Welcome to MyScubaStuff

Welcome to MyScubaStuff.

On this blog, we will be posting informative "how-to" information about diving, plus we will share links to other websites where we find interesting articles that would appeal to divers.

My first warm water dive,
Islamorada 1987

Let me share a few notes about myself.  My name is Dave.  I've been scuba diving over 27 years.  I live in the northeastern United States, so most of my diving is up here.  In a good year, I'll get into the ocean every other week between March and December, although I have to admit, as I get older I'm a little less tolerant of the cold.  Since I turned 55, I've decided that when the water temperature gets below 45F, I'll keep my butt in the boat.  After all, this is supposed to be fun.

I'm what you'd call a rec diver.  That's rec; short for recreational.  Not wreck, as in shipwreck.  I dive for the fun of it.  There's no where else where it's as quiet and calm as in the ocean.

I'm not a "macho" guy, I'm a very conservative diver.  I have a family and I want to come home to them after every dive, so I'm not above aborting a dive if I'm not feeling 100% good about it.  I do my safety stops religiously, I exercise to keep myself in shape, I watch my weight (mostly I watch it go up) and I stay hydrated when diving.  I don't buy cheap dive gear because when I'm 90 feet deep, my life depends on it.

Up here in the northeast, we have hundreds of diveable ship wrecks.  Between bad weather, bad maps, bad captains and quite a few wars, the eastern coast of the USA is littered with wrecks.  I've had the opportunity to visit wooden schooners that sank 200 years ago, cargo ships and crise ships that have only been on the bottom for 70 or 80 years, a few war ships that were sunk in WW1 and WW2, plus dozens of "artificial reefs" sunk by the government to create homes for fish and destinations for divers and fishermen.

One of the reasons I enjoy diving so much, aside from my love and appreciation of the ocean, is that I've had the honor to meet so many other great divers in my area.   From the boat captains that told their mates to keep an eye on me on my first trips as a young diver, to the "old salts" whose dive gear seems to be held together by duct-tape, I've learned many tricks and techniques that they don't teach you in dive class.  I try to share some of what I've learned with other new divers when I meet them, and I still look forward to diving with my old friends because I continue to learn something new every day.

I look forward to writing this column and hope that others who have something interesting to add will leave their comments as well.

Thanks for reading - DSAO!  (Dive safe and often)