Welcome to Tyll’s Dive located in the heart of West End on Roatan, the Bay Islands, Honduras home of the world’s second largest barrier reef.Tyll’s Dive takes pride in offering scuba divers a small family atmosphere where you are not just any number or just another diver. We dive in small groups. When you dive with Tyll’s Dive you are part of the dive family.Tyll’s dive family is world wide.
Showing posts with label Discover Scuba Diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Discover Scuba Diving. Show all posts
An era has come to an end. The Blenny House and cabins has been sold.
Between packing up and sorting out stuff, Jenny Blenny did find some time to come diving at Tyll’s. Many good memories and fun times to think back on. Wish Jenny all the best in France and we are sure some of her future travels will include a stop on Roatan for some more diving.
For a long time we did not take any divemaster trainees, but accepted Vincent earlier this year. We found we were busy enough to offer him good training and get enough experience that we would hire him. Well he had to go back to Canada.
When he comes back he will be an instructor and we hope we will have work for him.
We are now in August. Waiting for the Silvesides madness to return to Blue Channel. While waiting there have been so many great sightings. Pipe horses, Juvenile Trunkfish, also known as the Pea, Eaglerays, Turtles. You name it.
Tyll’s Dive is happy to see many of our “old” divers returning after a break of 6-8 years not being here. It has been amazing.
One of them is Wolfgang now doing his divemaster.
A new blog entry is way over due. What happend between April and now?
It’s not all dive related, but still connected to Tyll’s Dive.
After a great spring seeing many good friends coming back to Roatan for their yearly get away from the cold, we have been enjoying the more frequent visits from Gary, Dory, Tracy and Kal, who are in the process of building or reconstructing their Roatan home away from home.
The Summer months rolled by fairly quick and we made new friends to add to our Tyll’s Dive family.
The Silversides have been back in the swim through again at Blue Channel. Amazing as always.
After several reports of Whaleshark sightings, Mel finally got to see and swim with her first one ever. What a treat for Sean and Virginia on their first diving day on Roatan.
So things began to slow down and we had to do maintenance on the boat. Quite a costly affair indeed. Well if you have a car or a boat you will know.
Have to mention what a great community West End has. During the time the boat was out of the water, we got help left and right so we could keep the business going.
This is Samuel" on "Very Deep", also gently called "The Slow Boat" by our divers.
It got them to the dive sites and back and we all very much appreciated we could borrow it.
Following is a little about renewing Honduran residency.
Our 5 years were coming up for renewal and change of status. Should be straight forward and not too complicated as long the Immigration receives the new 5 year fee up front on time. Then the lawyer puts together an application to be filed.
So far all is good until she try to get a statement from Interpol Honduras,that we are not wanted criminals. But there is a small detail, the Interpol office has been closed down for unknown time, and there is no plan B...Who mentioned fiascos in paradise?
Just recent we had a visit from our very first diver from when we took over Tyll's Dive in June 2002. Last time Nancy visited Roatan was 6-7 years ago. We had a lot to catch up on while her son got certified Open Water Diver. A great week that went way too fast.
In the mean while Jenny Blenny and Ben are touring the States, meeting Tyll’s Dive family every where...
And guess who is here right now? Matt de Jong. Good to see him after so many years.
Tyll has recently been back on the island from his home in La Ceiba. He found some goodies in his old house here,he had written years ago, and we agreed would they find a great place on this blog. Enjoy and hopefully it will make you smile.
DAT TEST (Divemaster Alert Test)
By Tyll Sass
Take this Divemaster Alert Test and match your skills with those of the experts. Answers down below. (No cheating now...)
1.
Archimedes Principal: If you have 30 gallons of fresh water in a
rinsetank, then you submerge and fill one gallon into a container. How many gallons remain in the rinsetank? when you compare them. a) 28 b) 32 c) all of the above d) none of the above
2.
If 3 divers in the water planned a bottom time of one hour, and 3 more
people jumped in and planned to stay 30 minutes halfway through the first group's dive. How many divers would be in the water 59 minutes after the first group jumped in? a) 5 b) 6 c) 12 d) none of the above
3. If you were diving in Cozumel, and wanted a dive plan before the boat left the dock for the divesite. Who would you ask?
a) the secretary behind the window who took your money b) the divemaster on the boat c) you'd call Paul Tzimolis of Skin-Diver magazine d) nobody, you'd plan the dive when the boat got there
4.
