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I'll tell a little story about watches:
There were many unique aspects to the Research Diving Program at Cal, it was very much a 1960s version of today's DIR diving, highly refined and standardized training and procedures, extensive and exacting training and identical gear most of it black. Sound familiar?
It was all there on the equipment list you see, there was a equipment list, and you needed to show up the first night of class with a full set of gear. Some of the stuff was rather standard and easy to get, other pieces were rarer and in short supply making the weeks before the first night of class into a dive gear scavenger hunt that extended from Monterey to Napa and Sacramento to the Pacific Coast.
The recommended suit was a Rubatex GN-231N, skin out, farmer-john, attached hood, no zipper custom suit. You also needed the parts to make a neoprene instrument cuff for your left forearm that held an Ikelight compass, a Sears Waterproof Sports watch and a capillary depth gauge. Steel ?2s with a K-Valve and a plastic backpack that you learned to modify with two stainless steel twistlocks on the left shoulder were in vogue. Also de regur as was a U.S. Divers BC-2 (also known as a BC-707) with CO2 detonators as well as a weight belt with a wire buckle. You had to have a Dacor 300 regulator, when you saw another Berkeley Diver, you knew who they were. Well you knew most of them. Then there were the odd-jobs ... like me.
I was already a diver, at least I thought of my self that way. I'd been diving for more than 10 years, and had made about 1500 dives. That's about the point in every diver's career that they know everything there is to know. Well, knowing everything about diving that there is to know is fine, but back then, when diving was dangerous and sex was safe, it was much more important to look sharp, and I looked sharp.
Besides being 6'2" and a rather muscular 195 lbs., with a strong, clean shaven, cleft chin and thick brown curly hair that fell down to my shoulders (back then, I'm still 6'2" today ... but that's the only similarity), my gear was really gnarly. An orange U.S. Divers Taskmaster suit, was topped with a matching hooded vest, I had a shiny aluminum 72, a Swimmaster MR-12 regulator with (gasp) an "Octopus" and lots of ScubaPro: a triple pane mask, Jetfins, JetSnorkel, CamPack, five finger gloves, and that weightbelt with the blue stripe and the bungies in the back.
Ah there were my instruments, only the hippest gauges would do, ScubaPro Helium Depth Gauge, Suunto SK-6 Compass and my pride and joy, a U.S. Divers, orange face DOXA 300. And the pièce de résistance, my Fenzy. Yeah, I was as cool a diver as they had ever seen , and poor Ken McKaye had to deal with me.
Exactly how Ken turned that refugee from the Thunderball set into a committed Berkeley Research Diver is a story for another time, suffice it to say that through a combination of Ken's incredible skill as a diver, patience as an instructor and brilliance as a researcher I found myself, within just a few months, looking exactly like every other Berkeley Diver (well almost, I did continue to use my gnarly gauges, installed, of course, on a regulation U.C. diver gauntlet).
...
I caught Ken's eye, shrugged and pointed to my Doxa. Ken shrugged. There had always been a bit of well resentment, perhaps even the feeling that I was guilty of lèse majesté when it came to this watch. Lloyd Austin had a Rolex, but then that was appropriate; after all he was the Diving Safety Officer. I had this beautiful Doxa, but I was just a lowly undergrad. All the other divers in the program had "Sports Watches" from Sears that went for about thirty bucks with a one year guarantee. When the watch eventually flooded, they's get the paperwork from a new diver and that would result in a replacement. Anyway, Ken tried to "flip me the bird," at least that's how I interpreted the upward jerk of his right forearm and the raised three last digits.
There were many unique aspects to the Research Diving Program at Cal, it was very much a 1960s version of today's DIR diving, highly refined and standardized training and procedures, extensive and exacting training and identical gear most of it black. Sound familiar?
It was all there on the equipment list you see, there was a equipment list, and you needed to show up the first night of class with a full set of gear. Some of the stuff was rather standard and easy to get, other pieces were rarer and in short supply making the weeks before the first night of class into a dive gear scavenger hunt that extended from Monterey to Napa and Sacramento to the Pacific Coast.
The recommended suit was a Rubatex GN-231N, skin out, farmer-john, attached hood, no zipper custom suit. You also needed the parts to make a neoprene instrument cuff for your left forearm that held an Ikelight compass, a Sears Waterproof Sports watch and a capillary depth gauge. Steel ?2s with a K-Valve and a plastic backpack that you learned to modify with two stainless steel twistlocks on the left shoulder were in vogue. Also de regur as was a U.S. Divers BC-2 (also known as a BC-707) with CO2 detonators as well as a weight belt with a wire buckle. You had to have a Dacor 300 regulator, when you saw another Berkeley Diver, you knew who they were. Well you knew most of them. Then there were the odd-jobs ... like me.
I was already a diver, at least I thought of my self that way. I'd been diving for more than 10 years, and had made about 1500 dives. That's about the point in every diver's career that they know everything there is to know. Well, knowing everything about diving that there is to know is fine, but back then, when diving was dangerous and sex was safe, it was much more important to look sharp, and I looked sharp.
Besides being 6'2" and a rather muscular 195 lbs., with a strong, clean shaven, cleft chin and thick brown curly hair that fell down to my shoulders (back then, I'm still 6'2" today ... but that's the only similarity), my gear was really gnarly. An orange U.S. Divers Taskmaster suit, was topped with a matching hooded vest, I had a shiny aluminum 72, a Swimmaster MR-12 regulator with (gasp) an "Octopus" and lots of ScubaPro: a triple pane mask, Jetfins, JetSnorkel, CamPack, five finger gloves, and that weightbelt with the blue stripe and the bungies in the back.
Ah there were my instruments, only the hippest gauges would do, ScubaPro Helium Depth Gauge, Suunto SK-6 Compass and my pride and joy, a U.S. Divers, orange face DOXA 300. And the pièce de résistance, my Fenzy. Yeah, I was as cool a diver as they had ever seen , and poor Ken McKaye had to deal with me.
Exactly how Ken turned that refugee from the Thunderball set into a committed Berkeley Research Diver is a story for another time, suffice it to say that through a combination of Ken's incredible skill as a diver, patience as an instructor and brilliance as a researcher I found myself, within just a few months, looking exactly like every other Berkeley Diver (well almost, I did continue to use my gnarly gauges, installed, of course, on a regulation U.C. diver gauntlet).
...
I caught Ken's eye, shrugged and pointed to my Doxa. Ken shrugged. There had always been a bit of well resentment, perhaps even the feeling that I was guilty of lèse majesté when it came to this watch. Lloyd Austin had a Rolex, but then that was appropriate; after all he was the Diving Safety Officer. I had this beautiful Doxa, but I was just a lowly undergrad. All the other divers in the program had "Sports Watches" from Sears that went for about thirty bucks with a one year guarantee. When the watch eventually flooded, they's get the paperwork from a new diver and that would result in a replacement. Anyway, Ken tried to "flip me the bird," at least that's how I interpreted the upward jerk of his right forearm and the raised three last digits.
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