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South Florida Divers, Inc.
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LOOK OUT:
~ By Jeff Guzowski |
It seems like yesterday that it was summer, and now we are heading into winter diving and the holiday seasons. The year 2002 feels like it just flew by.
On November 23, the club is running a two-hour Holiday Lights Water Taxi Cruise. This is a great time that has been popular in the past, where you catch a Water Taxi docked at Riverfront in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and cruise down the New River and Intracoastal, while partying with your friends. We all bring snacks to share and your own drinks while enjoying the fabulous holiday decorated homes. After the cruise, there is plenty of entertainment available at Riverfront as we leave the Water Taxi. The cost is $25 per person (this includes tip), and payment will be needed at the November meeting, or call me at home.
Our annual Holiday Party is coming up on Saturday, December 7. It is held at the City of Dania Beach I.T. Parker Community Center and starts around 7 PM and runs to 1 AM, so mark your calendars for an evening of good food and drinks, and most of all, good company. You just might get brave enough to get up and dance, too.
I would like to take this time to thank the
club members who helped with the club events and parties that we had this
year. These are the people who helped set up, clean up, cook, collect
raffle and door money, run calendar events, trips and everything else it
took to make this a great year for the club. Help is always appreciated
when it comes to making a successful club like ours.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Dive Safely,
~ Ski
NEW MEMBERS! We warmly welcome our newest dive buddies, Kevin Cameron, Nat Church, Steve Secrest, andLarry Zito. Be sure to introduce yourself to them at the next meeting! |
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Phone numbers of trip coordinators are not posted here to ensure privacy. If you are a club member, consult your Buddy List for numbers; if not, and you wish to contact a trip coordinator, e-mail the web divemaster.
November 15, 6-10 PM: Lauderdale By-The-Sea merchants' contest for the best-dressed pet in a Christmas costume benefit for National Save The Sea Turtle Foundation. For more information, click here or call 954-786-1080. has termites and is holding a special HARRY POTTER DINNER DANCE that Ann Guardino is co-chairing to raise needed funds for improvements and repairs. She hopes that our members could get a table together and compete in the costume contest! (Adults only). It is $20.00 per person, including a full Italian dinner with salad, rolls, 3 entrees (you get all 3!) and desert. Plus a rousing DJ. Games. Contests. Prizes. [MAP HERE] |
For
our November 6 General Meeting, our guest speakers will tell us the story
of the USS Hoga, the
last boat still afloat from the attack on Pearl Harbor.
At the end of the 1930's Americans were struggling to pull out of the depression and watching the spread of fascism across Europe with great concern. German troops, under the leadership of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, annexed Austria in March of 1938, and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia by September of that year. In the Far East in October, Japan openly rejected the 38-year old Open Door Policy with China. The U.S. Congress passed a Naval Expansion Act providing $1,000,000,000 to build a "two-ocean" navy in case they were forced to defend the ideals of freedom and challenge fascism.
U. S. President Roosevelt sought reassurance from Hitler and Italy's Mussolini that they did not intend to attack additional nations. Hitler agreed to a nonaggression treaty in August with the Soviet Union. Yet, on September 1, 1939, German troops attacked Poland causing England and France to declare war on Germany. At the same time Hitler's troops moved into Czechoslovakia and Italian troops crossed the Adriatic to occupy Albania. In the face of this international crisis the United States began preparations for war with a build up of troops, machinery and provisions.
A true American Hero is fighting for her life. What started as a nondescript life in 1939 turned into anything but that at 0756 hours on December 7, 1941. That morning for approximately 3 hours the hawser tug YT 146 "Hoga" dodged bombs, bullets and torpedoes to help fight fires on the USS Arizona, Minesweeper USS Oglala and the USS Nevada. She rescued untold wounded sailors from the fiery waters of Pearl Harbor. Her crew worked the HOGA continually for 72 hours before receiving a relief crew. After the attack on Pearl Harbor she returned to her normal job in the port helping warships in and out of the harbor.
