Pirate’s Cove 2007 CCR and Wreck Week’s
I have been terribly remiss in my duties as official documenter of dive trips and I have no excuses for my lazy behavior. Many months later, I am thinking about the upcoming trip, expected to be in April of ’08 and realize that I have not finished my article on the last year. So here it is. I shot over 700 images on this trip, and the most difficult part was deciding which ones to include, and still leave some bandwidth for others.
The first half of the Pirate’s Cove Dive Center trip was dedicated to CCR’s and the second half to wreck diving and although we had bubble blowers on the first week and CCR divers on the second week, everyone got along just fine and a good time was had by all.
Rooms for the event were provided by a local hotel and the PCDC staff were always ready to grab a van and take participants back and forth whenever they wanted. The hotel was about a 5 minute van ride or a 10 minute walk along the beach. Morning breakfast was provided across the street from the hotel and was included in the trip cost. A nice touch.
The weather was wonderful, most days in the mid 80’sF with a nice breeze in from the ocean and flat calm seas for the day’s diving.
The
The staff at PCDC are exceptional, they never tire of hauling gear, providing food and beverage and laying a toothy smile on you no matter what your request or concern, this is truly a “can do” resort and it is a very refreshing place to visit compared to the lack of customer service we see on a daily basis back home or at other destinations. Uwe Rath runs the place with an easy grace and everyone seems to know what is needed before it is asked for. Each time I return, the staff grows, but there is no turnover, it’s the same great people every time and hugs and handshakes when you arrive. Awesome!
For the first week, dubbed CCR week, Industry professionals
were invited to the resort to do presentations about diving, equipment and
safety. This was the place to learn
about new CCR’s, features, gear and accessories for diving sans bubbles. In attendance were Mike Fowler of SDS,
The diving was likewise just spectacular, with stunning coral, wrecks full of fish and crystal clear, bathtub warm, water.
The
The DR is an area rich with history and its quite possible to be swimming over a reef that is covering an ancient ships anchor from the times of Christopher Columbus. In fact, during wreck week, two ancient anchors were found using a magnetometer and old fashioned slething.
Cave Diving in DR!
The DR is not famous for cave diving like
Wreck Week!
The second week of action packed diving and tall tail telling was led off by John Chatterton (who needs no introduction) and Joe (and Heidi) Porter who is the owner/editor of Wreck Diving Magazine. Joe and John agreed to take over the administration of the second week with blessings from John Mattera and Uwe Rath and they managed to fill the weeks non diving activities with some amazing learning experiences. The guys from Video Ray showed up with some micro ROV’s that had cameras, grapples and 360 degree maneuverability as well as prizes of T shirts for those who showed their prowess operating the little underwater robots. JC and I both managed to graduate to picking up quarters off the bottom and depositing them onto the swim steps, with others able to deliver golf balls onto the steps, no easy task either.
John Mattera had delivered to PCDC a tow behind side scan sonar and a magnetometer and each was used off shore to look for new dive sites during the event with the curious on the boat along for the ride and educational opportunity.
Sir Robert Marx was invited to give presentations every
evening that showed some remarkable historic shipwreck exploration and salvage
that would have made even
The CCR folks that stayed for the second week also gave presentations and pool demo’s of our products to the mostly open circuit folks that showed up to explore the areas visually rich ocean. Evening seminars were done as well as pool demos during the day.
Billy Gambrel showed and gave pool demo’s
of his modified Prism CCR rebuilt to work as a side mount unit. He and
Paul Raemaekers gave pool and ocean demo dives on his two rEvo CCR’s that recently came into production. I did a 10 minute pool session, some time learning how things went together and then did a 2 hour ocean dive with Paul as my wingman. Very nice machine Paul, well done!
John Mattera tries out an Ouroboros, John Chatterton dives the side mount Prism. Leigh Bishop, Paul Raemaekers, Billy Gambrel, Joe Porter and Gayle Laskowsky all give the Meg CCR a pool dive.
A great Turnout for
Bob Fridel,
Nothing
but smiles from all the participants of CCR and Wreck week down at
Curt Bowen, Michelle Desloge,
Larry Elsevier, Paul Raemaekers, Mike
Ellsinore,
There are certainly some folks whose names I have forgotten and some pictures that I didn’t get, but I hope that the overall impression to the reader is that a great bunch of people got together at Pirates Cove and had a wonderful couple weeks of diving and socializing, because, that is what I was trying to get across. : )
Thanks so much to John and
This coming years trip is scheduled for April more details at www.piratescovedivecenter.com or www.wreckdivingmag.com
Download the .pdf flyer here PiratesCove08.pdf
Ron Micjan