LynnB
Contributor
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Years and may there be more diving in 2011 than there was in 2010!!!
Happy new year
- Thread starter LynnB
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
Happy New Year, y'all.
Cajuncru Diver
Contributor
- Messages
- 10,949
- Reaction score
- 4,153
- # of dives
- None - Not Certified
We once tried to do the midnight NYE dive on the Prince Albert wreck.
I think we went to sleep at 9:30 instead.
A story from Y2K....
A Bang-up New Years
So Mr. Bill (owner of CCV) was coming South and he stopped by the Florida Dollar Store and bought a cubic yard of toys. Now this may seem peculiar, refering to toys in the measurement of a "cubic yard", but after you have been "muling" stuff down for enough years you begin to think in terms of "free space" available inside your luggage.
He goes up to TACA desk in Miami, and you have to understand that this goes back to an earlier time, and they ask, "Meeester Effanz, of dese two chaiked begs, wheech juan jew wan priority? Anyone who has flown TACA knows that this means "which one would you like to see again someday maybe?". Mr. Bill points at the standard cardboard box of toys secured with duct tape, weighing in at no more than 30# of plastic processed in China with Arabian oil, yet somehow not good enough for Mall-Wart. "This one is priority" he points and thinks that all's whats in the other suitcase is clothing in need of laundering. (Miss Ev was apparently in Roatan).
So Bill shows up at RTB and waits in luggage to collect... only his dirty laundry. The bastidges had kept his crate of dollar toys in Miami. (Well, they did finally arrive by New Years, and since this was Y2K, they came in handy because of some bizarre connection these island people made between Y2K and Jesus, versus us just worrying whether Bill Gates was about to reap the ultimate nerd revenge).
We sit there before New Years Eve and sort out the toys and preparing them for three different villages. The Police advised that we not venture out January 1 pre-dawn as they reminded us that Central Americans have a prediliction for celebratory hoohaa by discharging automatic weapons (theoretically) skyward.
Before we did that, however, we had to light off the Y2K fireworks in front of the resort. I have never really been fond of fireworks, as my experience with the real deal explosives educated me to the fact that fireworks are way more dangerous than c4. On the 30th, we took the barge over to French Harbour where the rich island folks footed the bill for the display as they watched from the two restaurants, and the orphanages watched from the other bank over by the loading docks.
I told Tonio (the then manager of CCV, retired Bay Islands Congressman, noted fireworks nut) that we would all wear protective goggles, earplugs and he and I would wear the two flak vests that I had in a footlocker sitting in Honduras lo these many years.
The fireworks went off well, no problems, bang zoom, oooh, ahhh. I was still very nervous, and although Tonio maintained great control and safety protocol, he was as giddy as a kid. The rich people clapped, the orphans cheered, we went back to CCV.
The next night we set up the display out on the Gazebo walkway at CCV. The array consisted of 50 4" PVC schedule 40 pipes used as mortar tubes. Tonio directed me to touch off as many of them as I could using the small propane torch while he was lighting a ground effect display. It had went so well the night before, I had ditched every protective device except for the goggles. Bad idea.
Fireworks are pretty basic. First thing that happens is a 'lifting charge' launches them out of the tube. As they go skyward, an internal fuse slowly burns towards the 'display' charge that makes the oooh ahhh. These were basic Honduran Fireworks.
I believe the humidity in the air during storage may have ruined the 'lifting' charge. Now- how Tonio got these over from the mainland on the Islena puddle jumper I have no clue. Maybe they got wet then? Maybe they got wet on the way over from the landing? Maybe when he stored them on the floors of his office, they absorbed moisture from the ocean right underneath?
I don't know.
So I light maybe 40 of these 4" explosives that are mounted in brittle grey plastic pipe in wooden stands. At about number 38 or 39 things went from bad to worse in an instant. Apparently the lifting charges were not going off but the fuses had burned upwards to the display charges and they were igniting in the pipes or no more the 6 feet from our heads.
Everybody inside the Clubhouse is enjoying the show, or so they thought. There is a large contingent of divers having their picture taken by Randy and Pat Elliot over the PA Wreck at the stroke of the new Milennium. Tonio and I were standing, if but for a brief moment, in the exploding sunlight of New Years gone awry.
Me and Tonio were blinded, deafened and cut to ribbons by the explosion. And I laughed at my sister who expressed concern about Y2K meltdown when she planned her trip to Disneyworld. I predicted that the Hall of Animatronic Presidents there would break free and begin burning and pillaging. I'm going someplace that is Y2K-proof... Honduras!
I am now deaf and flash blind, making my way back to the Clubhouse with Tonio and a few mildly injured yard boys. I am bleeding from a line of wounds that stitched across my porky self when that schedule 40 went from launch tube to shrapnel. I never did like fireworks.
The Luminox watch that I was wearing was destroyed, the hands frozen in time for the Y2K event. It is on the CCV sign post, the one that has the time capsule bottle with everybody's name and a Honduran Cigar (Now quite moldy like the fireworks were) and there's a grey shard of schedule 40 PVC there as well. A moment frozen in time. Go visit it.