In 1948, her life changed again and instead of becoming a heap of scrap iron, she took on duties as a fireboat in the harbor at San Francisco and Oakland. Renamed "CITY OF OAKLAND," she fought fires on the docks and ships for another five decades. In 1996, she lost her stripes again and was retired to the reserve fleet, where she awaits her fate. She is the last survivor still afloat from that infamous attack. The City of Dania Beach and the USS HOGA YT-146 Association are asking for help to give her a final resting place as an honored living memorial to those who have fought in America's wars.
Click here for the Hoga's official website. See you at the meeting...bring a friend! If you are not a member of SFDI and are just visiting our website, please join us on November 6...visitors are always welcome!
It's
time to nominate members for next year's SFDI executive board! We
especially encourage our many new members to get involved with the club
and run for an office. To nominate yourself or any other member,
or just to find out what is involved, contact any
e-board member, or just let us know at the November 6 meeting.
Executive Board positions include: President, VP of Membership, Membership Assistant, VP of Calendar, Calendar Assistant, VP of Programs, Secretary, Treasurer, Treasurer Assistant, Newsletter Editor, Web Divemaster, Sargeant-At-Arms, Member-At-Large, and Greeter.
To encourage participation on "Election Day", December 4, we will give each paid-up club member who stays until the voting is completed a free raffle ticket for a new SCUBA tank. You must be present to win but we're also having a social night, so you'll want to stay and mingle with your friends anyhow!
Rebecca
Gaines only joined SFDI this past July, but she is already becoming one
of our prolific club photographers. She contributed the underwater
shots for the Key Largo photo
gallery. Click here
to view Rebecca's new gallery
of photos, all taken locally in the Southeast Florida area, that prove
that we divers are indeed fortunate to live, and dive, right here!
Joe
and I had a wonderful September vacation at Club
Turkoise, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands. We were at Club
Med, an all-inclusive resort.
We dove daily, all "wall" dives. It
was really great since it provided diving quite a bit different from our
local diving. The coral formations were spectacular and fish life
was abundant. Macro
photography offered really excellent opportunities...more
Flamingo tongues than I've ever seen in a week.
"Perfect
photo subjects and I still screwed up" (they say with photography if you
get one decent shot per roll that is really...really good) so I keep trying...and
trying again.. Anemones, cleaner shrimp, coral banded shrimp, and
arrowhead crabs provided lots of photo ops.
The
Dome was an interesting dive. The Dome is left over from a "reality" show
that the French tried years ago. The contestants had to free
dive into the dome and if they found the clue, a mermaid with a regulator
would give them a breath of air (not recommended as a safe diving practice).
A couple of the contestants got bent, and the show was understandably not
a success. The dome is now broken open but is still a really interesting
dive site.
Club
Med offers a lot of activities (besides diving) including water aerobics,
pool volleyball, beach volleyball, sailing, kayaking, and numerous other
water and land activities including the trapeze. They also provide
nightly entertainment. The trapeze is a special offer of the "Turkoise
Club Med". One of the nightly entertainment shows features the guests
performing on the trapeze.
The trapeze...we thought about it...but...not!!!!
Click here for more photos of Turkoise by Julie Taylor
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Curacao, Netherlands Antilles
~ By Jeff Guzowski, SFDI President
 The
club is running a trip to Curacao, located 35 miles off Venezuela's north
coast, June 7– 14, 2003 (Saturday to Saturday). The trip will cost
$1,150 plus airfare. The lodging will be at the Sunset
Waters Beach Resort. According to their website, "Picturesque
mountains, bays, cliffs and quiet waters surround Sunset Waters Beach Resort
on Curacao's Gold Coast. Renowned for its beautiful crescent shaped
beach and accessibility to the islands premier dive locations makes this
small boutique hotel the perfect island retreat."
I have information sheets and a payment schedule made up, and if you are interested, see me at the November meeting. (The first payment of $150 was due at the September 4 club meeting.) (Note: Joe Smariga and Julie Taylor are arranging the identical trip from June 28-July 5, 2003. All of the same information applies.) |
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The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome |
Author Jim Carrier gave a fascinating presentation
at Broward County Main Library in July about his latest book, The Ship
and the Storm. I've cruised on one of the Windjammer
Barefoot Cruise ships, "Flying Cloud" in 1979, and this October on
the Star Clipper,
a newer tall masted sailing ship, so I simply had to read his book.
