NAUI 50th Anniversary party

[captain]

Although I have no connection to NAUI I was invited to a NAUI 50th anniversary party last night by a former NAUI president I know. They showed Sea Hunt during the event and I was asked to do a short talk about vintage equipment and diving.
Many of those in attendance said they had one or more double hose regulators and inquired about rebuilding them and parts availability. I showed them my Voit Phoenix and passed out some NAVED brochures.
One shop owner said he has a bunch of vintage regulators and tanks and invited me to come take a look.
Maybe we will gain a member or two.

[Bryan]

You can't pay for this kind of publicity or exposure. Thanks for spreading the word Tom. I'm sure more than one of them were surprised how many of us are still diving with the original type equipment.

[YankDownUnder]

NAUI is an open minded organization and approved our standard dress helmet certification courses and has now approved a vintage scuba certification here in Australia. I have NAUI certifications in standard and advanced standard dress diving.

At the end of March we are conducting our first NAUI vintage scuba training course. It will be one day of class room instruction and one day of swimming pool diving. We have many diving locations here, but as we will have members flying in, we don't want to worry about bad weather and poor visibility, which can happen.

The course will include both double hose and early Australian single hose scuba. (ie. Porpoise, Sea Bee, Scubmatic and Dawson). Our course will also include a seperate certification in oxygen closed circuit rebreathers. We have an oxygen pressure chamber for the O2 portions of instruction.

I wrote the diving portions of our helmet manuals and I am in the process of writing our vintage scuba manual. We have existing Drager LAR V manuals for the rebreathers. We are fortunate to have a HDS member who is a NAUI instructor and owner of a commercial diving operation. He runs the training and I assist. We have certified 30 members in standard dress and hope for another 20 members to attend out vintage scuba course. Our size limit is based upon the rebreathers that we have.

You can look at the helmet class at http://www.classicdiver.org. Click on the helmet diver standing on the stage platform.

I'll post information about the scuba course, but it is still sometime off. Steve

[1969ivan1]

Good work Tom. I am sure your presentation was top notch and I wish that I could have attended.

[JES]

Great job Tom!

[DiverTim]

Sounds like it was a great evening. Sorry I did get called in to work. Tim

[USdiver]

It's good to know that there are organizations out there that do appreciate the historic, and thank you Tom for providing the information to them.

Maybe Emilio Lago is right, we should start producing our own television show - "Hollywood Squidbillies". Based outside of Ft. Lauderdale (Hollywood, FL) it's the heartwarming story of a young ex-Navy man from Georgia, who re-locates to the big city after discovering a highly profitable liquid on his property. Out of the wilderness, he has many mis-adventures with powerheads, vine fruit, adult beverages, and rubber suits (not X rated), all while tending to his aging USD triple set from 1954.

Now if I could just think up a theme song - Gary little help?