On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 23:45:03 +1000, "BRO"
wrote:

Hi Bill,
I'm up in sunny Brisbane, about 1200 miles north of Melbourne.
Cheers,
Brett

We'll be going through Brisbane on our way back south from Cairnes
(Cans). I'm looking forward to diving off the great Barrier Reef up
there.

The last cool dive I did was the Cayman Wall. I was talking to the
dive master a month ago on the boat when we did the dive. He told me
a month earlier some Yuppie went over the wall at 120 feet and kept
descending. He never hit the compressed air button to inflate his
buoyancy compensato (BC). He just kept getting squeezed and started
sinking faster and faster as he went down into the abyss. The dive
master followed him at full speed to 160 feet before he gave up and
turned around. Even then the dive master decompressed at 15 feet for
30 minutes before he came up. One of the other dive masters on the
boat took him down a second tank so he could decompress appropriately.
The Yuppie is fish food to say the least.

I heard a story similar to that off Cairnes six months ago. But then
some of the dive masters are nuts too. I was diving in Aruba three
months ago and our bottom time exceeded the Navy dive tables by three
minutes. The stupid dive master took everyone up to the surface. I
grabbed Boom Boom and held her back on the anchor line at 15 feet for
15 minutes to decompress. Jesus, the nearest recompression chamber
from Aruba is Miami. These guys are nuts. The PADI tables are really
conservative compared to the Navy dive tables. If you dive the Navy
tables to the letter, you will still get the benz 3% of the time. The
PADI tables are more conservative than that.

Anyway, I hear that they lose some out there off Cairnes (Cans) each
year. What do you think? Are you a diver?

BWB