recall this divesite as the the last known invasion of Canada, which was accomplished last year and ended up wht the IVS crew being summarily arrested and detained in Canadian Customs until they realized we were but harmless and misinformed scuba divers from America.  Well this year, instead of the half hour internment and rush of excitement, we opted for the far more conventional and waaaaay more slow process of actually informing the other country that we were coming in for a visit.  Next time, go back to Plan A!  Anyhows, this wooded wreck offers a fairly intact hull, sitting in about 90-120 ft of water, upright and easily penetratable.  We dropped in at 6:55, enjoying the dive at twilight, and ending as a night dive.  We hung out on the boat for a short surface interval (thank goodness for dive computers and Nitrox), then revisited the wreck for a true night dive, going in at 9:00 in the evening.  Another good hour-long dive, with Donna and her buddy John G giving us a nice unplanned macrame performance in tieing yourself up while trying to practice using a reel at night for penetration.   No harm, no foul and everyone came out of the wreck wiser for the exercise.  

Back at the resort, Mark the owner and his fine staff take care of us at the bar, keeping the libations flowing well into the evening.  You can imagine that the Indian Valley Scuba gang brings just a little more energy, excitement and late-night laughter to a resort that normally caters to a more mundane crowd of early-morning fishermen and their families.  Finally it’s off to bed, get some well-deserved rest, and be ready for the a.m.

John S managed to rack up a few more hours of international cell phone charges, but it resulted in him getting his pass extended to the morning dive trip.

Saturday morning we start off with another tank-filling run to Divetech, hauling and humping another 22 steel tanks and doubles in for filling and reloading them into the IVS truckster.  Back at Caigers, we repeat the boat loading process, and this time we board a different boat than we had yesterday.  Different in many ways, perhaps the most important one being that although both boats were equipped with two inboard engines, only yesterday’s boat actually had both engines operating!  Broken boats seem to be an IVS tradition, so what the heck, we load up and begin to prepare to slowly head out to visit our friends at US Customs to seek permisssion to come home to dive for the morning.  Except, a quick review of the manifest shows that we had missed the 24-hour advance window to notify U.S. Customs that John Scott had gotten permission to visit America again, so it was hold the boat, bacak to the computer, re-send a revised manifest and make some sort of official phone call, and finally, finally we are ready to depart.  Except now, with that circus behind us, we tell John in no uncertain terms that he owes us the afternoon dive, so he might as well recharge his cell phone battery now in preparation of the call(s) he’ll have to make to his wife. 

OK, the mooring lines are untied, and we start to motor out towards the border.  Our boat was joined by a another vessel, this one loaded a bunch of Canadians, led by IVS-North instructor Jim Cormier.  The group included Jim, his lovely wife Peg, and kids Sarah and Matthew, along with Earl ‘the hugger’ McLean, Brian Post, Steve Mueller, John Beck, Brian McPherson, and Steve’s lovely counterpart, Brenda.  Needless to say, our progress was much slower so we waved goodbye to our northern neighbors as they quickly pulled away from our boat.  Customs today was far less simple than yesterday, being Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and also by virtue of the fact that it was approaching noon by the time we arrived. Progress is amazingly slow, and the experience is the same as yesterday, only slower.  No welcome home hugs for us from the Customs agent, boo hoo.

Once we clear customs, we begin to head upstream to the Vickery.  The boat is making about 6 knots, and the current is running about 5 knots, so you can do the math here.   You can almost here the Gilligan’s Island theme song “three hour tour” as we plod slowly towards the dive site.  Thank goodness it is a beautiful day and the scenery along the river is phenomenal, so there is plenty to look at and enjoy.  Our captain for the day, Rick, has something to say about everything we see on both sides of the river, but unfortunately, most of it is wrong or has no ending.  Interesting to spend your entire life working on this river and being so clueless about what you look at each day.  It’s a little past one now, and we have the dive site mooring in sight now.  We are excited and start to slip into wetsuits and re-check the gear.  Putt-putt-putt, we’re almost there, when suddenly with a look of shock and amazement in his eyes, John “first in the water, whether we’re at the dive site or not” Scott falls off the back of the dive boat into the river!  Well we immediately roll into our man-overboard drill, and question whether we want to tell the captain since it has taken so long to get this close to the dive site, and to go back for John would mean we would have to retrace a good chunk of our route.  Well after a quick vote and a rock/paper/scissors tie-breaker, we decide to turn around and get John.  We pull his sorry butt back on board, and he knows the incident is blog-worthy material already.

With all divers now re-accounted for on-board we finally make it to the mooring and tie into the wreck.  Our selection for this dive is the Vickery, a 136 ft long schooner that struck the shoals and sunk in 1889.  She lies on a sloping rocky bottom from 65 to 120 feet in depth.  Off the stern the two masts invite divers to travel down to a little over 150 ft to see the crows nest and rigging that lie near the extreme end of them.  The current is smoking here, so careful use of wreck reels and using the wreckage to shield yourself is key to a safe dive experience.  The rudder is a dramatic site at the stern, rising almost 15 ft vertically.  Very nice dive overall, and it was finally time to head back to our boat.  Well, time for most of us to go back to our boat, as Sherwood “Inspector Gadget’ Probeck opted for mooring line #2, heading off to make new friends on another boat, and helping take a little of the blog pressure off John Scott for his earlier escapade. This makes Sherwood 0-for-2 on making it back to the boat he jumped off of.  We are confident we can improve that this weekend!

Once roll is taken, Captain Rick suggests a dive site that is even further upstream from where we are, and we unilaterally tell him he is out of his freakin’ mind if he is thinking about plodding any further against the current in the S.S. Minnow.  That being said, he says he has another site for us, and we turn the boat downstream and make some decent headway down the river.  We cruise along for a while, and I think perhaps it might be wise to see what ideas are rolling around in our captain’s head with regards to dive #2.  So I head up to the bridge and we talk about the site, and what is there, and why we might enjoy it.  Then I ask what country the site is located in, and he says “Canada”.  “Wait one cotton-picking minute here, you mean we have to go back to shore and tie up while we are making that call from that “designated phone” and requesting entry back into Canada??  I don’t think so.  Stop the boat!”  “Where are we now?”  “America?”  “Yes”. “Good.  We are going to drift dive the wall right along the island that we are passing, right now.”  “Well we never dove here” he says.  “Well you are about to”, I say.  So we gear up, jump in, and drop down for a pretty cool drift dive along Deer Island, which is owned by some secret society that Captain Rick couldn’t remember much about.  Nice dive, lots of big fish, good wall structure, and nearly an hour later we drift into a quiet bay and get picked up for the short ride home to Canada.  Mutiny over.

