Written by Lamar English (reprinted with permission)

“I’m going.”

My quiet statement broke the silence shared by the three of us atop the tower overlooking Wakulla Springs. We each had our own thoughts as we stared into the huge spring before us. Bill Main let out a little laugh, leaned over, and said to Bill Gavin,
“Hey Billy, we can’t let our little redneck buddy go solo diving in here. He might get lost all by himself!”
“We can’t have that now, can we? I guess we’d better go and keep an eye on him.”

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Written by Lamar English (reprinted with permission)

Congratulations, by passing the written test, and having demonstrated an acceptable degree of proficiency in the pool and completing the mandatory number of training dives…You now have earned the title “certified diver”. You’re ready to take on the underwater world. You have also, however, been handed off to your new teacher, “experience”, who will teach you things that were not covered in class. You don’t yet realize it, but your certification is the underwater equivalent of a restricted driver’s license, a learner’s permit. You don’t know shit, haven’t seen shit, and haven’t done shit.

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Written by Lamar English (reprinted with permission)

Let’s face it: air has gone out of style. For just about any type of dive (with the possible exception of checking out the drain at the deep end of the pool), air is neither the preferred nor optimal choice of breathing gas. For dives to moderate depths and for repetitive dives, nitrox is the ticket. For deep dives, tri-mix (in various percentages), accompanied by nitrox and oxygen for deco, is the norm for all serious divers. Did you ever wonder how all this got started? Well, here’s the story.

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Written by Lamar English (reprinted with permission)

Here’s an interesting little entry from the log books that Bill Main and I thought you might enjoy: June 27, 1987, (Saturday night around 10:30) Bill, Vaughn Maxwell and I were gearing up at McBride Slough, getting ready for a big dive. (McBride is a little spring just off highway 267, some three or four miles east of the entrance to Wakulla Springs State Park.) Bill’s tanks were already in the water and he had just finished putting on his second wetsuit. Vaughn and I were suited up in full cave gear and ready to go, so that’s just what we did! We climbed back into the van, Bill took the driver’s seat and we cranked up and headed west. (McBride is a decent dive and it’s also a pretty darned good staging area for certain clandestine activities like say…a sneak dive into Numero Uno!)

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