
Last week has seen a lot of rebreather and sidemount diving in Indonesia and more specifically here on Bunaken island.
A very experienced instructor Leo from Jakarta popped by for two very nice 50m tec dives the other day. Him being on backmount, Theresia on sidemount and me on a rebreather it was a full hand. Two relaxed dives at Alung Banua and Tanjung Parigi and Leo headed back to Manado to continue his business.

Theresia spent almost two months with us here. During that time she passed her TDI nitrox blender and trimix blender with me and advanced trimix with Ben with flying colours and is about to finish her divemaster course over at Lembeh. As a last day activity before she left we decided to do a rebreather tryout with her. She was more than proficient on the theory side and to her own big surprise did also very well under water. So ladies and gentlemen – please give long standing ovations to Theresia, I think she has earned it!

Joep and Sylvie finished their divemaster course in Lembeh and came over here to prepare for the IDC course at the end of the month. Karoline arrived a week ago and is ready for her divemaster and assistant instructor course.
To get them even more ready and knowledgeable I ran an introduction to technical diving program to them. After a thorough theoretical overview what tec is and what it is not it was time to set up the equipment. I like to take that part very slowly and make sure that all the equipment is very well adjusted because this is directly connected to how they feel and get on under water. After some fiddling with D-rings, boltsnaps and ring bungees we were ready for this morning dives.

“At the beginning it was a bit more task-loaded than expected but under water it was super-comfortable and it got more and more comfortable every minute”. This one sentence sums diving in sidemount configuration pretty well I think. As for me personally, I haven’t used a twinset for a while now and am planning to keep it that way. So look out when you are over here – sidemount takes over!
All in all it’s been a busy month over here and looks like it’s going to stay that way!
Over and out for now from Bunaken,
Markko