Once back at the dock I sit down for a little pow-wow with Wayne and we work out a plan to salvage this day for us.  Unload the boat, get the tanks filled, and let’s head about 20 kilometers east and jump on his other boat in the town of Brockville.  Sounds like a plan!  We unload the gear, hump a kazillion tanks into the truck, stop by our new buddies at Divetech for gas, and, choices being limited, visit the Mallorytown Diner for a bit more of Darlene and the fun we enjoyed yesterday. Finally it is 7:30 and we are pulling away from the Brockville dock with Wayne at the helm.  Our first stop for this afternoon’s dive (yes we are still working on our 1:30 trip) is the wreck of the Muscallonge, in it’s day the largest tugboat to work the river, which suffered an explosion and sunk in 1936, settling upright but badly damaged on the bottom in 99 ft of water.  It’s always an extra thrill to do your night dive on a new site, in strong current.  This is an adventure trip for sure.  The dive was enjoyable but the damage to the wreck made it more of a ‘Sanford & Son’ junkpile than a shipwreck, taking a little out of the experience.  Back on board (all of us, including Sherwood!) decide to keep the adrenalin flowing, and we motored over to another brand new site for our second night dive of the afternoon, dropping in at 9:30 p.m. on the wreck of the Robert Gaskin.  This 136 ft long triple masted barque actually sunk not once but three times while working on a salvage project to re-float a train-carrying ferry that had sunk in the channel. They say three times is a charm, and that proved to be the case here, as on the third attempt to raise the ferry one of the pontoons they had attached to the sunken vessel and were filling with high-pressure steam to float actually broke loose and rocketed to the surface, striking the Gaston, making this perhaps the only Canadian ship in history to torpedo itself.  The damage from this event was too great and they left the wreck on the bottom, but coincidently did manage to re-float the train ferry.  This wreck sits upright in 55 to 70 ft of water, with more good penetrations thoughout. Another great first visit on a night dive, with current and penetration!  What were those guidelines again?

Thankfully all of our dives this afternoon were in Canadian waters, so no calls to Customs were required as we returned to the dock.  Unload gear, hump tanks, and head back to the resort for some more laughs and brewskies at the bar.  John S boogies for home now, leaving at 11:00 p.m and due home in time for his wife to leave for work at 5:00 a.m. - way to cut it close John.  It’ll probably be a long time before he is allowed out to play with us again!  Meanwhile, Dave West and Ray Graff had arrived this evening, and joined in the beers, merriment and story sharing.  We ended the evening with Csaba and Ray enjoying some fine Cuban cigars (available in Canada) on Caigers waterfront patio while the stars treated us to a nice show.

Now it’s Sunday and we kick off the morning with our daily exercise, humping 20-some tanks and doubles for gas fills at Divetech.  Down to the boat, load gear on the S.S. Minnow again, and head out to meander upstream to a couple of locations on the Canadian side - enough of the customs nonsense.  Our first site is a drift wall dive along Eagle Point and highly rated by Captain Rick.  It was a pretty cool dive, and I hit depths to 160 feet along the wall, which dropped down that distance again to the bottom.  Lots of fish, some really dramatic rock structures, and a pretty nice current to kick along with.  For our second dive we opted to forego the planned second drift location and instead visited the Kingshorn, to actually see it in the daylight hours.  A nice dive for everyone, and thanks to the location, a quick ride back to the resort for us.

After unloading the gear and packing the trucks for the tank fill run and transfer to the Brockville boat, we decided to try a new location for lunch, and headed west to Rockport to dine at the Boathouse Tavern.  Great food and more chances to enjoy local Canadian fare such as poutine, which is french fries with brown gravy and cheese curd on top - yummy!  Lunch was a blast as every gathering with this gang has been, and we wrapped it up and hustled over to Divetech to get our tanks filled once again.  The guys there work like we do at Indian Valley Scuba, with the scheduled 5:00 closing time coming and going with no one even thinking about quiting as there were still plenty of customers in the shop and many tanks to fill.  Finally we finished ours, and headed into Brockville again to load the boat.  This was the closest we were yet to actually making an afternoon dive in any part of the day that resembled the afternoon as most of us know it.  We loaded up and headed out to the wreck of the Daryaw, a 220 ft long steel freighter that ran aground in the fog in 1941, turning turtle and wedging itself in a deep crack in the shoal.  The top of the wreck, actually the keel of the ship, lies at 55 ft deep, while the superstructure is about 90 ft below the surface.  The current was ripping along this wreck from bow to stern, so a firm grip on the downline and the tag line running along the wreck was a necessity.  Just prior to entering the water, Dave W managed to tear his dry suit neck seal right down the front.  Well, try as he may to use this as an excuse to call the dive, those of you who know me know that you need to have bones sticking out to be allowed to call off a dive, and we made no exceptions in this case.  Even Sherwood, who has had an endless supply of tools and spare parts in his kit for us all weekend, doesn’t have a new neck seal to remedy the situation.  So Dave sucked it up, and we went in and enjoyed a great dive exploring this wreck and making some exploratory excursions into the interior.  His suit did not flood completely until we were on the ascent line, so kudos to him for managing his trim in the water and keeping his neck down the entire dive.  And a good chance for everyone to see that flooding your dry suit on a dive is not life threatening in spite of the yarns that some instructors like to spin.  Bottom line, very cool wreck, very disorientating as it sits completely upside down.  In addition to the dry suit damage, Dave W and Ray also were suffering a little light envy, as Csaba, Donna & Sue were all styling and showing off their brand-new canister light systems.  What a difference a great light makes for deep, dark wreck dives like these!  All in all, a very nice dive on a very nice wreck, and well worth the drive to Brockville. 

Since we were well versed in the art of visiting and exploring brand new wrecks in the dark and swiftly-moving waters, we figured we were ready for our final Brockville dive, opting to visit the Lillie Parsons, a 130 ft long inverted wooden two-masted schooner which met it’s demise during a blinding squall in 1877, hitting wall along the edge of the channel head on and sinking immediately.  Her cargo of 500 tons of hard coal is very evident all around the wreck, with the material that they were not able to salvage still dropping out of the hold.  The neatest part about the wreck is the entry to the dive site.  Due to the currents here, which were without a doubt the strongest we encountered all weekend, you actually drop in at a point about 300 ft in front of the island that the vessel wrecked on.  Once in, we dropped down immediately and kicked a little to the left to ensure we made it to the right side of the island as the current separated around the land mass.  We hit the wreck in about 20 seconds so you can imagine the speed of the current.  Once on the wreck we made sure everyone was OK, then proceeded to explore the wreck around the perimeter with some very minor visits underneath it to check out the cargo hold.  The masts heading down into the dark abyss were calling our names, but we opted for caution (whoa, did I say that?) and chose to not head down to see what may be at the end of them.  Once we were done playing around the wreck, we re-positioned ourselves between the wreck and the rocky shoal wall, finding a crack to ascend up from our 60 ft depth to the 30 ft range, and we literally sailed head over teacup along the wall, bumping into fish, scaring the large crayfish, and just having a laugh on this ride, as we kept out eyes open for a rope that marked the turn into a sheltered bay where our boat was waiting for us.  Here it comes, grab it, hold on for your dear life, and slide on up to the 15 ft mark for our safety stop.  Cool!!  Once done, we kicked around corner into the bay, and swam to our boat.  What a ride!!! 