Happy & safe new year to all.
I think we went to sleep at 9:30 instead.
A story from Y2K....
A Bang-up New Years
So Mr. Bill (owner of CCV) was coming South and he stopped by the Florida Dollar Store and bought a cubic yard of toys. Now this may seem peculiar, refering to toys in the measurement of a "cubic yard", but after you have been "muling" stuff down for enough years you begin to think in terms of "free space" available inside your luggage.
He goes up to TACA desk in Miami, and you have to understand that this goes back to an earlier time, and they ask, "Meeester Effanz, of dese two chaiked begs, wheech juan jew wan priority? Anyone who has flown TACA knows that this means "which one would you like to see again someday maybe?". Mr. Bill points at the standard cardboard box of toys secured with duct tape, weighing in at no more than 30# of plastic processed in China with Arabian oil, yet somehow not good enough for Mall-Wart. "This one is priority" he points and thinks that all's whats in the other suitcase is clothing in need of laundering. (Miss Ev was apparently in Roatan).
So Bill shows up at RTB and waits in luggage to collect... only his dirty laundry. The bastidges had kept his crate of dollar toys in Miami. (Well, they did finally arrive by New Years, and since this was Y2K, they came in handy because of some bizarre connection these island people made between Y2K and Jesus, versus us just worrying whether Bill Gates was about to reap the ultimate nerd revenge).
We sit there before New Years Eve and sort out the toys and preparing them for three different villages. The Police advised that we not venture out January 1 pre-dawn as they reminded us that Central Americans have a prediliction for celebratory hoohaa by discharging automatic weapons (theoretically) skyward.
Before we did that, however, we had to light off the Y2K fireworks in front of the resort. I have never really been fond of fireworks, as my experience with the real deal explosives educated me to the fact that fireworks are way more dangerous than c4. On the 30th, we took the barge over to French Harbour where the rich island folks footed the bill for the display as they watched from the two restaurants, and the orphanages watched from the other bank over by the loading docks.
I told Tonio (the then manager of CCV, retired Bay Islands Congressman, noted fireworks nut) that we would all wear protective goggles, earplugs and he and I would wear the two flak vests that I had in a footlocker sitting in Honduras lo these many years.
The fireworks went off well, no problems, bang zoom, oooh, ahhh. I was still very nervous, and although Tonio maintained great control and safety protocol, he was as giddy as a kid. The rich people clapped, the orphans cheered, we went back to CCV.
The next night we set up the display out on the Gazebo walkway at CCV. The array consisted of 50 4" PVC schedule 40 pipes used as mortar tubes. Tonio directed me to touch off as many of them as I could using the small propane torch while he was lighting a ground effect display. It had went so well the night before, I had ditched every protective device except for the goggles. Bad idea.
Fireworks are pretty basic. First thing that happens is a 'lifting charge' launches them out of the tube. As they go skyward, an internal fuse slowly burns towards the 'display' charge that makes the oooh ahhh. These were basic Honduran Fireworks.
I believe the humidity in the air during storage may have ruined the 'lifting' charge. Now- how Tonio got these over from the mainland on the Islena puddle jumper I have no clue. Maybe they got wet then? Maybe they got wet on the way over from the landing? Maybe when he stored them on the floors of his office, they absorbed moisture from the ocean right underneath?
I don't know.
So I light maybe 40 of these 4" explosives that are mounted in brittle grey plastic pipe in wooden stands. At about number 38 or 39 things went from bad to worse in an instant. Apparently the lifting charges were not going off but the fuses had burned upwards to the display charges and they were igniting in the pipes or no more the 6 feet from our heads.
Everybody inside the Clubhouse is enjoying the show, or so they thought. There is a large contingent of divers having their picture taken by Randy and Pat Elliot over the PA Wreck at the stroke of the new Milennium. Tonio and I were standing, if but for a brief moment, in the exploding sunlight of New Years gone awry.
Me and Tonio were blinded, deafened and cut to ribbons by the explosion. And I laughed at my sister who expressed concern about Y2K meltdown when she planned her trip to Disneyworld. I predicted that the Hall of Animatronic Presidents there would break free and begin burning and pillaging. I'm going someplace that is Y2K-proof... Honduras!
I am now deaf and flash blind, making my way back to the Clubhouse with Tonio and a few mildly injured yard boys. I am bleeding from a line of wounds that stitched across my porky self when that schedule 40 went from launch tube to shrapnel. I never did like fireworks.
The Luminox watch that I was wearing was destroyed, the hands frozen in time for the Y2K event. It is on the CCV sign post, the one that has the time capsule bottle with everybody's name and a Honduran Cigar (Now quite moldy like the fireworks were) and there's a grey shard of schedule 40 PVC there as well. A moment frozen in time. Go visit it.
Happy & safe new year to all.
CajunDiva
Contributor
Similar threads
