CRABBS Dive Club will meet Tuesday, Nov. 8th at The Nature Conservance, at 6:30. Stephen and Deanna Cunningham will give a program about their and several other CRABBS members adventure in Yap last month

Be sure to get your tickets purchased for the 20 year Holiday Party @ Reminisce.

Great Buffet Dinner, Pirate Gift Exchange, Friends old and new and all for $20.00 per person!

More Info??? e-mail CRABBSVI@LIVE.COM

Crabbs will meet at The Nature Conservancy at 6:30 on Tuesday, Oct. 11th.
John Graff will present a program about his recent trip to Figi.

In a recent CRABBS meeting we heard from Greg and Mel Gapen, dive instructors at Cane Bay
Dive Shop, about divers with disabilities. Greg and Mel were trained by Diveheart to certify
scuba divers who have disabilities. Diveheart is an organization whose mission is to help build
confidence and independence in children, adults and veterans with disabilities through the sport
of scuba diving. One of the activities that Diveheart sponsors to accomplish this mission is to
train able bodied divers to be a dive buddy for a disabled diver.
Several CRABBS members have expressed an interest in finding out more about this activity so
I have done a little research to find out what is involved. After reading the following information,
if you are interested in becoming certified as a buddy for a disabled diver please reply to this
email. We want to find out just how many people are interested so we can talk to Diveheart
about bringing their training program to St. Croix.
Diveheart Adaptive Dive Training is open to all Open Water or higher certified
divers who would like to become qualified to dive with divers with disabilities as a buddy or an
instructor.
Generally the program involves five consecutive days of training:
• The first three half days
• The final two full day
The classroom portion takes 8-10 hours and is usually broken up over two days.
The swimming pool training will consist of 15-20 hours and will also be done over 2 or more
days.
There will be a final day of open water training.
After completing the program the diver will be certified by Diveheart or by Handicapped Scuba
Association (your choice) as a dive buddy for disabled divers. Diveheart subsidizes the training
so a buddy course that normally costs $500 is offered to us at $225.
Going on concurrently with the buddy training will be instructor training for those divers currently
certified as instructors with one of the certifying agencies. The cost for the instructor
course is $395.
Diveheart does more than just certify buddies. They certify disabled divers, certify instructors,
consult with local businesses to help them make their facilities accessible for disabled
individuals, and they promote diving at locations, like St. Croix, where there are trained buddies
and accessible facilities. To learn more about Diveheart go to their web site http://diveheart.org/
Click on the tab labeled; What We Do, to get more detailed information about how they are
accomplishing their mission.
We hope to bring Diveheart to St. Croix, possibly as soon as this winter, to help St. Croix
become a location for disabled divers to visit. To start the process we would need
about a half dozen or more Open Water certified divers who are interested
in becoming certified as a buddy for disabled divers. If you are interested in
getting involved please reply to this email. Thanks.
Jim Davison
President, CRABBS Dive Club

Next CRABBS meeting Sept 13th, 6:30 at The Nature Conservancy. The speaker will be Jan Stogner, President of Caribbean and Pacific Dive Vacations. She will give an informal discussion, with questions and answers about Dive Vacations.

Tuesday August 16th is our club dive this month. We are doing a night dive out at Cane Bay in hopes of catching the Acropora Coral spawn. If you want more info email us at crabbsvi@live.com