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Drado
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Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:05 am

I posted a photo of my regs on a dive board on FB one time asking if there were any DH divers in my area (the Philippines). Luckily enough, I received a response from Bernard whose father used DH regs in the mid fifties. He even had a whole stash of NOS Broxton parts from his dad.

Here’s a pic of his dad et al, as well as a copy of the text.

Image
“The beginning —-

Scuba diving in Cebu City in the early 50s started with very spartan diving gear. A bare tank with only a skimpy harness of webbed belting fastened with “D” rings as body straps. The top of this tank was fitted with a “K” valve which used Teflon washers as a high pressure seat. Attached to this valve was a double hose regulator which always filled up with water when the mouthpiece was dislodged. You have to roll over to your left side and blow the water out. The other hose on the right side supplies the air on demand. If you do not have enough air to blow the water out, just roll over on your back then you will get a free flow of air to fill your needs. The narrow oval mask, the " Squale Mask " does not have the modern day nose well, so you just push your mask upward to seal your nose with the bottom skirts in order to clear your ears. We did not have snorkels then, so when we ran out of air (we did not have submersible pressure gauge then), we just swam up and used the “frog-kick” to swim to the shore out the nearest banca boat. They called us “frog-men” didn’t they?

Hector Veloso, prominent sportsman picked up his first scuba diving set in the US Divers store when they first opened up shop in California USA in 1954. He brought this set to Carcar, Cebu on a picnic outing hosted by a mutual friend, Nene Racoma of the Mancao clan at the beach resort in Barrio Toyom. Hector and I took turns at familiarizing with this new toy complete with imported spear guns, the French “Arbalete”. As there were no other takers we both enjoyed our first experience in scuba diving while the rest shared in the eating of our fish catch.

From then on, it was diving trips to Danao, Cebu where Hector bought a beach lot and built a beach house just for the diving. Rene Weingarner a Swiss manager of F. E. Zuellig Co. followed suit by taking up diving and also bought another beach lot nearby and diving parties were a regular event. Donald Wood, an American from Mobile Oil Company and Mr. Nelson, another American from The Goodyear Tire Co. caught on with this new craze. These new diving buddies were also drinking buddies so the Cebu Divers International set up headquarters at Eddie’s Log Cabin and has nightly meetings. During the rounds of drinking were also tales of fish catch specially the ones that got away that got bigger and bigger in proportion to the amount of spirits imbibed. Here at Eddie’s Log Cabin is where we plan our next diving expeditions to different islets on long weekends as in this old photograph at Balicasag island hosted by Tanciong Lim a prominent businessman and sportsman from Tagbilaran, Bohol, an owner of a technical school as well.”
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:36 am

Great story, Ed! My wife really enjoyed it too.

Francie did some diving in the Cebu area (among others) in the 80's while on the live-aboard "Lady of the Sea". It was a familiarization trip promoted by the boat owner and Poseidon Ventures Travel out of California. That was during a tough political time in the Philippines. I got elected to stay home and run the dive shop. :(

Thanks for posting it.
The older I get the better I was.

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Drado
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:53 am

It was great getting an insight to diving back then! Found out there’s also quite a bit more double hoses out there. Here’s some of the parts that were found:

Image

I found the can clip tool very interesting!
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:56 am

What an exciting and fun time that must have been. Simple equipment and nobody telling you what you can and cannot do. I was only 5-6 years old when diving came to my town in northern Minnesota but I remember a fair amount of the adventure and anticipation of it. AS a little kid, there was a big difference between what I saw Mike Nelson do on TV and what I experienced trying it myself in the cold and cloudy lake water. I can only imagine how much fun they had in the warm and clear waters of the Philippines.

I remember my Dad dove a Totes dry suit and when a friend bought a Wet Suit, he put it on over his clothes and went diving... He didn't know a "Wet Suit" meant he would get wet!

A closing thought... The description of the camaraderie at Eddie's Log Cabin reminds me of how much fun it is whenever we get together for our dive trips... But ours are too few and far between. We had two nights of it up at Alices Restaurant in Iron River Michigan last weekend. Luckily I had a designated driver dive buddy to get back to the motel! I bet they didn't have such worries back in the 50s.

Thanks for posting that Ed!
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The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:16 am

Drado wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:05 am
I posted a photo of my regs on a dive board on FB one time asking if there were any DH divers in my area (the Philippines). Luckily enough, I received a response from Bernard whose father was using DH regs in the mid fifties. He even has a whole stash of NOS Broxton parts from his dad.

Here’s a pic of his dad et al, as well as a copy of the text.

