Northill Hijackers
Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:50 pm
Hello Everyone, first of all, thanks for the kindhearted welcome, and also thank you to the forum monitors for their patience as I wasn't really sure how the process works and got off message topic regarding the Northill reg conversation.. I guess it's easy to get going on first gen open circuit stuff..
To Fred and Mark...look forward to chatting of course, and yes Mark all you mentioned regarding Catalina strikes a chord for me as one might expect.
I knew, and spent many hours with the late John Hardy..it was John who got me to come to the island in the first place..I was operating a small research sub in New Orleans in 1994 as part of a program through SubSea international Oilfield Corp... it coincided with the annual DEMA and Underwater Intervention conventions which just happened to be in New Orleans that year..naturally Hardy was attending DEMA along with his then partner Loraine Sadler.. a well known diver in her own right.. We all met through that crossing of paths and John and Loraine came out and I put each of them in the sub in a massive test tank facility where they had an opportunity to learn the basics of ADS operations through my quick training session.. John was so impressed that he strongly urged me to consider bringing the sub to Catalina... at that time for me being a Seattle native I knew zero about Socal or the channel islands..all my diving had been done in the Pac NW, San Juan islands and puget sound...and of course while conducting research work for the EPA and NOAA in the arctic in Alaska... long story short, we ended up bringing the sub to Catalina that spring on May 1st and we ran submersible ops just west of Hamilton Cove until the end of Sept.. at that point I transported the sub to Key largo where I'd already established a contract with Marine Resources Development Foundation in conjunction with NASA and astronaut/Aquanaut Scott Carpenter to train astronauts who were prepping to fill spots in the ISS... the lion's share of the training took place in-water because of the similarities in weightlessness and bulky equipment and how those skill sets are parallel to working in space... after that year contract completed, I returned to Seattle and resumed commuting to alaska for ongoing data collection..which involved submersible piloting.. but after being away for 18 months and returning to sub zero temps..and diving in them..I made plans to return to Socal and the only place which made sense was Catalina island... I still travel globally for oceanographic expedition projects but call Avalon home.. the really beneficial part for me in all of this is that I've been able to work with some of the leaders in the diving and oceanographic industries and have incredible 1-on-1 stories with all of them.. I pinch myself regularly!!
To Fred and Mark...look forward to chatting of course, and yes Mark all you mentioned regarding Catalina strikes a chord for me as one might expect.
I knew, and spent many hours with the late John Hardy..it was John who got me to come to the island in the first place..I was operating a small research sub in New Orleans in 1994 as part of a program through SubSea international Oilfield Corp... it coincided with the annual DEMA and Underwater Intervention conventions which just happened to be in New Orleans that year..naturally Hardy was attending DEMA along with his then partner Loraine Sadler.. a well known diver in her own right.. We all met through that crossing of paths and John and Loraine came out and I put each of them in the sub in a massive test tank facility where they had an opportunity to learn the basics of ADS operations through my quick training session.. John was so impressed that he strongly urged me to consider bringing the sub to Catalina... at that time for me being a Seattle native I knew zero about Socal or the channel islands..all my diving had been done in the Pac NW, San Juan islands and puget sound...and of course while conducting research work for the EPA and NOAA in the arctic in Alaska... long story short, we ended up bringing the sub to Catalina that spring on May 1st and we ran submersible ops just west of Hamilton Cove until the end of Sept.. at that point I transported the sub to Key largo where I'd already established a contract with Marine Resources Development Foundation in conjunction with NASA and astronaut/Aquanaut Scott Carpenter to train astronauts who were prepping to fill spots in the ISS... the lion's share of the training took place in-water because of the similarities in weightlessness and bulky equipment and how those skill sets are parallel to working in space... after that year contract completed, I returned to Seattle and resumed commuting to alaska for ongoing data collection..which involved submersible piloting.. but after being away for 18 months and returning to sub zero temps..and diving in them..I made plans to return to Socal and the only place which made sense was Catalina island... I still travel globally for oceanographic expedition projects but call Avalon home.. the really beneficial part for me in all of this is that I've been able to work with some of the leaders in the diving and oceanographic industries and have incredible 1-on-1 stories with all of them.. I pinch myself regularly!!
