Official vintage diving instruction?

[captain]

Now that's funny

And it is dead on accurate, on the surface.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I've been trying to do my part as well.
As some of you know from the other vintage boards, I too am putting on a west coast vintage meet up in Mendocino County in September. It's our regular dive club annual campout and dive fest, but this year I'm including a vintage element to it and have invited any vintage divers that want to attend. I hope some of you take me up on it and can find the time to show up. It's a rip roaring time for sure, four days of it.
We claim a bunch of sites at www.albionrivercampground.com and set up a huge kitchen. I've got a tiki bar I bring and set up too.
We dive our butts off all day and then in the evening we cook up all the fish and seafood we get. There's abalone in Northern California too and that's always a treat, but you have to skin dive for those.
We get a big fire pit going and drink beer and swap stories. it's a hell of a lot of fun.
As far as I know Fish&Beer, Duckbill, Scuba Cowboy, and maybe Sea Rat are showing up. I'm working on a few others. Akimbo lives about ten minutes away from there and I'm sure he might make an appearance.

I guess this is another official invitation to my first west coast vintage meet.
Any of you vintage aficionados who are intersted PM me and I'll fill you in on the details.

 

[Akimbo]

… As some of you know from the other vintage boards, I too am putting on a west coast vintage meet up in Mendocino County in September...

September… can you be a little more specific? Dates would be good

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

September… can you be a little more specific? Dates would be good

Place: Albion River Campground
Dates: September 15,16,17,. 2011 (Get there Thursday - leave Sunday)
Sites are D-9 through D-19.

There will be a Tiki bar, full kitchen, commercial size barbecue, big fire pit, plenty of parking,
The campground features a boat ramp, beach on site. clean restrooms with showers, restaurant, fish cleaning station, beautiful scenery on the Albion River.

We will have plenty of room, there will be no need for guests to reserve their own space.
The only thing guests are required to do is check in with the office and pay the $10 extra per person charge per night. Sites allow for the first two included, then each person after that pays $10 a night fee. They don't care how many people are in a site.
It's a pot luck so bring some food for yourself (whatever you want to throw on the barbecue) and maybe some breakfast stuff.
Kitchen is open for everyone to use. No need to bring a lot of stuff except a cooler with a little food and beer, your dive gear, a small tent and your sleeping bag. We will provide the rest.

There is a dive shop about 15 miles up the road for fills. There is some great shore diving around north and south of Albion.

Don't forget your Hawaiian shirt.

And ladies, don't forget your coconut shell top and your grass hula skirt :shocked2:
Just kidding

Here is a link to the campground:
www.albionrivercampground.com

 

[Airleron]

I'll be taking my coconut top and grass skirt to Cozumel that week.....but any one of you fellas can wear those too! It just looks a little "different"...... Any takers? Nemrod.....:blinking:

Lisa

 

[Nemrod]

I'll be taking my coconut top and grass skirt to Cozumel that week.....but any one of you fellas can wear those too! It just looks a little "different"...... Any takers? Nemrod.....:blinking:

Lisa

Is Charlie Sheen going with you?

N

 

[herman]

I'll be taking my coconut top and grass skirt to Cozumel that week.....but any one of you fellas can wear those too! It just looks a little "different"...... Any takers? Nemrod.....:blinking:

Lisa

Trust me, you do NOT want to see N in a skirt of any kind.


Wonder where our young instructor Ms Moonglow went, seems she does not care to talk to us anymore.

 

[Tom Winters]

I'll be taking my coconut top and grass skirt to Cozumel that week.....but any one of you fellas can wear those too! It just looks a little "different"...... Any takers? Nemrod.....:blinking:

Lisa

After one of my 6-month Navy deployments, the San Diego-based carrier battle group we were part of was finally pulling into Pearl Harbor where my ship was homeported. The battle group commander offered our ship the chance to go in first IF we could provide him with a reason why.
So the deal was the Executive Officer and I got on top of the pilothouse in grass skirts and coconut tops, Hawaiian music was piped over the ship's 1MC external speakers so the whole ocean could hear it, and the two of us hula'ed all 10 of the other warships waiting in a line to go in while we flew by at 30 knots and zoomed right on in to the pier since we never took a harbor pilot onboard.
It saved us about 3 hours of waiting for our turn since we were just a little 439-foot guided missile destroyer.

 

[iPutty]

I am an instructor and would love to teach a vintage scuba class. You have to remember though, that what really keeps the diving industry thriving is a healthy manufacturing base (i.e. equipment sales) and dive travel. Obviously, manufacturer support doesn't apply.

I know there are loosely organized trips being planned, but these need to be much more frequent and visible if the dive instruction industry is to take notice.

Then, of course, insurance is a big issue. In a courtroom, the defensibility of teaching someone to use 50 plus year old dive gear and omitting what is today considered mandatory safety equipment, would be questionable to say the least.

Certainly the hurdles can be overcome, but the market size is sure to remain very small. In my opinion, the first step is to increase the visibility of the vintage diving community. There are a lot of us, even if the "market size" is limited.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I am an instructor and would love to teach a vintage scuba class. You have to remember though, that what really keeps the diving industry thriving is a healthy manufacturing base (i.e. equipment sales) and dive travel. Obviously, manufacturer support doesn't apply.

I know there are loosely organized trips being planned, but these need to be much more frequent and visible if the dive instruction industry is to take notice.

Then, of course, insurance is a big issue. In a courtroom, the defensibility of teaching someone to use 50 plus year old dive gear and omitting what is today considered mandatory safety equipment, would be questionable to say the least.

Certainly the hurdles can be overcome, but the market size is sure to remain very small. In my opinion, the first step is to increase the visibility of the vintage diving community. There are a lot of us, even if the "market size" is limited.

Thanks for your ideas and support.

The manufacturing base thing. Most dive gear isn't even made in the USA anymore. Some stuff is but by in large it's all offshored. So in that respect they've abandoned us long ago. One guy does it to get a financial edge and they all have to do it, a fact of modern life in the business world.

However with vintage diving local economies are being supported more than meets the eye. All the rebuild parts for the old regs are being made here (correct me if I'm wrong), and take for example my wetsuits, I have a guy down in Southern California making my new (vintage cut) wetsuits so all the labor is going to him. The neoprene however is made in China but not a lot we can do about that.

Then there's the restoration factor. All the work is done by american craftsmen working in their shops. Simonbeans makes harnesses, a nother guy is doing chrome work, Bryan restores and sells double hoses and parts, the list goes on.
Then there's the resale factor with people digging out this old stuff and putting a little money into their pockets which in turn gets put right back into the immediate american economy.

Besides I don't think the vintage community makes up even one one hundredth of one percent of the overall diving population so I don't see that as being even a blip on the sales flow of modern gear sellers.

We are just into our own thing. I do think however our scene could benefit from a little more organization and structured mentorship, because right now it's all over the place. Somebody admiring vintage diving that want's to get into it has a lot of hurdles to jump over before they even get into the water.

As far as modern training and safety devices, I think a little differently about it.
I don't see anything safe about teaching people to grossly overweight themselves and then depend on a big air bag to do all the work for them including keeping them floating on the surface.
I think the old style of diving where weighting was critical and taught correctly and the emphasis was put on in water skills and comfort is a much safer way to dive IMO.
The less contraptions to depend on and the more good skills and watermanship strenghts to depend on is light years ahead of how they train divers now.

That's why we need organization, to teach new people coming into vintage that what they learned in their PADINAUISSISDI open water isn't going to work for vintage.
Them trying to figure this out on their own could present a problem.