You have been assigned a new buddy, (as your last one is sitting this
one out in the chamber) and you notice him fidgeting with his equipment,
he is irritable, twitching and think he knows it all.
a) he has oxygen poisoning b) he is anxious/perfectionist c) he is on drugs d) he is obnoxious/dependent 5.You and your buddy are on 60 ft., and you notice a 10 ft. difference in your depth gauges. What should you do?
a) immediately go to the surface & blow your whistle b) use the 70 ft. schedule then decompress for 5 min. at 10 ft. c) continue the dive as if nothing happend d) throw the gauge that gives the shallower reading into the dumpster upon completion of the dive
6.
You are diving in a shipping channel. It is 20 ft. deep and 65 ft.
wide. The current is 2 knots. You decide to surface, and see an
oiltanker coming towards you that draws 18 ft. of water and is 60 ft. wide. a) Wave furiously to hail the bridge b) swim like hell! c) ditch your gear & head for shore d) kiss your ass good-bye!
7.
Somehow you've lucked out and drawn Bob Croft in a buddy-pool on a
live-aboard dive trip. (He was the world's free diving champion in the
70's). On your first dive with him, you are at 60 ft., suddenly his eyes widen and become the size of saucers. You should immediately:
a) drop his weight belt and slowly assist him to the surface b) drop his weight belt and inflate his BCD c) turn around 8. Your dive boat captain is drunk and passes out. Meanwhile the dive boat has run up on a reef and the batteries are dead. The tide is going out. You should: a) call the Coast Guard b) set all anchors and try winching off c) patch the hole underwater with marine-tex d) have a drink. You are going to be there a while 9.
Your new dive buddy weighs 350 lbs. You both jump into the water with a
giant stride. He forgets to inflate his BCD and goes straight to the
bottom. Then his weight belt falls of, he hits the CO2 cartridge and
comes roaring past you towards the surface. You should: a) grab his feet as he goes by b) try to deflate his BCD by stabbing at it with your dive knife c) drop your weight belt inflate you BCD and try catch him d) get back in the boat and get a new dive buddy
10) In an emergency, using oxygen, you should:
a) lubricate all moving parts with transmission oil b) if the valve sticks or leak, have an oxygen "expert" ready with a ballpien hammer c) be sure the gauge does not read over 21% before opening valve d) keep it on deck
ANSWER SHEET
1. None of the above - it never said he took the container back out, stupid! 2. None of the above - the second 3 were snorklers. 3. Nobody - the secretary doesn't speak English, none of the divemasters can hear, and Paul Tzimolis is always busy. 4. d 5. Both c and d are correct. since your buddys gauge read 50 ft. 6. Both c and d are correct. 7. Turn around. There is probably a great white closing in. Bob Croft likely wouldn't panic at 60 ft....he can free dive to 300. 8. You can't call the Coast Guard because the batteries are dead. The only answer is to have a drink. 9. d - this guy is an idiot. You need a new buddy. 10. d - if you missed this one, there is no hope.
2012.
What this year will bring us we can only wait and see.
Will the electric company RECO keep charging high fuel adjustment surcharges all year around?
Will the West End road project ever get finished? And if so, will residents and visitors think of it as a big improvement or a total fiasco? ,
Will The Tax People come back in even bigger force and audit businesses twice a day instead of every second day for a month?
Will any of us ever fully recover from 2009's Zelaya fiasco?
Will the world go crazy because of the Mayan Calenders ending?( Maybe a calender ending might just mean its time to get a new calender.)
Too many speculations for the first month of a New Year.
Some things seem never to change though, like the prices for diving and courses, and the availability of baleadas, rice, beans and chicken. At least we have this to hold on to so we can have some stability
in our daily life.
Looking very much forward to see a lot of you again this year for diving, hanging out, a game of Scrabble, Cribbage or Rummy 500, home cooked meals, catching up and sharing stories, fantastic diving in a small group. Not just watching fins and bubbles.
A recent diver at Tyll's Dive mentioned that we are not a big fancy shop, but a small shop with a big heart and where a small group experience is what you get, not just promised. Like that, because thats what we are really.
This is why Tyll's Dive can never be a big busy shop. We need to have time for our people,
make sure everyone has a good experience and a good time on Roatan, and thats why we love what we do. And hope we will be able to continue on with this .
Hope we can add more to the Tyll's family over the year!
Back to superstitions and such, would like to close this blog entry with a quote from Groucho Marx:
"A black cat crossing the street signifies an animal going somewhere.
Sometimes thats all it is."
The biggest event in June was probably Peeter. Peeter is a rescued kitten from West Bay. The litter lost their mother when they were 3 weeks old and a watchman brought them to Celeste at West Bay Lodge who lovingly brought them up. We were ready for a new family member and got in contact with Penelope from Roatan Renegade Rescue who told us to go see Celeste.