Finally, it’s Monday and time to head back to the land of opportunity, America.  We say our goodbyes to our new friends at the resort, run out for a final tank fill at Divetech, and start to head across the border.  ‘Start’ is the operative word here, because the process for a truckload of Americans to return home was, in a nutshell, ridiculous.  First we have about six border agents directing traffic into the clearly marked lanes to pass through customs, as if we could not figure that out on our own.  Then we inch up to the front, and finally we are next in the queue for the agent.  Large, clear signs indicate that you should advance when the lane clears, so we wait.  The car in front of us appears to have answered the customs agents’ questions incorrectly, and are being directed to the body cavity search area.  Since the lane is clear, we begin to pull up, only to see the agent throw up here hands to tell us to stop.  Realizing that we have advanced about 24 inches closer to our homeland, she throws up her hands again in obvious disgust at our failure to read her mind.  So she signals us to advance a little bit more forward, but not quite to the booth.  I feel like we are in “tweener land” between two countries, and had war broken out, it would be a crap shoot as to which way to run.  She takes care of her business with the occupants of the car that did not pass the test, and turns her attention to us.  We have been studying and practicing furiously, and are hoping that she is grading on a curve today.  Mickey’s girlfriend is Minnie, it was the Yankees who won the world series in 1952,  Grover Cleveland was the 14th president of the US….what else might they ask to authenticate our citizenship?  Oh no, while we were waiting in tweener land, they switched agents in the booth, and we are not prepared for the new male border guard.  I pull up, careful to stop at exactly the prescribed line at the booth.  “Passports please” he says, and I hand them over. Csaba has already been briefed to feign sleeping, while Donna, if questioned, will be our token deaf/mute.  Sounds like we have the bases covered!  I hand over the passports, and he asks if I can shut off the truck so he can hear my answers.  Geeesh…ready for the interrogation!  Sure, I say, and I shut it off…then to add a bit of levity, I ask “so, do you have jumper cables?”.  “You must be kidding”, he says, without a change in expression or tone.  Hmmm, I am thinking, maybe I should compliment him on how well the scar is healing, from where they REMOVED HIS PERSONALITY!!  OK, I think, maybe he would not appreciate that joke since it was so close to the truth, and I refrain.  “Where were you”, he asks, and I tell him.  “What were you doing?”  “Scuba diving”.  “What are you carrying?”  “Duh, dive gear!”. Truly working with a rocket scientist here, I refrain from offering more info than he can process.  When he asks if we are bringing in any alcohol and tobacco, I almost say “No, Ray & Dave have that in their car behind us”, but again, I refrain.  We are finally allowed to resume our place as resident taxpayers, and pass through the golden gates into America.  I pull over to the side after going through to wait for Ray & Dave, and you would have thought I was slipping into my suicide vest as the border guys dropped what they were doing and started gesticulating wildly for me to move further away from the customs station.  I am thinking they really need to get a life there.  

We head over to Alexandria Bay, NY for a nice little shore dive right next to River Hospital.  Things could not be more perfect as we snag two parking spots right on the water, gear up, brief and head down under the water.  We expore the wreckage of the former townfront, visit the Stonehenge of the St. Lawrence with neatly arranged chairs, tables, glasses, plates and beverage bottles all at 70 feet.  Slipping along the shore we pass under the floating bar, see more former pilings and piers, and end up with a nice exploration on the wreck of the former wooden passenger ship Islander.  This was a sidewheel steamer, 125 ft long and displacing 118 gross tons, which operated as a mail boat and passenger steamer between Clayton and A-bay from 1871 until she burned and sank at the dock in 1909.  It sits in 15 to 60 ft of water, with minimal current, making it a nice easy shore dive and training site for local shops.  A nice 60 minute tour and we are ready to slip out of the gear for the 13th and last time this weekend. 

It’s time to start for the 5 hour ride home, but first, hey, let’s get something to eat here.  I recommend Cavalliaro’s where we enjoyed a fine meal last summer.  We agree, and we pull into the lot and park.  They have tables outside, so we figure how perfect is that, we can eat and watch the gear in the truck at the same time.  Well, it’s 3:30, and they don’t open until 5.  ”Sit down and have a drink with us” is what the gang on the porch says, so hey, who are we to argue!  There is some minor rumbling from the gang, thinking why do we have to wait 90 minutes to eat and still have this long ride home.  Well, we put those concerns to rest within the first two minutes as the girls on the porch, Cindy, Shirly and Joanne, along with Tara the owner, pulled up extra chairs to their table and ordered libations to share with us.  What a perfect fit, us and them, as we shared stories, told jokes and basically laughed our butts off for the next three hours.  They don’t serve dinner on the porch, we are told, and haven’t since they opened in 1962.  “Sounds like a guideline to me”, I say, and yes, you can guess it, the IVS gang enjoyed the first-ever meal served on the porch!  Our new friends were an absolute hoot, and it ended up being a most wonderful way to end a great trip.  Cindy shared some of her observations with us, pointing out that perhaps I was not very good at advertising and should keep my mouth shut!  Dave West enjoyed a prime rib that took probably two cows to make, and the rest of us enjoyed the finest food of the weekend.  After dinner, desserts and more drinks, along with additional doses of laughter.  Our bellies were full and hurting from all the laughter by the time we shared hugs and goodbyes with everyone there.

Four hours and 22 minutes later, we are safe & sound back in Harleysville, and planning for next years trip already! 

Another repeat visit, this time to our little friends at Camp Wonderfun at the Harleysville Learning Center, with a special emphasis on their Learning about the Undersea World Week.  Team IVS brought out all the big guns, with Bev Loggins, Chris Rich, Mike Gusenko, Maureen Gribb, Steve Clem, Jim Cormier and Ray Graff sharing our love of the ocean with over 60 campers!   What a great way to reinforce what they had spent the week learning about, with Bev making sure we had plenty of great “touch and see” items, including sharks teeth, sea turtle shells, urchins, conch shells and more.  After an enthralling session in the classroom, we moved out to the pool, and spent the next two hours in the water, teaching the 7 & under crowd how to snorkel, while the 8 & up bunch enjoyed a Discover Scuba Diving session with our instructors.

This was our second visit this year to Camp Wonderfun, and we look to come back next season.  Would you like Team IVS to come to your school or camp program?  Just call us at the shop!

This just in - it’s official, Key Largo has been taken over by the Indian Valley Scuba gang!

Forty IVS divers descended on the quiet hamlet of Key Largo last evening, and immediately set up camp at Amy Slate’s Amoray Dive Resort!  Other guests at the resort were aghast at the news - there are NO spots available on the boat all weekend unless you are with IVS!  Team IVS has filled the Amoray Diver to capacity and then some.

Our group started arriving Thursday at the resort, to join the twenty lobster hunters already in position,  We kicked it right off with a night dive to the Benwood wreck, enjoying perfect conditions above and below the surface.  Great viz, 86 degree water temps, lots & lots of sea life to enjoy - what a way to start off the trip!  While 18 of us were enjoying this night dive, another 8 were completing the last lobster dive of the mini-season, helping to ensure that there would be plenty of lobster for everyone at our dinner Friday night.  We ended up with 106 lobster tails in the freezer by the end of the two day event.  This night dive brought my personal time underwater to 15 hours over the last 42 hours - I feel like I am truly a walking talking DAN dive study.

Friday morning, and the perfect weather we have been enjoying all week continued.  No wind, blue sunny skies, all good stuff!  We motored out to French Reef this morning and started off with a  dip on the City of Washington, carefully timed to coincide with a Creature Feature dive that was being run by Capt. Slates.  We got to enjoy the feed, with about 7 or 8 friendly nurse sharks coming in for the feast, along with barracuda and a large green moray.  Nice chance for the IVS gang to enjoy some big animal encounters with plenty of photo opportunities.   Great dive, period!  We followed that up with a visit to the Train Wheel wreck, another nice 30 ft dive on the beautiful reef system.  It’s a lot like Dutch Springs here, with a distinct thermocline in the water column - the difference being that the surface temp is 90 degrees with a big drop in temperature to 86 at about 15 feet - brrrrrr!

