Tyll's Dive April 2015

April 2015

I have neglected the blog for way too long. Either been busy or not being able to find words unless it involved playing SCRABBLE. (By the way the shop got this shiny new Scrabble board for Christmas, and we were all excited and had guest players. Several people have been tapping on my shoulder and said it is time for an update!

So where to begin? Seeing the yellow Frogfish, finding the Seahorses or swimming with the pod of about 100 Dolphins?

Or the vast amount of Sargassum seaweed that kept floating in for weeks earlier this year. Tons of it. Apparently a piece had gotten loose and began to float. The Sargassum Sea is a very unik floating habitat in the middle of the ocean. Held together by the ocean currents. Look it up on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea very interesting. But when it hits land it begins to stink when it begins to decompose.


March was the month where everybody decided to come visiting. A good fun month with our loyal diver family. We just kept getting messages, Okay coming so and so, flight is booked.But it all worked out just fine. Some knew each other, others met for the first time. Got to go on a sailing trip with some of the divers on Captain Alex boat. A marriage proposal happened.Kevin and Danis wedding will be next year down here.
Had a visit from the past, Ron brought a dvd from one dive at Mandys Eelgarden in 2003. West Bay was jungle and Mangroves and wide sandy beach. No Mayan Princess, no Infinity Bay…no nothing, just beach.
Ron, you made us laugh seeing that dvd. What a bunch we were back then.
So they all left and boo, really quiet until we got our new team Utah arriving. Yes, we have team divers, a few team Colorado , a couple of team Arizona and of course our 2 team Wisconsin, and not to forget team Houston, New Jersey, Toronto and New York. Probably a lot more…

We have added some new shop members: Jackie Chan and Boy. We some how ended up with them...

The biggest news are that Dorte is going to visit her family in Denmark very soon after not having been there for about 9 years.

Slow down 2014, you are a way too fast moving year!

We at Tyll's Dive are (among many others) glad to leave 2013 behind us and start up on a fresh, clean page with many hopes for 2014.
This wonderful group of divers gave us a great start.

Having many of our repeat divers (now like friends and family) coming back around the same time every year is something we always look forward to.
We have added quite a few new members to the dive family.

Kimberly and Gary organized a fix the deck workshop one Sunday. Thank you all so much for spending a Sunday sweating,sawing and hammering. Here is the crew. Scott, Terry, Gary and Phil. Kimberly is supervising and Christian must be next door pulling nails out of reusable floor boards.

We did not find any treasures or monsters underneath the deck. But the cats, Blanca and Bailies are still not convinced - about the monster part.

We are glad to have Mel back,but we have not yet had many opportunities to play Scrabble. Phil and Tess who had been cat sitting and covering for her, went onto their next adventures. Phil and Tess, we can not thank you enough for all your help, support, hard work, enthusiasm, and being creative by giving the dive shop a little face lift with colorful signs.

For the diving part. Recently there have been seen Seahorses, Pipehorses and Harlequin Pipefish, last week was Eagleray week, then the weeks with the little puffers every where. Turtles, Drumfish and I could keep going.

Kal took some really nice photos. He has turned himself into be Tyll's Dive private u/w photographer and does not mind to share his photos with other divers.

Here is Kal.

Congratulation to Willem's 3 Open Water students Tracy, Michelle and Tino who just got certified.

Spring 2013

April 2013 Semana Santa is over. Did not seem too crazy after all except the loud music at night. So, I promised Kal to post the Cow song from Tyll, which is not from Tyll at all, he modified it. So am not sure it qualifies. But found other gems in Tyll’s treasure box. But before we get to that, a little update might be in place. After a very slow fall season it got busy around Christmas. Shop full of very nice people and then there was this high maintenance couple who ran from their bill. Well that was a learning curve. Have only had this happen once before in all the years. Everybody was so upset that this happened to us. Mid February into March was like a big busy family reunion. It was wonderful. Also having Jenny Blenny and Ben around was just an extra treat. We had 2 Birthdays we celebrated next door at The Buena Vida. Thanks Kimberly to be on top of that and help arranging the get togethers for Elizabeth and David. This is Silke and her dad Bernd who did his open water. He decided to learn English now. . Am glad I first broke my wrist later. If you decide to walk to West Bay, be aware of very slippery rocks that have to be scrambled over in a certain section. We have been very happy to have Anika and Giles Working with us and are sad they will be leaving soon. Working their way back to the States to get married. All the best wishes and hope they will be back one.day. Rather sooner than later. The first dive at the point after a couple of days with rain and strong winds, was amazing. It was Patti and Jims second time here, and that dive was their best ever. A school of about 200 horseeyed Jacks!!!! Photogenic turtles on other dives are always something special. The water temperature is taking its time to warm up this year it seems. Air temperature not so much. Hopefully this year will give us all a bit more steadiness business wise instead of the previous couple of years with either feast or famine. Big thank you to all our loyal divers/friends, instructors and divemasters.

