John ('JC') Chapman started diving in 1973, because his then girlfriend (now wife) was a diver!  He trained under the BSAC regime, which in those days had Snorkel, 3rd, 2nd and 1st Class diver categories; attaining 3rd Class.  His diving lasted around 3 years, with relatively infrequent dives in the UK, including West Wales, Scotland and St Abbs Head in a wet suit in the winter!  Diving stalled for a while during pilot training and only resurfaced (sic) with the occasional dives off Sardinia during the Squadron's Annual Armament Practice Camp.  More dives came during the mid-1980s, including leading an expedition to Gibraltar in 1986, but thereafter there was a significant gap until 2003.  Having endured enough of UK waters in a wet suit JC and his wife qualified for Open Water PADI in Cyprus, during a vacation.  This was followed by PADI Advanced in Egypt in Oct 2004.

Although having a total of around 60 dives, with deep, night, low visibility, navigation and some wreck dives thrown in, his experience covers a number of years and, having now rejoined BSAC, JC intends to use the expedition to qualify as Dive Leader.

Expedition Dive Location Feature:

Overnight cruising at 7kts was interrupted by several routine stops to change dhoni crew, but by breakfast we were still 50nm short of Kelaa and it quickly became obvious that our ETA of 1100 hrs was highly optimistic.  We had also managed to leave the dhoni behind therefore had to wait for it to catch up before we could go diving.  Further dive leader training was an initial briefing by Paul, who was responsible for arranging and coordinating the wreck survey plan.  Meanwhile the crew continued to finish fitting out the boat around us with surprisingly little disruption.  They could not do enough for us in terms of finding extra power sockets and making up special tools etc in the engine room workshop.

 At last Martin managed to get us together to squeeze in the long awaited photo shoots to thank our various sponsors.  The top deck provided ample space as we squinted into the sun and Dave Bewick got us to ‘work the camera’.  Uncle Sam (Usa), the boats skipper, kindly fulfilled the role of David Bailey whilst we did quick clothes changes between our various T-shirts and caps; however some were perhaps not quite as fresh as when provided! 

JC and Paul went onto the island of Kelaa to meet the various local dignitaries and find out what information they could about the location of the wreck.  Meanwhile the rest of the expedition conducted the only dive of the day on the southern reef of Kelaa Island. There were some challenging up currents, but the marine life made it all worthwhile. Everyone saw plenty of marine life.  Reid and Stef saw the first Manta of the trip, which swam alongside them, and two hawksbill turtles which they named Hanna and Sweeney.  Everyone else had a most enjoyable dive.

 Following a brief by Paul and JC the pair subsequently headed off to snorkel the area where it is known that there are elements of the fuselage in order to develop a more detailed diving plan.   Meanwhile the rest of the team conducted some concurrent activity…