Our afternoon trip took us out to visit one of our favorite wrecks, the Spiegel Grove.  As we approached we could see the ominous signs of a strong current with the mooring balls hanging partly submerged and the water piling up against them….hmmm…not the best sign, but hey - we’re here to dive!  So, our teams got themselves geared up, and began the entries into the water and down the descent line.  The current was absolutely ripping on the line all the way down to the wreck - with each diver hanging off the line like a flag as we went down.  Once on the wreck, we used the mass of the large ship to hide us from the current, and each of the teams enjoyed a great dive, with a great first deep/ocean/wreck/nitrox experience for a bunch of the group, including Rob Lunny, Jamie Winchester, Brad Creveling, Tim Brown, Brenden Malloy, James, Jonathon & Nicholas MacKnight, Jenna Murray, and Dave Elmer.  IVS Instructors Ray Graff, Sue Douglass, & Butch loggins, assisted by DM’s Frank Gabriel, Bill Zyskowski, and Csaba Lorinczy, worked together to ensure a great experience for each group.  I took Niki Lorinczy and  John Glowdowski for some wreck penetration training running a reel line inside the wreck.

After coming in from our dive and gussying up, we headed over to the Key Largo Conch House for our third annual lobster feast.  Our friends Ted & Laura Dreaver, owners of the Conch House, went out of their way taking care of us and cooking up our 100 tails and all the fixings to go along with them, making a perfect dinner under the stars for us. Perfect opportunity for a lot of bonding between the IVS group with a lot of new friendships solidifying. 

Saturday dawned with another perfect weather day, and we loaded the boat to head out for one of the signature Key Largo dives - Key Largo Dry Rocks, or more commonly referred to as Christ of the Abyss.  Perfect conditions greeted us, with decent viz and no current or surge to speak of.  Donna Raleigh & Jenna Murray worked on their Fish ID specialty, completing REEF fish surveys on this and the next dive.  A perfect 60-plus minutes was spent exploring this site. The time passed too quickly, and it was time to enjoy a long and arduous 12 minute surface interval while we motored over to our second site, north Key Largo Dry Rocks.  Another great reef dive, more good stuff for all.  These were the last dives of the weekend for two of our lobster assassins, Tricia Healy & Gary Kai.  Gracing the topside and soaking up the sun for our afternoon ride were the designated bathing beauties for the trip, Isabella Gabriel and Stephanie Skelton.

Back at the dock, we had a generous 25 minutes for lunch and then it was time to head back out for another visit to the Spiegel Grove.  If yesterdays current was ripping, today’s was clearly ripping plus!  Like jumping into a washing machine, we entered the water and went hand-over-hand across the mooring line to begin our descent down to the wreck.  “Hold on to the line - don’t let go” was truly the order of the day. We had a few different groups once again, with Dave Hartman, representing IVS South, leading a penetration tour under the well deck, with Frank G, Bill Z, John G & Csaba L gearing up wth stage bottles and working as teams to run some reel lines into the wreck for some serious technical exercises.  The rest of us split up into a couple of tour groups, with Butch, Sue and myself leading each of our groups on nice penetration tours of this fine wreck.  In spite of the conditions everyone came up smiling and laughing, and wiser for the experience.  Niki Lorinczy finally got her breathing under control, nearly matching the gas usage of the much older and much larger Dave Valaika.  The ‘lame-o’ tour, led by me, ended up with the longest bottom time and most penetration time of all the groups - what’s up with that??

We followed that experience with a visit to the Benwood, giving everyone the opportunity to see this World War II wreck in the daytime, and to be able to appreciate the change in sea life that happens each day after dark.  Butch & Bev Loggins, along with Frank G, Mike Conn, Jason Stelle and a few others, headed off the bow to visit the “Benwood Wall” a nice 90 foot sloping drop 150 degrees off the bow of the wreck.  Amazing schools of fish surrounded the wreck today, and just further fueled the question - “where do they go at night??”  And as is typical with IVS, the training never ends - using darkness and night diving to raise the stress conditions a bit, Butch and Rob Lunny practiced running penetration reels as a team.  They performed flawlessly, running nearly 300 ft of line throughout the wreck area, maintaining perfect buoyancy and light communications, and just clicking as a team.  We’ll see the results of their practice tomorrow when we put this to a test in the Spiegel Grove.  While they were hard at work, Donna Raleigh shared her biophosphorescece illuminating gear with several of us, using a special filter on her lamp and polarized lenses over our masks, we were able to see the unbelievable glow of the phosphorescence of certain hard corals, sponges, anenomes, and a few other of the seas critters - very cool study in an area that is unknown by most.  For more information on this check out this link - (insert link here). And Jenna and I had a nice startle - while focusing in on some photography of a nice size crab out for the evening, Jenna looked up and suddenly grabbed my arm, so I raised my light up and Holy Smokes Batman!! - look at the size of the shark, sitting almost on our heads!   A very curious and not shy gray friend, either a reef or bull, out for dinner and not perturbed about us being in his dining room at all!  Very cool, and a great rush too!  And to top it off Jonathan MacKnight shot some super video of a turtle swimming along with us - check out our U-Tube clip here (insert link),

We had a bit of rain during the night, and a light breeze greeted us Sunday morning.  The wind caused some choppy surface conditions, but it was all bark and no bite as the sea was calm below as we visited the Wellwood wreck site on French Reef, followed by Hardbottom Caves on Molasses.  Very slight surge, but viz was super, lots of critters to enjoy, and a couple of great dives overall.   Sylvia Lorinczy ended up with completing two 45-minute dives on a single 65 CF tank, returning to the boat with an amazing 600 psi left - unbelievable!  Julie Antidormi, Steve Monte, Linda Malloy, Tom Brennan, Sandy Stelle, & Don Yowell wrapped up their weekends diving this morning, preferring to avoid the reported rough conditions on the afteroon’s double-deep adventure.  While we motoring back in, we listened to reports coming in from boats on the Duane, our target this afternoon. Not good, it sounded, as divers were aborting the dive and calling them before even starting down the line in the current.

In light of that report from the Duane, we opted for the usually better but still supposedly ripping conditions on the Spiegel, doing a double dip on this wreck.  Well, as usual when you get reports on sea conditions from the locals, everything is bigger and worse than reality, by far.  We arrived at the Spiegel, and you could not have asked for better conditions anywhere.  Near-flat seas, zero current, great viz - we really should learn by now, when you get the local report, divide by four for the actual wave height and current speed.  The dives were great, with more deep & dark penetration for the IVS gang, exploring all sorts of nook, crannies and voids deep in the bowels of this ship.  On an international note, we learned that the Hungarian symbol for “crane” is almost identical to the PADI symbol for “fin pivot”, so you can imagine the blank looks and WTF’s that you get underwater when you use this sign to ask everyone where the crane is while you’re down on the wreck.  Have to admit, the fin pivot exercise on the deck was humorous, but finally the group managed to understand the alternate translation, and make it back to the ship’s crane to return to the Amoray Diver.  And Niki is off the hook on getting the Air Consumption Queen Award on this trip, as her dad managed to make the first dive this afternoon a nine minute express version.  The bottom line for the day- all great stuff.  This afternoon we saw Shelly Liu, Meredith Bernardo, Craig Bentley & Jason Stelle all getting in their fourth Spiegel Grove dives in for the weekend. 

And if all that wasn’t enough, we opted to add a third night dive to the trip, heading back out Sunday evening to visit the City of Washington, after dark.  A light breeze from the East made the ride out a bit wetter and bumpier than normal, but it didn’t detract from the stellar conditions underneath.  Zero current, zero surge, just fine diving with all sorts of fun animals out to entertain and amaze the divers - octopus, lobsters, cuttlefish, eels & sharks - all made for a great last dive for most of the group. With the following breeze the ride back was smooth as can be, and we were treated to a great light show with lightning flashing all around us the entire ride in.  Another perfect day in paradise. 