Image
“The beginning —-

Scuba diving in Cebu City in the early 50s started with very spartan diving gear. A bare tank with only a skimpy harness of webbed belting fastened with “D” rings as body straps. The top of this tank was fitted with a “K” valve which used Teflon washers as a high pressure seat. Attached to this valve was a double hose regulator which always filled up with water when the mouthpiece was dislodged. You have to roll over to your left side and blow the water out. The other hose on the right side supplies the air on demand. If you do not have enough air to blow the water out, just roll over on your back then you will get a free flow of air to fill your needs. The narrow oval mask, the " Squale Mask " does not have the modern day nose well, so you just push your mask upward to seal your nose with the bottom skirts in order to clear your ears. We did not have snorkels then, so when we ran out of air (we did not have submersible pressure gauge then), we just swam up and used the “frog-kick” to swim to the shore out the nearest banca boat. They called us “frog-men” didn’t they?

Hector Veloso, prominent sportsman picked up his first scuba diving set in the US Divers store when they first opened up shop in California USA in 1954. He brought this set to Carcar, Cebu on a picnic outing hosted by a mutual friend, Nene Racoma of the Mancao clan at the beach resort in Barrio Toyom. Hector and I took turns at familiarizing with this new toy complete with imported spear guns, the French “Arbalete”. As there were no other takers we both enjoyed our first experience in scuba diving while the rest shared in the eating of our fish catch.

From then on, it was diving trips to Danao, Cebu where Hector bought a beach lot and built a beach house just for the diving. Rene Weingarner a Swiss manager of F. E. Zuellig Co. followed suit by taking up diving and also bought another beach lot nearby and diving parties were a regular event. Donald Wood, an American from Mobile Oil Company and Mr. Nelson, another American from The Goodyear Tire Co. caught on with this new craze. These new diving buddies were also drinking buddies so the Cebu Divers International set up headquarters at Eddie’s Log Cabin and has nightly meetings. During the rounds of drinking were also tales of fish catch specially the ones that got away that got bigger and bigger in proportion to the amount of spirits imbibed. Here at Eddie’s Log Cabin is where we plan our next diving expeditions to different islets on long weekends as in this old photograph at Balicasag island hosted by Tanciong Lim a prominent businessman and sportsman from Tagbilaran, Bohol, an owner of a technical school as well.”
Fantastic! Good to see you, Ed.
A sincere THANK YOU to all at VDH who make this wonderful resource available and to all the thoughtful contributors.

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luis
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:31 pm

Hi Ed,

Nice picture and story.


You will be seeing an email from me soon. We have new dates for next spring. And I have some cool new projects to share. :D

I will be in touch soon.
Luis

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Drado
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:54 pm

luis wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:31 pm
Hi Ed,

Nice picture and story.


You will be seeing an email from me soon. We have new dates for next spring. And I have some cool new projects to share. :D

I will be in touch soon.

Excellent! :)

Sure is nice to be back posting on the board and seeing you guys!

There’s actually another Kraken diver based in Cebu - though it hasn’t been reflected in the world domination map.

The tribe is growing :)

Here’s another snippet from Bernard showing his dad with what seems to be a rebreather. I guess the part that I enjoy about these anecdotes is the “can-do” mindset of that time.

Image


Copy reads:

REBREATHER

In 1954, I bought a couple of these gadgets from a side walk vendor for fifty pesos. Nobody knew what it was for and it was peddled as some sort of gas mask that didn’t work. Later at another surplus yard of a friend, Mr. Matias Aznar jr. had a stack of canned Slake Lime that nobody wanted so he gave me lots of cans. This fitted exactly with the built in CO2 scrubber. As soon as we filled up the small cylinder with industrial oxygen for welding or diving equipment from the US Navy was ready for use. My buddy, Litong Ponce and I practiced using them at the Cebu harbor in the vicinity of the Ponce shipyard. I enjoyed my spear fishing and Litong even found a one man Japanese submarine in 20 feet of water. He promptly salvaged it, cut it up and sold the scrap readily.

The instructions stated that we should not use it below 30 feet so we followed that rule. Little did we know that we could get oxygen poisoning if we violated that rule. We learned this when we enrolled in a SCUBA diving class about ten years later.

Gaudencio O. Peña Jr. PADI MI No. 6548


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TeamDoug2015
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Re: Vintage diving in the Philippines

Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:43 pm

Hello Ed,

Thanks for posting the great story.

We should have a double hose event in the Western Pacific. Is there any resistance to vintage regulator use in the Philippines?

Sooner or later travel is bound to open up. Singapore is still very limited and has a two-week arrival quarantine - if you can even get an arrival quota.

- Doug

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