Captain Guyan March, thirty-two years old, had spent his entire professional career aboard Mike Burke's aging fleet of tall ships. When he agreed to command the Fantome in the uncrowded waters of the Gulf of Honduras during hurricane season, he knew that a storm would leave him little time to run and few places to hide.
In October 1998, as March and his crew--most of them West Indians and most still in their twenties--neared the end of another cruise season, Tropical Storm Mitch whirled to life like a nebula in the southern reaches of the Caribbean. While hurricane specialists in Miami struggled to decipher satellite photos and conflicting readings, Mitch moved north, then west, ultimately growing into the fourth most powerful Atlantic storm on record as it plowed toward the Gulf of Honduras. After discharging his 97 passengers in Belize, Captain March--with First Mate "Brasso" Frederick, Second Mate Onassis Reyes, and twenty-eight other crew--took the $20 million uninsured ship to sea to try to dodge the approaching storm.
Mitch would become the most destructive hurricane in Western Hemisphere history, leaving 18,207 people dead or missing. It would devastate Honduras. First, though, it would corner the Fantome in a deadly game of cat and mouse, confounding the experts' predictions and countering the ship's every move with eerie precision. Descending on the ship, it would expose every unexamined assumption to 180-mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot seas.
Based on journalist Jim Carrier's exhaustive research and hundreds of interviews--including Windjammer staff and passengers, the crew's families, and experts from the National Hurricane Center--The Ship and the Storm explores the story of the Fantome and Hurricane Mitch from every angle, cutting from the deck of the ship, to cruise company headquarters in Miami, to the research planes flying into the unspeakable heart of the storm, to islanders and coastal villagers in a desperate battle for survival. Heartbreaking and horrifying, this story won't let go. Check out a copy @your library.
Click here for more book reviews!
SFDI
member Marc Cohen's group, the Historical
Diving Society, is having a rally this month (see calendar, above),
so I thought it would be fun to check out their website. Founded
in 1992, the HDSUSA "prides itself on the accurate investigating and recording
of diving history". The HDSUSA Advisory Board is a "Who's Who of Diving",
including Sylvia Earle, Hans Haas, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Bev Morgan,
Peter Bennett, Scott Carpenter, and more. Their quarterly magazine
Historical
Diver features articles covering the history of diving from ancient
times to the modern surge in recreational diving. The magazine features
profiles on such personalities as Augustus Siebe and Lotte Haas, as well
as in-depth articles on Mark V diving helmets, scuba regulators and more.
Their online store has some very cool items, including posters and prints,
T-shirts, and U.S. Military Diving Insignia metal pins...just the thing
to get for the diver on your holiday list who seems to have everything
else they need. Dive into the HDSUSA
site today!
Click here for more Websites of the Month!
Members of South Florida Divers, Inc. are entitled to place free Classified Ads here! However, you must agree to have either your e-mail address, telephone number, or both published so that people can contact you. Members, to place your free ad, simply e-mail me with the details. Non-members, come to our next general meeting and join us!COMPUTER NEEDED: Do you have a no-longer-used Windows 98 desktop or notebook computer that you would donate to the club? Your web divemaster needs a second unit. It would remain the property of SFDI; if someone else becomes the dive webmaster it goes to them or back to you. Contact Debby Auchter.
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This
is an all-inclusive trip and the price includes hotel and service tax,
round trip airport transfers, two restaurants which include ALL meals (breakfast,
lunch, & dinner), all beverages (premium, top shelf are extra), two
boat dives a day, unlimited shore diving, tanks, weights, and air fills,
complimentary shuttle to Willemstad (the capital), use of all hotel facilities
(pool, Jacuzzi, beach lounges, towels, fitness rooms), tennis courts, 18
hole mini golf, and motorized water sports. Not to mention a casino
on the premises!
Buy
a GREAT dive boat! Debby
and Rick Auchter are selling the Rapture. How can we do that
after spending so much time and money customizing this beautiful Grady-White
Sailfish into a great dive boat? Because we bought a home in
Key Largo, and we want to get a smaller boat. Visit 