Monday morning dawned darker and breezier than any day of the previous week, and we counted our blessings for the fine weather we enjoyed every day of this trip.  Never the less, Don Yowell and I headed out for one more visit to the reefs this morning before we had to head up to the airport for the trip home.  The ride out was very wet with a number of waves breaking over the bow of the boat, but we soldiered on.  The reward: two nice dives on French Reef, with Hardbottom Caves and Christmas Tree Caves as the chosen sites. Great quiet relaxing way to wrap up a superb trip to the Keys.  It was not without a moment of sadness, as I had to take my regulator off my tank for the 32nd time in the last 5 days, and this time I had no new tank to put it on.  Finally Don & I headed to the airport, officially turning the Key Largo back over to the locals.  Not to worry, we’ll be back soon enough!

Winers of this trips ‘ADD’ Award (All Dives with Dave) are Jason Stelle, Jenna Murray, Brenden Malloy, Shelly Liu, Mike Conn, Dave Elmer, Rob Lunny & Craig Bentley.  Make sure you visit the IVS website for photos and videos from this trip! 

To call this years two-day Florida Sport Lobster season amazing would be an serious understatement!  Team IVS kicked lobster butt as we caught 106 keepers over the course of the two day sport season, held every year on the last two contiguous Wednesday & Thursday of July. 

We chartered the entire Garden Cove Divers fleet for the entire season, scheduling four 2-tank trips each day.  Yours truly worked as the first mate for Captain Anna on the boat for all dives on both days, ensuring another spot for Team IVS on each trip.  Starting at 4:00 a.m., Mike Conn, Bill Zyskowski, Gary Kai, Dave Hartman, Frank Gabriel & Tricia Healy loaded scuba tanks and hunting gear into the boat, and headed up, geared up and ready to splash at the exact minute that the season open in Monroe County, where Key Largo is located.  The season opens one hour before legal sunrise, and ends each day one hour after legal sunset.  So that translates into 5:47 for this morning, and the divers hit the water the moment the clock struck that hour.  Underwater, the lights were flashing and dancing about, spotlighting the prey as they scurried for cover in the reef system.  Snares, tickle sticks, nets and skilled hands worked in tandem to put eighteen ’bugs’ in the bags over the course of the next sixty minutes.  What a way to kick it off!  This was followed by dive two for the first team, adding another 11 bugs to the count.  After that it was back to the dock, swap out tanks, and have team two board the boat.

Our second team included Jason & Sandy Stelle, Sue Douglass, Shelly Liu, Judy Jaskiewicz, and Tricia Healy again.  This location proved to be a mere shadow of our first spot, producing a lowly 4 bugs total over two 1-hour dives.  Then back to the dock, switching out to team 3, including Bev & Butch Loggins, Brenden Malloy, Don Yowell, John Glowdowski, and Tricia Healy (again!)  We headed out to a different reef spot and although better, still only managed to produce 6 bugs total for the cooler.  Of course by now the reef was filled wth boats and lobster hunters as far as the eyes could see, an amazing number of grabby hands competing with us for the succulent lobsters we sought.  Finally the night crew boarded, same guys as morning shift plus Ray Graff.  Of course, as is customary with most IVS trips, the engine started to falter and the hatch cover was opened up, and our multi-talented Captain Anna crawled right in there, twisting wrenches and making adjustments until the Caterpillar diesel roared back to life.  Great job Anna!  Finally we motored out, and after a false start on a patch of grass that was supposed to be a reef, we re-positioned and nailed another dozen keepers for the evening, ending our hunting at exactly one hour after legal sunset.

The alarm rang all too early for the morning shift again, and there we were at 4;00 a.m., loading tanks and slipping into still-wet wetsuits to head out for another days hunt.  Another strong start for the day, with 22 bugs in the cooler as we came back to the dock.  Team 2 jumped on board, and put another 13 in the bag.  Meanwhile, Bill Z couldn’t nap after the morning trip, so he threw on snorkel gear and went out in the bay behind the Amoray Dive Resort, nailing another couple of bugs from their roosts and adding them to the count.   Team 3 continued the picked up pace, adding twenty more to the catch total.  Finally, the night crew headed out, and after sharing some of the catch with the captain and some of the helpful locals, we ended up with another 8 in the bag, bringing our two day total to 106 spiny lobsters!   Another late evening of cleaning bugs at the dock and bagging them for the freezer, and we were off to the Paradise Pub for a celebration dinner.  Way to go teams!

Be sure to visit the IVS site to see the pictures from this trip! [add link]

Another day, another batch of new scuba enthusiasts!  Today we visited the New Life School in Schwenksville, PA for our third annual Discover Scuba Diving program.  This alternative school for youths age 12-19 is one of our favorite stops on the DSD tour, where we get to help turn a lot of energy in a positive direction.  Director Dan Novak tells us this is one of the most looked-forward to events of the summer season for the young men enrolled in the schools’s program.  Team IVS included Csaba Lorinczy, Steve Clem, Ray Graff, Maureen Gribb, Chris Rich & Tom Brennan, bringing a lot of collective experience into the mix to provide a great experience for the young men.

Phase one is a classroom session, with the students viewing the PADI Discover Scuba Diving video, followed with a detailed gear discussion and Q&A session.  Then, it’s off to the pool, for gear fitting and a snorkeling session to get everyone comfortable.  Finally, the scuba units are put on, and the class gets a great session of diving, learning some basic scuba skills, and most importantly, having FUN!

Want to join in our our DSD activities? Call Bev at the shop and see where the IVS Scuba Tour Bus is scheduled to travel to next!  Be part of the team and share what we  love so much with others.

What a perfect weekend for the IVS gang to enjoy at Dutch Springs!  Beautiful sunny weather, humidity just right, and the conditions at our favorite local watery hole were excellent!  Head Instructor Butch Loggins, assisted by Instructor Ray Graff, treated our newest divers to another great seven dive checkout weekend - yes, that’s 7, and yes that’s about double what everyone else does.  Would you expect anything different from IVS?

This weekend, in addition to all the regularly scheduled fun, we also brought along our Aeris Compumasks for everyone to demo.  This is a great product, allowing divers to operate thier instrumentation in a truly hands-free mode, with the in-mask lighted display showing depth, time, tank pressure, and more - essentially all the data that you would see on the Atmos AI dive computer, without the heed to pick the device up to see it.  Absolutely perfect for photographers and night divers, it reduces the task loading by bringing all the key information you need and want right up to your eyes.  And, it’s fully Nitrox programmable, and downloadable to your desktop computer via a cable.  Interested in trying one?  We have demo units in stock at the shop - just ask and we’ll hook you up! 

And from a gastronomical point of view, we welcomed Bev Loggins back on the grill, bringing her special flare for making a simple BBQ weekend all that much more for our group.  The grill was ‘a-smoking, as the burgers, dogs, sausages and steaks were prepared to everyne’s delight.  Plus the spread of munchies, snacks, fixin’s, salads and desserts are an IVS trademark at Dutch Springs.  

We want to welcome our newest PADI National Geographic Open Water divers, Rebecca Moore, Linda Malloy, Jamie Winchester, and Brad Creveling into the Indian Valley Scuba family. They completed their Open Water certification, Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty, and the National Geographic Specialty programs this weekend.  Way to go guys!

