Horns or Halo???

July 4^th finds in Cozumel with 39 of our close, warm, personal friends.  Ok, this included the three staff members who joined me on this holiday trip.  Why so many staff members you might ask?  Well, there are a number of reasons with the primary one being we don’t normally run large trips; but, when we do, we try and make them have the feel of our smaller more personal trips.  So, despite the large number of divers, we had three boats and separate, local Dive Masters for each group.  Of course we all met for lunch at the pier each day so we had the best of both worlds – lots of friends and a personal touch.
Of course, there were some clients who would have preferred a little less attention to their needs.  Ashton Arsement, Brittan Clark and Stephanie Watawich were under the watchful eye of their Principals of Technical Diving Instructor – none other than our own Dave Snyder.  Dave has a reputation of being a little devilish at times, so his students came up with a hand-sign for him during the dives.  Dave was fortunate to have discovered this sign after Stephanie’s son Mathew visited at dinner and asked are you the Dave (with his hands on his head making horns) or are you “Dave” with a faraway dreamy or nice look (this would be Dave Sweeten).
Yes Stephanie saw the hand-sign starting but was too far away to have stopped the revelation.  The cat was out of the bag and Dave Snyder had a new hand-sign for himself underwater.  In fact, his wife Martha even started using in when she signaled to me asking “where is Dave.”
The diving was really nice despite some unusual currents.  Harvey Sisco commented that looking up a wall in Cozumel from 300’ was really spectacular and he could see why we liked doing those dives on a wall.  The wall itself at this depth was sparse but looking up at the coral heads, the fish and the surface way in the distance creates a lasting impression that carries you through the 90 minutes of decompression.  Of course you do have the advantage of decompressing on the reef you were looking at from below, so it is a wonderful way to dive.
Stephanie celebrated a birthday with us and Brittan Clark, Morgan Hann, and Liz Kreiger all completed there 100^th dive on this trip.  Ashton, Brittan and Stephanie finished their Principals of Technical Diving Course and Harvey Sisco completed his CCR Trimix Course on during this trip.  Congratulations everyone!