Bottom Time E

Sept. 14, 2006

Edition 10

The Medallion was found by a student while doing his second open water dive in Pickerel Lake. It was about 300 feet from the public access. Vincent Olson from Ogema was the lucky winner of the Sherwood dive computer.

As a whole the summer was very good for diving with visibility and air and water temps. great. There were a lot of new faces in the dive center this summer and it was fun to hear their dive stories. Classes were up and we trained a lot of people to enjoy our great sport. I would like to get all the check out dives for the open water classes done within the next few days so if you are not finished up with your dives give us a call so we can get them done.

The new rescuer diver course certified 6 divers and this gives us an edge on helping new students to become better divers. The Advanced Diver course had a big number of divers in the class and I would like to get those dives done before it gets to cold so if you are in the class give me a call so we can get it completed. We now have an instructor living in the Willmar area. Stefan Rink will be teaching classes there starting next spring so any of you that have been certified with us from that area Stefan would welcome help with the classes.

As of next spring we will also be offering classes in the Grand Forks area as we have an instructor living there now.

We are also teaching classes in the Twin Cities area starting this fall and will get into full swing with classes down there in the spring when our assistant instructor completes his instructor training.

This coming Tuesday we will be offering a Dive First Responder course at 6:30 here at the dive center for anyone interested in taking this course. The first part will be CPR and then we will go into how to handle dive medical emergencies.

We have quite a few tanks and regulators that have been serviced that need to be picked up.

We went through a lot of consignment and rental equipment this year and we still have a few items left. Eight regulator combos, a few men's wetsuits and quite a few women's wetsuits to sell at greatly reduced prices as we do not want to carry them another year. There are two X Small, three Small, three Medium and two Large rental BCs to sell.

For those of you that have been thinking about getting a snorkeling package I would recommend getting them before the end of September as the price of Force Fins at taking a big jump in price.

Remember our fall and winter hours are by appointment so please call before coming to the dive center to make sure we are around. I am here most of the time but I do not have other staff on hand to assist with your needs. Thank you to Scott Laudon, Randi Granger, and Karl Biederman for working in the shop this summer.

A special thank you to Ryan Tangan, Ryan Sandvig, Ricky Rasmussen, Jake Jacobson, Chirs Benson, Brad Fulmer, James Dahl, David Laudon, Scott Laudon, and Brian Jahnke for helping with pool sessions and open water dives this year. Without your help the students would not have come out as prepared as they are. You can be very proud on how professional you were and I know all the students are glad you were there to assist them.

See you on the bottom.