bshort4
Contributor
Greetings from Colo. Sprgs, CO., though I'm not new to diving I am new to this board. I got my OW cert in Utah in 1974 (yes the oceans there dried up a few years before I was born). Did about 50 freshwater dives in Utah and Calif., and a couple of attempted shore dives at Half Moon Bay in Calif. in the kelp beds--that scared the crap out of us! (What's a logbook?) Well life then got in the way--job, wife, kids, mortgage--you know the story. Its now 2014--wifeys gone, kids grown up and gone, jobs gone--retired (yippee). Time to see the world. Booked a 30 day trip to the Philippines to look into moving there. Since I was going to be in a lace surrounded by water I thought about renewing my interest in diving. Instead of taking a refresher course I thought I'd do the complete OW cert over again--what's a BCD? Did the classroom and pool sessions in Colorado and would do my referral in the Philippines at a dive resort I had booked at for a week. Did my referral dives--no problem--got my OW cert and promptly stopped diving again. Returned to Philippines the next year and decided to dive again--stayed at different resort but using the same dive operation as prior year--different management--run by a nice German guy who introduced me to his dive master who pretty much didn't want anything to do with me--where's your log book? I just came to talk about setting up some dives--its in my room. Well he did everything but call me a liar--never asked for my C card which I did have with me. At my age I have no patience for bad attitudes so I pretty much walked away and didn't return. No more diving until I returned this past December again to the Philippines--I'll give this one more shot. Was in Boracay and walked down to a dive shop and set up a refresher course and dive for the next day--my instructor was an American gal from Boston--no problems everything was great, nice dive. Returned the next day and did another dive. Was booked into Puerto Galera for a week and had contacted a dive shop next to where I was staying but when I got there he had no one else diving so he didn't want to take out one client--but he did call another shop and set up a dive for me the next day. Great dive and then Typhoon Nina blew in the day after Christmas and that ended the diving for rest of the week. On to Dauin by Dumaguete and Mikes Dive and beach resort. Did 7 dives with him and 3 of them were at Apo Island--great dives! So returned home all excited about diving again--time to buy my own equipment--see where this is going? Jumped on the cheapest package deal I could find on-line--BCD, Reg-Octo- Mares Pro Puck computer (more about the computer later). Tried the stuff out at the local dive shop in their pool--seemed fine to me. Booked a trip to Cozumel in April with Dive with Cristina-- nice comfy boat for my old bones. Well ten great drift dives later and I hate this BCD--just couldn't get my trim right and we adjusted weights until the cows came home. They did manage to get my weight down pretty good though to twelve pounds. My new Puck Pro stopped working at the start of my 7th dive. At the surface I opened the battery compartment and it blew off like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Not flooded but a gooey mess inside where it looks like the battery leaked all the acid out. Cleaned it out and replaced the battery and O ring and it fired right up again--no problems the rest of my dives. So I'm back home looking at buying a new BC--going this next week to try out a few back inflate BC's--ScubaPro Lite Hawk and the BioLite BC. So now I have 24 official logged dives and looking forward to many more--back to Cozumel in October and the Philippines again in November.
