A dry plateau in northern Namibia. A field of tuff and lava rock. There is a small hole in it. It turns out to be the entrance to a cave system. Everyone is curious. After all, there is an explorer or researcher in each of us. It seems that we are always interested in finding out more about our environment.

A friend of mine recently sent me a copy of the diving logbook he used when he did his first diver training with what was then the Malayan Sub Aqua Club. As my friend guessed, this is the same logbook I was given when I signed up for my first dive course. My original logbook is long gone, and seeing this brought back a flood of long-lost memories. I thought you might be entertained by a quick rundown of what we had to go through and the skills we needed to master to become sport divers in those days.

Let’s first turn back the clock to 1981…

The genesis of this story was a friend asking me if I had ever been frightened on a technical dive. My answer was, “Not at the time.” There have been a few occasions when fear only arose after the dive—after I reviewed what had happened and realised how differently things could have turned out. That’s when the cold sweat formed on my forehead, a chill ran down the back of my neck, my face began to flush, and I got that familiar “uh-oh” sensation in the pit of my stomach.

Friends Phil and Donna passed this tale on to me, and it is an excellent topic for a Scuba Confidential column. They were living in Florida at the time and heard that one of the local boats had a couple of spare slots. So, they threw their equipment into the truck, drove down to the dock and jumped on board.

Phil takes up the story…