Rounding out Team IVS this weekend were DM’s Frank Gabriel, Bill Zyskowski, Csaba Lorinzcy, and DM candidate Chris Rich, along with …………………..

In an unending quest to develop Indian Valley Scuba into the finest dive center in the Northeast, your own Dave Valaika finally has entered PADI’s highest level training program, the Course Director Training Course.  This comprehensive two week program, conducted once annually at two locations, Newport Beach CA and Malaysia, brings some of the most qualified PADI Master Instructors from around the globe together to help develop them into Course Directors, able to go forth and train the next generation of PADI instructors.  For me personally, this has been 33 years of diving in the making, and I’m thrilled to have been accepted into the program. 

My journey started on an auspicious note, as I landed at John Wayne airport in Orange County, CA.  My flights from Philadelphia through Atlanta were uneventful, and even on-time, not always something to be expected anymore.  I wandered on down to the baggage carousel, feeling pretty good so far, and waited for my bags to arrive….and I waited…and I waited.  Three bags sent, only one arrives with me….so much for the uneventful travel!  The good news is that my friends at Delta have confirmed that my bags are indeed traveling westward, but they opted for a different flight than me.  They should arrive on the Delta flight due in at 10:49 p.m that evening, which is exactly 11 minutes before the mandated 11 o’clock curfew on arriving flights kicks in and they shut the lights off at the airport!  So, praying for a strong tail wind and no weather delays in-route, I waited paitently for my errant bags to re-unite with their rightful owner.

As the clock ticked slowly towards the curfew, the skilled pilots managed to touch ‘wheels down’ spot on at 10:49, saving the day and bringing my bags and all materials I needed for my coursework to me.  A quick (second) wait at the carousel, and I had my bags.  Now for some much needed rest and start of a busy two weeks.

Day 1

The first official day of the program started off great, with much anticipation for each individual as well as the group as a whole.  Years of planning and preparation had led each of the candidates to this moment, and it was obvious at first glance what a qualified and prepared group this was!  We started off with a general orientation, some in-dpth personal introductions, and a chance to meet and mingle with the other 37 candidates selected for this year’s program.  Over 140 PADI  Master Instructors worldwide applied for this course, and the final selection was based on a scoring system that included teaching experience, number of PADI certifications issued, continuing education, and most importantly, the submission of a personal business plan outlining how each candidate will best go forward and promote the PADI program in their local area.  It’s a very diverse group here, with only 9 Americans among the 38 candidates.  The U.K. has a large contingent, and there are a number of Canadians also, plus folks from places such as Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Dubai, Egypt, U.A.E., Malayasia, Korea and more..….a very international group overall.  And as a result there are a number of translators in the room also, so any given presentation is being simuoultaneously listened to and spoken again in a multitude of languages for the non-English speaking candidates.  I even found myself having to translate for my new friend Rob Mills – he only speaks Canadian!  Thank goodness I have so much language training with Jim Cormier, Tom Brennan and our other regular gang of IVS Canucks!

The group was divided into six teams, and parts of the program wil involve some friendly competition between the teams.  The groups were assigned by color, and one of our first team assignments was to select a name for our unit.  As the red team, we couldn’t come up with anything more creative than the “Red Bulls”, hoping the name inspires to ‘give us wings’ to fly through the next two weeks of PADI course director boot camp!

A long first day indeed, but full of very informative presentations and group discussions as the PADI team set the tone and pace for our program.  It is very exciting to be here and to be part of such a unique group!

Finally the time arrived for us to take a break from all the great input and board a bus to go visit Mecca of scuba diving, PADI World Headquarters in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  We journeyed down the highway, entertained by the less-than-stellar jokes of PADI examiner John Land, as he tried to inspire others to take the microphone and share some of our humor.  Unfortunately the rules were that the jokes had to be clean, non-discriminatory, politically safe, non-religious…you get the picture – that rules out every single joke in my repetoire!

Finally we arrived at PADI HQ, and our first stop was a photo session along the PADI pool.  Then a thorough tour of the PADI facility, where we got the chance to meet so many of the folks who support our programs and take care of our needs every day – very cool to finally put faces to the voices on the phone and to the emails!

We ended with a tour of Founders Hall, virtually a museum within PADI, chock full of diving and PADI history, displays and memorabilia.  And they opened the PADI private tavern for us, serving libations of all flavors and putting out a great spread of food for all to enjoy.  Many of the PADI luminaries joined us, and I had the chance to enjoy some excellent conversations with PADI Chairman Brian Cronin, CEO Drew Richardson, Director of Worldwide Training Johnny Wetzstein, and host of others.  The drinks and relaxed setting had the intended affect on the class, and before you know it everyone was enjoying themselves and chatting and sharing stories.  Good thinking on PADI’s part, and a great way to foster bonding within the group.  Finally, it was time to surface, and we boarded the bus and returned to our hotel for the night.

Day 2

Our second day started off with four non-stop hours of us learning all about the pyschology of evaluation and counseling of instructor candidates – some deep stuff indeed.  Lots of role play back and forth – oh fun! 

We followed that exciting morning up with our Prescriptive Teaching workshop, where we broke into small teams and worked together to help develop our prescriptive teaching assignments which we will present to the group tomorrow.  My particular assignment is to review an incorrect answer from the Project Aware course, about diving “Aware”.  A perfect opportunity for me to wax on about Zen and the art of scuba diving – “be the ray!”  By mid-afternoon we were ready for something new and different, and that’s exactly what we got as we transitioned to the pool for our skill circuit review.  Here we worked in our teams, going from station to station, and performing demonstration-quality examples of standard diving skills that we teach all the time in our classes.  The Davester was on a roll, scoring an average of 4.9 points per skill out of a possible 5.0, when we came to the combination weight belt removal followed by underwater BCD removal skill set.  As most know, I wear a backplate & wing system, and with such a setup, I never need to wear any weights.  Well, never is a relative term, and when you are performing your skills for this program, you will be wearing a weight belt!  So, I threw one on, and we submerged for our team to perform the two skills.  Weight belt off & on – no problem, and I added another 4 or 5 points to my evaluation score.  Now, the BCD removal – well let me tell you, your BCD comes off a whole lot easier if you don’t have your crotch strap tangled up in your weight belt!  Dang! There went my perfect day, and my fun-loving Red Bulls team gave me the moniker of “Do it again Dave” – nice bunch, eh?   Enough on that, but rest assured we’ll be revisiting that particular skill later this week!! 

Following the skill circuit, we then went on to a Confined Water Evaluation Workshop, watching and scoring the PADI Examiners as they conducted pool teaching presentations for us to grade, and then to compare our scores.  Finally, after about four non-stop hours in the pool we called it quits for the night, and went to work on our presentation assignments for tomorrow. 

Day 3

Today’s focus was clearly followed the Marine Corps philosphy, where they “break them down and build them back up as Marines”.  Each of us came to this program with a fair degree of confidence in our ability to listen and watch presentations given, and to accurately score them based on the PADI evaluation process.  Well, scratch that! Our entire morning was spent listening to five different knowledge review presentations given by PADI Examiners.  Each presentation was carefully scripted to challenge the candidates ability to carefully evaluate the content, delivery, effectiveness and accuracy of the presentation.  And challenge us they did - it was utterly amazing to see the range of scores and interpretations of what the different candidates saw or perceived from the presentations.  Obviously we need some work here!!

