October 7-9, 2011
While I was in Italy for a business and family trip I was gladly invited to the rebreather conference @ Ponza Island, organized by Ponza Dive center .
What follows is a little report of the event as it was fun and very interesting at the same time.
A friend of mine (Simone Iaria) was heading down with Marco Barlocco to perform a SUEX scooter demo during the week end for the participants of the conference.
The organization and hospitality of Ponza Dive Center was remarkable and enjoyable, special thanks to Andrea and Daniela (DC’s owners).
There were around 40 divers from all over Italy, with a big presence from Padova and Rome.
We arrived at Ponza island Friday the 7th late evening, as the boat was delayed by a very rough Mediterrean sea, where we were immediately welcomed (as we always do in Italy) with a huge dinner and white wine in a nice little restaurant in the harbor area with all the other members of the conference.
The following day we started around 10.30 am (Italian time.... ehehehe) with different presentations in a nice terrace overlooking the Sea, the subjects of the conference were:
- Oxygen sensor for rebreather, life and mechanism, by an electrical engineer
- Suex scooter introduction of different models, by Simone Iaria, Suex sales representative
- History of the use of different types of rebreathers in the history of cave diving exploration, done by the most famous Italian cave explorer Gigi Casati.
It was very interesting to see old pictures of Casati and his team during exploration and to listen to his reasons of the use of different kind of rebreathers for different purposes and at different times.
In the afternoon they all went diving, in the boat we had Sentinels, Copis Megs and the voyager’s one. Also Simone and Marco offered the divers the opportunity to try different kinds of SUEX scooters they brought with them for the event (Enjoy, XK and Zeuxo).
After diving and just before dinner we enjoyed the movie “The Ocean” that Roberto Bordin(who participated on some of the video shoots, together with the photographer) , brought up for us, just after the movie we enjoyed the usual super dinner and social.
Sunday morning was time to see some deep cave diving explorations video from Casati, exploration done in Greece and Italy, amazing dive sites and very difficult explorations were done by him and his team.
I was very glad to meet him as he is part of cave diving exploration history in Italy and internationally too, as he was the principal explorer of many deep caves around the world as well as setting records in depth while exploring caves.
We had the last social with all the members while enjoying a glass of wine and some freshly cooked pasta on the boat before we started to head home.
We had 2 1/2 hours boat back to Formia (Naples) and 7-8 hours drive up to Milano in front of us. We arrived home around 2.30 am and I was getting ready the other luggage to go back to Mexico the next day.
I am very glad I could participate to this social conference (thanks again to Simone Iaria for inviting me) as I could meet interesting people/divers and also look around new equipment and different style of configurations. As a dive professional I believe is important to stay updated all the time and keep the vision open at other equipment and style of diving.
I am very happy to be back in Mexico and diving Cenotes again after almost 2 months trip to Italy where I enjoyed my family company, rock climbing in the Alps and went around to meet some divers and introduce me and Cave Heaven Tulum to the Italian cave and tech community.
Dive safely
Emanuela Bertoni
Ela & Gigi Casati
No comments:
Post a Comment