Divemaster Alert Test

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

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 inbetween blog. No.1

How Uwe and Dorte ended up on Roatan.

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.

To be continued.

April and stories

April

April began with the almost yearly visit from Team Wisconsin, who have been coming down over the years to get certified and dive a lot. As always we had a really fun week which ended with what has become a tradition of their last night on the island: Pizza, rum and beer on the deck.
Semana Santa came and went. It was not too bad as long you stay away from West Bay Beach.

Officially the low season begins in may according to hotel pricing. Its pretty low already now.
Anyways what to do then?
Clean out old file cabinets from Tyll. Student files back from the mid nineties. Went through them and in the bin they went. Then the interesting part came. Felt like history. Receipts from a meeting at French Harbour yacht club 7 of September 1993: 5 beers and a water for lps 58,50 including tax.
An old copy from Lonely Planet pages about Roatan.

Dangers and Annoyances:
In the water keep an eye out for spiny sea urchins on the coral reefs. Be sure to wear adequate foot cowering- not-thongs-if you walk on the reefs as coral cuts and can easily become infected in the tropics.
NOW THAT has hopefully been changed in Lonely Planet.

Roatan, population: 10565
today 2011 its more likely 80000!!!

Places to eat:
HB Warrens in Coxen Hole. It says: The cafeteria at HB Warrens supermarket is the most enjoyable place to eat, mostly because its air conditioned.

West End: West End Village is probably the most beautiful part of the island, It's only a small village, but it is exceptionally lovely, on a turquise bay laced with coconut palms.

Places to stay:
Cheapest alternative is to pitch a tent on
West Bay Beach. This beach is probably the beautiful part of the island. Its over 3 km long and most of it undeveloped with nobody on it, but a forest of coconut trees just of the beach to provide shade.

Jimmys, Roberts Hill and other places have rooms from $2,75.There are more expensive places with own cabins like Fosters for $25.

Places to eat:
Various places offers fresh fish dinner for around $2.75

The few dive shops in West End offers
courses for $200 (Monterosa in Sanday Bay $300)
1 fundive $25
10 dive package $200

This was all 15 or so years ago,

And where are we now? I will leave this open.

One more gem I found to post on the April update. I found an:

Important information list. It begins:
1)Please read the "Diver Safety Plan". Sign on the same wall with numerous diplomas. Then inform us if you want to sign.
2) If you want to go deeper than 100 feet on any dive, please go down the road to another dive shop...some of them love deep diving . (See Bugseys cement cross on 150 ft or so).
3) On a guided tour please try to stay at the depth of the divemaster. Its much easier to plan our dive profiles this way.
(I am skipping some of them)
6) The Republic of Honduras has no insurance laws. You are on your own. (That's one reason diving is so cheap here),
7) Nothing we have is for sale unless you want to buy the whole dive shop, or if you lose or break
something.
8) The most dangerous thing you may encounter during your dive here are motor boats. Here they drive boats just like taxis.


Hope you enjoyed the April blog entry with a smile.

cu




March went so fast...we must have had a good time then?


Yes, we sure had a good time. The air and the water is slowly heating up. This last week of march is hot-humid and no breeze or rain. I know people smile and shake their heads by this. But we DO feel its getting from warm to warmer and then to hot and sticky.
Kimberly is back, she never skips a year coming down to Roatan. Scott joined her this year and did his open water and just loves it here.
Recently Kimberly put together her famous all yearly dinnerparty. And as usual we all had eaten too much but had a great sunday on the patio.

Jacquie is back too for a visit. Remember her? Our divemaster in training 2009 into 2010 and best storyteller ever. Okay, Tyll is the best story teller ever, but Jacquie is right behind him I think.


I wish one of them would have been to the West End community meetings about the facelift of West End.
How they would have been able to recount the meetings and the outcome. I am actually not sure what the out come is and I don't think anyone really knows at this point. And I went to 2 of the meetings to hear it out and been following discussionsboards on the yahoo groups and facebook. And already there is a lot of confusion about who want what done and who is paying for it all in the end.

So its either nothing is happening or we one day will wake up to lots of machinery going down the road to begin tearing everything up to give West End a "facelift".

But other than that, its been a great month with fantastic people coming down for a week or two or just for the day on a cruisship.

To all who visited Roatan and us, hope to see you again someday for more diving and fun.

Team Tyll's