Following that self-esteem busting morning, we then spent half the afternoon working on the preparation of our IDC academic presentations, which we’ll be giving in a day or two.  Learning all the in’s and out’s of the preferred PADI system, we were able to make significant team and individual progress on our assigned topics.  The key difference here is changing our mindset from presenting to diving students, to working with instructor candidates.  

Finally the moment we had been waiting for, our chance to make our first public academic Knowledge Review presentations to the class.  Lots of nervous energy filled the room, but each of us proceeded to present our topic to the class, with an examiner and a fellow candidate performing the evaluation while we spoke.  Each of us took our turn at the gallows, er, I mean podium, and proceeded to make our presentations to the group.  Other than the usual little hiccups, it really showed how much the candidates had prepared and how uniquely qualified each was to become a PADI Course Director.  I was even able to maintain my stellar 4.9 out of 5.0 point average for this portion of the program.  The evaluators felt I was just a little short on one area of my presentation - ready for this?  I didn’t SELL hard enough!  For a guy who could sell ice cubes to eskimos, this was clearly not an area I focused on in preparing my presentation.  Oh well, live & learn, I guess I’ll have to work on my selling techniques!

Day 4

As the candidates filed into the meeting hall today, the group was treated to a outstanding display of Team Red Bulls solidarity, with each member of the team wearing the official team color.  Go Team Red!!

Today’s topic du jour was marketing, and how we could most effectively market and sell instructor level training programs and beyond.  Tons of great ideas and information shared, lots of interactions and discussion among the candidates, notes being furiously taken all around the room, indicative of just how much good information was being gleaned from this session. Keeping things light, the folks from PADI, led by VP James Morgan, kept the teams competing against each other with trivia contests, diving knowledge questions, and of course, the dreaded ‘Gong’ each time the break timer went to zero. 

For the afternoon we enjoyed a great session, led by eMarketing Executive Amy Warren, that covered electronic marketing, e-learning, and the web.  The information superhighway, as some of us like to call it, is truly one of the most under-tapped and under-appreciated assets we have available to use in our businesses.  Amy shared with us an extensive list of valuable tips and tricks to help energize our website activity and usage, and to bring the full power of the web to bear for us to use in our business growth.  Fantastic session overall, and the Red Bulls scored heavily in the bonus points with lots of interaction and participation from our team.  PADI’s Linda Van Velsan handed out stars as awards for group participation, and my name tag had a bit of a “Mr. T” look to it with all the glitter and bling from the stars that were awarded to yours truly, the Quiet One.  At the end of the session the I ended up tied for second and Team Red Bulls ended up in first place with 23 stars awarded.  Go team!!

One of the most interesting and personally rewarding moments of the day came when the discussion turned towards how dive shops and Course Directors can best utilize the power of the internet to connect with current and future clients - and the example PADI used was Indian Valley Scuba’s website, and specifically, Dave’s Dive (b)Log - where we are blogging this entire course real-time!  How cool was that?  Good thing I was not shopping for hats this afternoon, as I am sure I could not find one big enough to fit!! 

Finally it was time to “transition to the pool”, as they like to say in PADI-land, and to give our first Confined Water presentations to the group.  I had a particularly difficult skill to teach - Cramp Removal.  Hours and hours were spent in the preparation of my presentation, with lots of thoughts given to potential problems and how the designated ’students’ could try to trick me up on this.

First up on the agenda was a Rescue Workshop, where we got to watch the PADI Pro’s show us how to effectively conduct a Rescue Workshop for IDC instructor candidates.  PADI’s Supervisor of Instructor Development Alan Jan, and Examiner Neil Fishburne from the PADI UK office, gave us hands-on training, tips & techniques on how to do it right!  After that we had a chance to practice it amongst ourselves, and Team Red is looking good, dare I say.  Finally, it was time for our first Confined Water teaching presentations, and each candidate got a chance to show their mettle to the group.  First a thorough briefing, then a demonstration, followed by working with the students (each of whom was assigned a problem) and finishing with a de-briefing.  By this time, I must admit my Kor-English is getting pretty darn good, and I am actually starting to understand ahead of Ju Ju Hyun Lee as she interprets for our two Korean speaking team members, Duck Koo Han from Phuket, Thailand, and Hyun Joon Kim from the Philippines.  Sharon Ainsworth from Womersley, England speaks a close-enough form of English for me (lord knows what those people did to our language over there!), and finally Joanna Mikutowicz from Honolulu and I are spot on with our lingo.   Maintaining my consisten upper mediocre scores for the week, my presentation earned me another ‘perfectly near the top but not quite’ 4.8 out of 5.0 and my evaluation alongside the PADI examiner’s control score scored well, matching 4 of 5 scores and only differing by one point on the final one.  Woo hooo!

Day 5

Saturday dawns, but there is no rest for this dedicated (and weary) group.  Our exciting topic this morning was Instructor Development Standards.  This riveting discussion, led by Alan Jan, covered one of the most challenging aspects of running Instructor Development Courses - the dreaded paperwork monster! We reviewed all the forms associated with Instructor Development and all it’s components, paying special attention to all the “T’s” to cross and “i’s” to dot to ensure the files are properly papered and the applications are complete at all levels.  We covered Con-Ed, Staff Instruction, Specialty Instructors, Crossovers, Status Updates…..you get the idea.  Lots and lots of details.  After that invigorating session, we then had the chance to step up the inter-team competition with a little version of PADI Bonus Knowledge Rounds, with points awarded for correct team answers, ranging from 1 to 500 points, based on a very scientific scoring basis - NOT! Penalties were also assessed for answering wrong, answering too quick, whining over scores, or whatever else inspired Alan to head to the big white board and adjust the scores. 

After lunch, we enjoyed quite the surprise when we were introduced to PADI’s latest product, the new eRDP - Multi Level version!  This little puppy replaces the current eRDP AND the never-easy-to-master Wheel RDP.  It allows calculator type operation for planning and calculating dives, including multi-level dives.  Very Cool product and one we’ll intergrate into our PADI Multilevel diver class immediately.

Finally, if that wasn’t enough, Project AWARE Director Jenny Miller Garmendia, assisted by Ania Budziak, spent most of the afternoon enlightening our group about the latest and greatest from Project AWARE, and shared tips on how we can incorporate this program into our instruction, and how to best encourage the next generation of instructors (which we should be responsible for producing!) to embrace Project AWARE and support it on every level, most importantly with diver education and participation. 

Our day wrapped up with another round of Knowledge Review presentations, and a general question & answer session regarding PADI contacts, setting up IDC’s and a host of other topics.  

Day 6

Our activities for today and tomorrow center around two optional training programs that PADI offers in conjunction with this years CDTC.  First on the list was the new PADI Emergency Oxygen Provider specialty course.  Taught by DSAT Instructional Designer Bob Wohlers, this just-released specialty certification is being introduced to teach O2 providers specific for the diving community.  It is similar to the DAN O2 Provider Course, but expands a bit on the basic DAN O2 Course, while not quite being equal to the DAN Advanced O2 program.  Look for it soon at Indian Valley Scuba.  Our second half of the day was devoted to the new PADI Digital Underwater Photography specialty course, with Bob being joined by John Land & Karen Boss.  Each of them spent the afternoon sharing techniques for teaching and marketing this program in our Instructor Development programs.   