Peeter
So a few days later we scheduled a dive to Mandys Eelgarden so the dive boat could drop of Amanda and me to go and meet Peeter. There was no doubt at all about the kitten. Peeter kind of looked up "Hi my name is Peeter, how are you?"
Afterwards Amanda and I walked around in West Bay and felt like being on a different island and being tourists. The watch and sunglasses guys didn't first recognize us, we being out of our natural environment of West End.
You may wonder why Amanda was not taking out the dive that day. She is also having a new family member, although not a furrry fourlegged one, but a little boy. She is glowing and happy to be a real mom some day soon.
Helen
We love Clay and Lisa, they always come back and bring good vipes to this place. Even though Lisa had to study so much this time, we found time to have lots of laughs together. Samuel said, Lisa is always smiling and happy. Samuel got that absolutely right.
We have been studying too: Watussas interacting with Peeter or vice versa. Very interesting. Am not sure if Peeter relates himself more to a Watussa than to a cat.
Also observed we have sucide sugar ants at the house. They climb the water bowl, and then drown. Does that make any sense?
Ever heard of Mini bees?
Mini bees are another thing. They live in a little plastic fitting outside the diveshop. Actually next to the meters. They are tiny, apparently friendly and don't sting. I guess its because you don't see them, and they are just there minding their own business.
Water tap wasps are another curiosity. They like to hang out underneath the water taps. Maybe they are just thirsty???
So who is filling in for Amanda. Melanie did before she went to the Caymans. Mo is still filling in when needed.
We recruited Helen. English science teacher and now Scuba instructor. Dive teacher is more fun than beeing a dry teacher. Her class room is in the sea, decoration is the coral reef and marine life.
Unfortunately or maybe it is fortunately that Ed, Uwe and Kristian do not always follow Helens advice in building bombs out of draino, alufoil and plastic bottles... The yard, the diveshop, The Wet Spot and the Blue Marlin are still intact.
Oh, The Wet Spot is now next door, great breakfast and lunch, and they are actually consistent with opening hours. Not like the Sharkcave. What a nice change that is, and we dont have to complain about the music volume every day.
What happens on thursdays? Karaokee night at the Blue Channel. Mo always fills
us in on how horrible the singers can be and want to sing over and over again. One thursday Hartley decided he can sing Bob Marleys "One Love". And he did. The two words he could remember were "One love" so the song was like this: One Love, One Loove, One love, one Love. one looove etc. Yes he could have read the tele prompter, but he didn't.
Details, details...
Helen just finished a rescue course with Martin who actually has DMP (dive master potential). It went very well. Instead of calling out Pizza pizza they called out Peeter peeter (course code for help help, to not attract a scene in our little community). Austin, thank you for helping out.
One last thing, keep supporting the Roatan Marinepark, read their newsletters and help where you can.
Instructor and backgammon player Tanguy and his student
Slippery Dick about to head out. In the water Matt and Jenny
Alva and her kitchen
Not happy with my draft for the June-July entry so decided for the this. Enjoy.
I think it was mid 2002 that we took over Tyll's Dive. Tyll kindly told us we can use his equipment , boat and compressor to start up with. So here we are with the apparently unsinkable boat called Con Permiso, a bunch of equipment that had seen better days, a squirrel that would pee on you when you passed by its cage to go to the toilet, a parrot called Hamburgeso, a dog named Pastelito and last Tyll's and Alvas adopted son, Christian. (The kid from hell, to be honest).
We had entered the Fiascos in Paradise:-)
We orderd a few sets of new equipment, hired Dexter to build a boat that could travel further than Blue Channel. We had a partner at this point, Jas. He sold out later though. It was all challenging times. Even order food at Alvas restaurant was a thing in itself. You order your food, go diving, and it might be ready when you get back. But hi, thats how it was.
The building of the boat took longer than anticipated, so in the meanwhile we got a skiff from Don Hickmann and used the tinfoil boat from Doc Radowski. Just imagine the picture.
The equipment arrived and finally Dexter brought the boat as he got tired of the checking ups on the progress. Colour was grasshopper green...Not the agreed colour, but guess was what he had available.
Uwe and Jas were horrified. I found it was pretty in a special way. Uniquie, only boat in West End with that colour. Well they won and it got repainted and named Slippery Dick after a wrasse.
