Houston's Premier Scuba and Dive Shop Oceanic Ventures Inc.

(713) 523-3483 (dive)
5808 Newcastle Drive
Houston, TX 77401

Middle East

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100 Scuba Dives…Dive Mom Needs Help!

Dive Mom Ready to Go
Dive Mom Ready to Go!

“For the first time I can remember, I don’t have my 100 dives by November 1; I need your help to get there before December 1!”
 Ann Keibler will be venturing up to the DUI Dog Rally and Demo Days in Terrell Texas on November 19-20 and she would like for you to join her. So that you both have something to do while swimming around the lake, she will be doing dry suit open water dives and dry suit demos. To give you some incentive to show up, she has come up with the following specials:

  • Take a Dry Suit course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for Saturday and Sunday. By doing your open water here, you also save the dry suit rental charge ($100 for the weekend).
  • Take your Nitrox course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for the day and include the Nitrox for your dives!

Both courses include the educational materials and the classroom portion is a home study program. You should turn in your homework and take the test before you leave. She will be staying late Wednesday November 9, so you can get the test over with early. You can take the test at the lake, but who wants to skip the fun and take a test so doing it early is really better.
Of course if you are already certified as a dry suit diver, you can still come up and go diving. Remember, she needs a lot of dives and she doesn’t think any one person will want to do that many in a day. As such, she needs multiple buddies and lots of moral support.
DUI’s Dog Rally and Demo Days is a really cool event where you can try almost every suit DUI makes, almost every style of undergarment, get lunch and a hat all for $10.00 (when purchased from Oceanic Ventures, in advance). And, if you are already a DOG (DUI Owners Group) and you bring a friend to the event, you will get a special gift.

Please send Dive Mom and email and tell her you will help her reach her goal.

She would like to know who is going to attend by Friday.

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The Victoria Eludes Us

During the week in week in Grand Cayman, it became apparent that our Lebanon trip was rapidly falling apart. The trip that started with 12 people for the first week and 10 for the second had within the past thirty days dwindled to 6 people for both weeks. During Tek Week two more people dropped out leaving the “Houston contingent” (Dave Snyder from Manhattan, Nat Robb from Cayman, Randy Terrill from Atlanta, Mark Conrad from Houston, and me)as our travel agent termed us. While we were committed to the trip, with deposits and air seats it became apparent that others were not as committed and for various reasons felt the need to drop out.

The problem for those of us remaining is that we have barely enough people to safely dive the Victoria and if someone has any issue (Ear clearing problems, equipment problems, etc) the dive would be scrubbed for everyone. Additionally, the costs for the dives would now be covered by 4 divers instead of 10-12 divers.

So after a lot of late night discussions, talking and soul searching we all decided to cancel this year’s trip and put one together for ourselves next year. I sent several notes to Walid in Lebanon, who was understandable upset about everything falling apart especially after he had purchased $5,000 of sorb and supplies for the trip, and explained our position and then told him we wanted to put our own trip together for next year. We also promised to handle it more like we would a conventional Oceanic Ventures trip complete with deposits for everyone.

This was a very disappointing development. We had all spent money and time preparing for the trip and the diving. It was especially disappointing since I spent the week in Grand Cayman diving in a DRY SUIT!

But as they always say in baseball, there is always next year.

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Who said a Taxi driver knows the way?

Eric Underwater on his Sentinel RebreatherIt all ended with a series of Ian, can you ask him to turn around?  The dive shop and the hotel are in the other direction; we just passed them. And later, I don’t think he knows where the airport is… just keep going, I think I see the sign up ahead.  Of course these two events were broken up by lunch and a lie by the pool all after getting off the boat and experiencing more of the Egyptian governmental efficiency – he wanted to know if I had any cigarettes, when I explained that I did not smoke he wanted to know if I had a lighter.  Since I did not smoke, I had no lighter so everyone needs to bring all of their luggage in.  This was followed by some more arguing between the officials and our driver, the luggage being x-rayed by an operator who was talking to another official and who did not even bother to look at the monitor, re-loading the van, more yelling and off for “the hotel.”

 

 

It was a full week.  The routine was assembly and diving during the day, lectures at night, and a written test in my spare time.  All-n-all it was an interesting week.  The diving was less than spectacular, the scenery was a little bland (except for the Russians) but the company was fun and the Rebreather was interesting.

 

Kevin noted that while we had a number of issues with the units, at the end of the week all twenty of the units were still divable — albeit the units had a variety of failures from secondary handsets staying on or not working, temperature monitors (TPM) not functioning, and high pressure sensors either failing or giving erratic results.  He had been on tests of other units where the failure rate was 50% to 100% before the week was out.

