September
started with bright and sunny conditions making for east diving with Dave
Sherry from New Zealand who completed his Hammerhead CCR Factory Training and Air
Diluent Decompression Procedures courses with us. Dave has been diving CCR for quite some time
and having already been trained on a few other units had no problem getting
used to the Hammerhead.
We also
managed to get started on entry level technical courses for 3 divers in the MDA
group, Asanga, Eamonn and Nick. All
three are making the jump from soft-tech diving (recreational diving
sidemount/twin tanks) to full technical qualifications. Being based in Manila, all three chose to
complete the course over several weekends rather than a continuous week of
training – looking forward to catching up with them again next month.
September also launched the first major DRT (Dive Resort and Travel) show to be held in the Philippines. Pro-Tech joined up with our friends at Dive-Thru and Manila Dive Academy as part of the Zero Impact Diving booth. The show was a little slower than expected but we had a great time, got to meet lots of great people, caught up with some great friends - lets hope the 2016 show builds on the foundations of the 2015 show and keeps growing stronger.
The last
highlight for me in September was having a free day to check out the Acacia
house reef deep wall and see just how far it went using our shiny new XK1 Suex
DPV and trusted Hammerhead Rebreather.
The wall just keeps to keep going and going, even spending 40 minutes
between 80-90m with the speed of the XK1 couldn’t find the end of the wall!
Sadly
September didn’t end as planned when what seemed to be a little bit of headache
developed overnight into Dengue fever and kept me out of the water for over a
month :-/