Many evenings there would be people playing guitar and singing. The Burrito Brothers would chip in with their repetoire like Ground Hog Day, Monica Monica and Running with the Buffaloes (all composed by Tyll)
The idea of moving or at least revisit Central America got planted in our heads in the end of the 1980'ties. Had visited friends in Guatemala and El Salvador and just fell in love. Almost 10 years passed before we came back. First we had to live out the dream of having a house on the country side in Denmark with garden, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and a pig.
Every sunday we would study the newspaper travel section and dream of places far far away. Then one sunday, a danish journalist had this brilliant article about the Bay Islands and in particular Roatan, it just sounded to be the place you have to visit. We were still not divers at that time. But the article we kept and made it a goal that one time we would go there. In the meanwhile Uwe got certified as a CMAS diver at the local diveclub in Loekken, Denmark. Do I have to mention cold water diving? I Dorte) was not as hardcore and chose to get Padi certified on Crete im Greece. Anyhow I managed to join Uwe and his drysuit buddies for around 10 cold water dives on the west coast of Denmark. Then finally we had saved up for a month vacation to ROATAN in Octuber 1998. It took a bit longer to save up, because everytime we were close, the car broke down and had to be fixed.... We were getting suspicious that our mecanic had an fix alert build in that was connected to our Roatan trip savings account...
Anyways. We finally arrive . Of course the taxi driver tells us that Dolphin Hotel is the only place that has room available this late of the day, which turned out to be a lie. By the way they still do that to people arriving late in the day.
We go for a little stroll to find a bite to eat. First impression of West End was THATS IT?. Thats gonna be 4 long weeks. It seemed so small.
Next day we got a nicer place to stay at Geophies Hide away and met dutch Ron. We are still big friends. Shared a lot of rum and stories and still do by the way when we get a chance to visit. We went diving every day. Everything was beautiful an pristine. Huge groupers the size of me, my dive buddies. Then remember it was fall 1998. Hurricane season. Well of course Hurricane Mitch passed by to say hello. Was interesting days. No power -no water- no internet. Well internet was not very common those days anyway. So the news about the storm was sparesly. Rudys family decided we should empty the concrete watercistern and use it as a shelter. All right so we did. We were all prepared. But Mitch just kept harassing neighboring island, Guanaja. But that was still very close. The power of nature surely flexed its muscles and toyed with us for days.
You might think, thats it, never coming back. No, seeing people helping each other in the community effort at getting things back on track and collect to them that lost stuff was the most amazing thing. Unfutunately we had to leave a week early because of family issues back home. Thanked everyone for a great time, and told Ron, Hi dutch boy, we will be back and be your neighbour again.
Went back to Denmark sold the rest of our belongings (the car we sold to the mecanic, well he knew what he/we had replaced all parts possible). So we packed our bags once again in January 1999. Arrive in Miami for Superbowl. Great! No room under a $100 to be found. Welcome to Miami!!! Airport luggagecarts works though, you just have to move around when the vacumcleaner woman approaches you.
We arrive, and people here all the same, maybe a few new faces. And Ron, the dutch boy had not left. Happy days to see a good friend.
So now we here. No plans at all. We dive and gain experience of the reef and the islandlife, how things work. Uwe does his divemaster and later instructor. Get involved in maintain and troubleshoot aircompressors, boat engines and scuba equipment. I learn go diving without Uwe being my dive buddy. Clyde assures he will look after me. And he did. I get to be the diveshop girl (not quite a manager yet), but observe what to do and not to do if it was my shop.
At some point down the road we decide to leave the island to explore other places. 4 months later we are back! And it was great to come back home. We missed it so much. We got our old jobs back too. Just like that.
And then we got friends with Tyll. And a whole new chapter and challenges began with taking over Tyll's Dive.
We just returned from our trip Sunday night, so I am just beginning to get caught back up with reality ; )
We VERY MUCH enjoyed our scuba diving experience with you and Monique.
Everything went very smoothly--Tony was wonderful--and it was VERY reassuring to know that you had those details handled for us ahead of time.
I was very glad not to have to deal with the scammers at the port and have to haggle on transportation to and from your place and be assured return to the ship on time. Not knowing the local customs, and being a single mother, I was very leary and YOU made it all work out just perfectly!
Tony was a true gentleman and very attentive.
That being said, it was our scuba experience with you all that was BY FAR the highlight of our trip! We can't wait to come back and are thinking of maybe staying out there on the West End by you somewhere for a week next year and really take the time to enjoy that gorgeous little piece of paradise!
Be sure to Thank Monique for holding my hand throughout the entire dive experience--I was clearly the most difficult diver and she was a true GEM! Love HER!
When things settle down here a bit I will send the photos you requested and would be happy to write a review for you on Trip Advisor or do anything else I can to help you and your wonderful business thrive!