Day 7

An early start found us gathered at the PADI van at 7:15, in time to head over to catch the Catalina Express high speed catamaran over to Catalina Island, a beautiful little little bump in the Pacific about 30 miles off the coast of Southern California.  Our destination was the lovely hamlet of Avalon, and the Avalon Underwater Park, a marine preserve located at Casino Point on the island.  Our mission today was to demonstrate to Bob Wohler that we had indeed completed our homework assignments from last night and that we were ready to take some good photographs under the water today.  Dive #1 found us working without strobes, using white balance and natural light to bring out the beauty of the aquatic scenery and the divers too!  Nice dive, an hour in the 68 degree water, warm to some of us, and cold to some (including the Swedish contingent who were diving in drysuits - go figure!)  After a short surface interval, we headed back in for dive 2, where we we allowed to use our strobes and given a laundry list of assigned photos to take, using various settings and composition techniques to really work test our photographic prowess.  Hundreds, no maybe thousands of photos taken, and probably a dozen really good ones too!  Ha ha,,,,not the easiest thing, but the park provided us with the perfect setting to attempt to achieve our goals.  And by the end of the day, after some counseling with Bob, we were ready for our next trip into the water with cameras!

Day 8

Back in the classroom after the day of diving, our exciting topic to start the day were Quality Management & Risk Management Workshop.  Led by PADI’s Steve Mortell, this session delved deeply into understanding the intricacies of customer complaints, standards violations and how PADI maintains the organizations standards of quality worldwide.  This was followed by each team presenting their own IDC marketing presentation, where we pitched our virtual dive center to attract a specific target customer.  The results of the past few days efforts were obvious as the teams presented newly-minted websites, email histories with the target customer, and a variety of other great ideas to help others reach out to bring the clients in.  Team Red Bull finished with an honorable mention in this event, with the Blue Marlins (huh?) taking the Blue Ribbon for today.  Lots of fun, lots of creativity - good stuff!

The afternoon led off with Alan Jan conducting an Open Water Evaluation workshop, where we reviewed what the PADI Examiners are looking for in a candidates presentation.  Very helpful info to tailor our own teaching styles around when we get back home.  Finally it was time for each of us to present our second individual IDC level presentation, and present we did!   The Red Team members passed with flying colors, and this is finally off the list!  Some individual counseling wrapped up the day, and we left to get ready for our Open Water work tomorrow, starting with a 5:45 a.m. gathering to board the bus to the ferry.

Day 9

4:30 came early as the alarm roused me from my slumber, and I set about preparing for the days activities. Pack the gear. grab some grub, and board the PADI bus for the ride to the Long Beach ferry terminal.  My antennas were wiggling at the timing of our departure, and sure enough, when we arrived at the not-yet-open ferry terminal at 6:30 for our 8:00 boat.  Hmmmmm…..I was in the Army years ago, and I thought I had finished with this ‘hurry up and wait’ stuff.  Oh well, finally we boarded the high speed catamaran and headed over to Catalina Island to complete the final required presentations and evaluations for thr program.  We disembarked, humped our gear to the waiting truck, and jumped into some taxis for the short ride to the Descantos Beach Club.  The folks at Scuba Luv in Avalon had done their part, and we found tanks, weights, and belts, all neatly arranged on - you guessed it - blue tarps (remember, this is California).  Each team geared up, and we met the Examiner who had been assigned to our group for the day.  Small world, our examiner was John McFadden, who was the PADI Examiner on my original PADI Instructor Examination many years ago. Fate is funny, eh?  My personal assignment for the open water presentation was Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent, or CESA.  This is probably the premier PADI diver skill in both confined and open water, primarily due to the risk of diver injury in the event of an improper execution of the skill.  No pressure, eh? 

Once we got geared up we headed into the water and conducted a descent workshop first, then began our skills.  Everyone marched through, showing great IDC presentation skills.  Finally, it was my turn, and I was able to finally score that perfect 5.0 score that had been eluding me all week long!!  Yeah baby!  Back to the beach for a de-briefing, then lunch.  After a quick snack I grabbed my gear and jogged over to the Casino, where I was able to grab a tank from the kiosk and head in for lone last California dive for the week.  Great dive, octopus galore, big bat ray rooting in the sand, tons of sushi all around.  Great way to cap the day’s activities.

Finally it was time to re-board the ferry and head on back.  Note to PADI staff here - it was VERY uncool for the PADI staff members to enjoy the upgraded First Class lounge for the return trip (as well as this mornings run out) while the rest of us had to grovel amongst the common folk.  It would have been a very powerful positive statement for PADI to have reserved first class tickets for the ride home, as a token of award for a job well done for each of the candidates who as of today have essentially completed the requirements of the program.  Hope PADI reads this and perhaps makes a note for future CDTC’s.  

Day 10

Remedial Course Director training was the planned activity for this morning, as the various candidates with requirements to make up or re-do gathered in the classroom or at the pool.  Everyone did well, and we put the required task list to rest.  Then Johnny Wetzstein led a comprehensive discussion and review on the roles and responsibilities of the PADI Course Director.  Great question & answer session, lots of good points raised.

Finally it was time to let out the deep breath of relief - we passed!  Welcome thirty-eight new PADI Course Directors into the family!  We celebrated that evening with a great dinner, a fun picture & video show of the past two weeks, and awardng of credentials to the candidates.  Mission accomplished! 

This weekend found us back at Dutch Springs for a rare back-to-back engagement with our friends from Halcyon Manufacturing.  The mission for this weekend was Halcyon Days Product Demo, and demo the product we did.  Backplate systems, wings of all shapes & sizes, new canister lights, and the rest of the entire line of fine Halcyon products were out and available for test-diving in the getting warmer-by-the-minute waters of Dutch Springs.  We enjoyed the company of the great Halcyon team, with renowned underwater explorer and founder of Halcyon and Global Underwater Explorers, Jarrod Jablonski on hand to answer questions, talk product, and provide a great Saturday evening presentation of some of the projects he and his team have recently been involved with.  Jarrod was supported by Ken Charleston and Sonya Tittle.  We were proud to be a part of the demo and honored to be one of the select delaers chosen to represent the Halcyon line.

And while all that demo’ing was going on, we were diving too!  This weekend found us graduating a new flock of PADI / National Geographic Open Water IVS divers, with Philip ‘Batman’ Nelson, Alberto & Chris Zeledon, John Zyskowski and Mike Gelatej joining the IVS family.  And we saw Lauren Halvorsen and Joe Bates working on Advanced Open Water, and Paul Stanton and Holly Germana completing thier Dry Suit Specialty course.  IVS Instructor Ray Graff was our guest chef this weekend as we gave Bev a couple of days off, and he he did a fine job representing the ‘B’ Team in the kitchen!  He even managed reached deep into his tofu recipe book to grill up some vegen burgers for our guests, Jarrod and Sonya! The great news is that Bev will be back in two weeks, so come back out and compare!  

Lead instructor Butch Loggins was assisted this fine weekend by Ray, DM’s Frank Gabriel & Bill Zyskowski, DM candidates Donna Raleigh, Jenna Murray, and Chris Rich, and the usual cast of supporting characters.  This is one of the most beautiful aspects of how the Indian Valley Scuba crew dives, as a ‘village’, with so much support and guidiance for everyone.  No egos, no BS, no conflicts - truly no one dives alone with IVS!

As usual we were joined by a bevy of friends and fellow diversand their families, and the laughter and fun continued all weekend long!  Be sure to mark your calendar to join us again the weekend of July 25-26 when we’ll be demo’ing the Aeris Compumask HUD display!  See you then!