Update: Mark Jelicka

Mike Ferris from Diver's Den has been notified by Mark Jelicka, the Instructor from Thailand that some of our Douglas County divers have met at our Club meetings.

He is safe, and has survived the big wave.

He will be in contact with Mike soon!

Happy New Year

To all of you!

Just wanted to wish all of you a Happy New Year!

Be Safe!

See you next year!

Cheers,

Marla

Club Meeting

Our December 23, 2004 Douglas County Diver's Club meeting is cancelled.

The next scheduled club meeting will be on January 27, 2005.

We will be holding elections, so please attend to this meeting and cast your votes.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Two Specialty Courses being offered: Night Dive and Search & Recovery

Morrie Lloyd will be teaching a class on Night Diving.
Jan 8, 2005 is the scheduled class date.
For more information, please contact Morrie #430-5076

Mike Ferris from Diver's Den will be teaching a class on Search & Recovery around the same time as Morrie Lloyd. There planning on the checkout dives corresponding with each other back to back the same weekend.
For more information on the Search and Recovery Course, you can call Diver's Den #673-3710 or #643-4710

Hoodsport Advanced Divers Return

Morrie LLoyd teaches an advanced class in Hoodsport on December 10th, 11th and 12th. Four students were certified. I will post more at a later date. Maybe we will have some posts from the people that went on this dive. Hope they all had a great time!

Sportsman Show 2005

Talked with Rod our President of the Douglas County Dive Club on December 9, 2004.
He will be sending out e-mails to all of you regarding the upcoming 2005 Sportsman's Show.
We need to know if everyone is in agreement in having a booth this year. Time is of the essence, so if any of you are supporting or not supporting the booth, please make known your decision to Rod.
You can contact our officers; President - Rod Smith by phone or e-mail, Marla K. or our Vice President, Morrie Lloyd or Mike Ferris ( sharing the Vice President position with Morrie ).
You can also just click in on comment and post your decision here on our site.

Thank you,
Marla

Comments on the Channel Island Dive Trip

UPDATE: Jim Rogers has some interesting comments on the Channel Island Dive Trip:

The Truth Aquatics trip started out with the weather putting up a fight. It decided to rain hard and sideways Saturday evening but this only added to the anticipation as we loaded our gear and watched the nearby party boats get "loaded", I think that most would agree that the sequined mermaid outfit was the best.

The next morning we dropped anchor at Santa Cruz Island near a spot called Painted Cave. We were fairly close to the cliffs, the water was extremely clear with large rock formations and big pockets below the rocks that had large horn sharks in them . These sharks were grey brown in color with whitish spots ringed in a darker brown, in front of the dorsal a large spike protruded a few inches above the fin that looked like a large ivory tooth pick, their snout was rather squared with the mouth set back from it's chin. How you might ask was he able the observe those details? Well it wasn't from sticking my hand into those holes because those horned dudes were at least a foot across or more.

Rod Smith and I were fortunate enough the have a smaller version --about an 18 incher to casually swim past us and perch himself on a rock allowing this close inspection and when I lightly tugged on his tail fin he slowly meandered off.

We dove twice in this area seeing orange Garibaldi--(they are just as bright an orange as in their pictures---one of the recent dive magazine covers)-- we also came across a mottled scarlet colored slug that was huge, it was the size of a volleyball kind of jug shaped with its neck stretched out, the head having slug-like antanae. We found out later that this was a sea hare a type of supper nudibranch that if you slide your hands up along its sides under its flaps you can get it to squirt purple ink! Who knew! Some of the divers scored lobsters as well as rock scallops.
As to the name of this location ,Painted Caves, some of the large rock faces were covered with brilliant blue, just as if someone had painted them and tossed them in.
What can you say; it's a wonder everytime you dive. I'll post some more comments as I have time especially about Jerry T. holding his own with the Sacramento card sharks. What kind of poker is it when one eyed kings are wild and you pass 3 cards to the left and then 2 two spaces to the right; it ain't natural!