 

My own personal unit had a secondary handset failure, a non-functioning TPM and an oxygen sensor that went in and out and gave erratic reading when it was functioning.  I am planning on visiting the factory and taking a technician course so I hope to learn more about these failures.

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Training Under the Waves

Kevin Gurr Discussing New BOVThe wind has picked up and the waves resemble a good day in the Gulf with the sun a little obscured by the clouds.  But despite the slight turn in the weather, like and good scuba course, the training goes on.  It is interesting in being the the first group of divers on a unit.  There are a few problems or design things that pop-up that might make it easier.  Of course I am not sure the design team always want to hear the comments.  However, the reception has been positive and everyone seems to be enjoying diving their units.

 

The dives themselves have been pretty boring as far as the general scenery.  Training reefs all of them with lots of sand and patchey corals.  Kevin was a little disappointed that the winds picked-up because we were poised to dive a “nice little wreck over there” but it is now too rough.  So instead we are mneung to a more protected area with access to several other sights. 

 

I like the unit.  It seems a little more complicated than the Evolution but it also has more features and some far superior design features that make it more appealing and an off-set for its larger size.

 

Simon Butler & Jong Sub ParkIt is interesting listening to Simon try and explain some wording for Jong Sub, from Korea, while he is trying to take notes about the course.    What would be another way to explain a concept by using a common word to explain something (e.g. “sanity breath,” “calming,” “settling down” and so on.).

 

The training Continues

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Travel, ouch

Snowing In EnglansThis kind of travel can get expensive.  Yours bags are too heavy.  You can rearrange them so they are under 32 kgs or rearrange them and check another bag.  No matter what, each bag must be under 32 kgs.  Come back and see me when you have them all arranged.”  When you already have 2 bags weighing in at the maximum weight and the are rather full the only option is a third bag.  And surprise, it will cost ₤75 (about $150.00US).  This is turning out to be an expensive undertaking.  Oh well, you do what you have to do to have fun!

 

After a long wait at the airport it was off to Egypt where more adventurers in travel awaited me.  After de-planing, you need to buy a visa – I think.  In asking the official, he told me diving, you need a visa if you are planning to visit Ros Mohamad. Are you planning on going there?  Since I have had little information about this trip, I had no idea whether I was going there or not.  But in looking at everyone who got off the flight, it appeared I needed to buy the visa so back in line.  The visa was $15.00 US.  If you had pounds sterling, you had to convert it to US dollars to get your Visa.  An interesting pricing structure since very few Americans travel to the Red Sea and a large number of Englishmen do.

 

Headed to EgyptWith Visa mounted in hand, I proceeded to immigration where thy applied it to the last page in my passport, skipping about 20 blank pages, stamped it and the told me no visa needed.  I am still not sure whether I needed it or not at this point.  Collecting the luggage was easy and the customs officials merely looked mean and disgusted while waving us through.

 

Having a Rebreather made it easy to find others arriving for the training course and we quickly found one-another.  Seven of us all looking for our transportaion.  Phil looked at us and said I am happy to see you, I’ve been here 45 minutes and no-one has shown up.  We continued to wait and finally Sue very nicely asked one of the tour guides picking up another group, if she could borrow her cell phone and call the dive operator whi was supposed to be picking us up.  After a brief discussion she was told they should be there, I don’t know what happened, just stay there and I’ll get them to find you.  A half an hour later she phoned us on the other tour guides phone and said they are there, where are you?  Of course we were standing outside the international arrival door so they probably were not there but were in transit.  Sure enough, 30 minutes later someone arrived, looked at the cases and said we don’t have enough room for you.

 

After a little discussion, we loaded ½ of the group in one van and the other part in another.  In the interim, the one van was parked the wrong direction in the street and a bus that tried to avoid him plowed into another car.  An argument resulted which in Egypt are very animated and up closse, ensued and we weren’t sure that everyone was going to get out.  They fineally did and so did we.  The funny thing was they made it to the boat before we did.

 

We got to the port and met the local guard unit at shift change according to our driver.  All we could tell was there was a great deal of yelling going on, our driver parking at the gate then mneung back to let the ambulense pull out and park, then back to the gate only to have to back up again to let the ambulance pull back in (local transportation for the police in the port).  This went on for about an hour.  Finealy, we were allowed into the gate but only as far as the officve where we were led into a large room to meed the local authorities.,  They had already taken our passports earlier and now they were trying to match faces the othe passport and making sure we had that visa (I guess I needed it whether I planned on visiting Ros Mahamoud or not).  Back in the van, without the passports – don’t worry, they need to copy them;  and, they will give them back to you on the boat.

An interesting start to the trip…