WOO HOO! Finally made it!
FINALLY finished my last round of courses over the weekend!
We did a couple of dives at Eagle's Nest to finish everything off and had an absolute blast doing so. It's been a really fun ride here and I'm happy I finally made it!
Pic: My instructor and I surfacing from my final dive at Eagle's Nest!
Pic: what my hard work, learning and skills earned me
Pic: NAUI was offering limited edition cards with very rare species of animals on them, so I got them all: Two species of Cave Clown Fishes, a Cave Hermit Crab and the ever elusive Cave Shark!
Speech!
Thanks to my instructors and mentors over the years, the dive shops I frequent to let me spend tons of money in, my wife for putting up with the many long weekends away from home and the Lord for not letting me die while doing all this awesome stuff!
I especially want to thank two people the most as they made me the diver I am today. You know who you are.
I've never formally introduced myself, only lurked here a while and then just recently started posting a few weeks ago... a little about my diving life:
About 10 years ago I went up to Peacock with a few buddies that were big bad cave divers. I wanted to see what they did, and check out the springs, as I had always enjoyed snorkeling and looking at the underwater world. When they surfaced, one of them let me try his regulator and go down a few feet. It was amazing. I could just sit there and stare at the fish and turtles all I wanted without having to surface for a breath of air. I was hooked...but at the time thought this sport/hobby was WAY out of my league and price range.
Then, 4 years ago a buddy came back from an island vacation and said he got to try a resort dive in the reefs and said it was the most amazing thing ever. I mentioned I had a buddy that was an instructor that said he would teach me whenever I was ready. We booked him and spent many weekends over a couple months period on our Open Water course.
Pic: Very first time on Scuba! Such an awesome thing to remember, I hope you all remember your first time. It's still amazing to me every time I get in the water.
From the get go he hammered into us buoyancy and trim. He would not pass us unless we could maintain as perfect newby trim as we could while hovering off the bottom. He taught us other skill beyond OW such as using lines and reels for navigation or just tying them to our safety sausages, etc. We went overboard with gear configs, slim lining everything and making sure we had nothing that would get caught on anything.
We did our checkout dives in Aug 09 down in Key Largo and had the time of our lives!
Pic: My buddy and I on our checkout dives in Key Largo. I love this picture, it just shows what a good instructor that takes the time to teach good skills will produce.
Now...as a fun pic, I got this taken when we finished our last checkout dive:
4 years later I still had the same pair of shades laying around so I had another pic taken of me wearing them while on my last checkout dive(not as bright, eagle's nest was NASTY last weekend)
From there I was hooked and just kept going and going, learning more, taking more courses, getting more gear. I found I really enjoyed mentoring as well and started going along to help with OW classes and such. I decided to go the DM route so I could officially help in classes. I found it rewarding and enjoyable to be able to share my knowledge and skills in something I love to do and am passionate about and helping to make someone else a better diver just by sharing.
It didn't take long before I got a taste of Cavern and took that course. Then I wanted to see what was beyond the cavern and took Cave 1. Cave 2 was naturally next on the list, but I also started helping with tech classes by just being a buddy to do demos and skills on to show the students. I really enjoyed this as well and decided I wanted to go full Tech DM to officially help in technical courses.
I have a few more things I am interested in down the road, but for now I'm pretty excited to see where diving will take me next!
Welcome to the Cave Diver's Forum.
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Semper Fi, Cameron David Smith, my son, my hero. 11/9/1989 - 11/13/2010 
Originally Posted by Captain Bil
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