I'm Available as a Dive Buddy — Here's My Background
If you're looking for a dive buddy — someone trained, experienced, and actually fun to get in the water with — I'm putting it out there. This is my background, what I'm certified in, and what kind of dives I'm looking to do.
How It Started: Cozumel, 2015
I got my first certification in Cozumel in 2015. If you know anything about Cozumel, you know it's one of those places that either hooks you immediately or it doesn't. For me, it took about thirty seconds underwater before I knew this was going to be a problem for my wallet.
The visibility, the wall dives, the current — I was done. I went back home a certified open water diver and immediately started planning how to dive more.
From Hobby to Working the Shop
Liked it so much that I ended up working at a dive shop for a few years. That's a different kind of education than just diving for fun. You learn fast when customers are counting on gear being right and tanks being filled correctly.
Working the shop is where I picked up skills I still use:
Regulator repair. I can tear down, clean, and rebuild regulators. Know what to look for, what wears out, what's a bandaid fix versus a real problem.
Gas blending. I'm trained in EAN (enriched air nitrox) and trimix blending. Nitrox is pretty straightforward once you understand partial pressures — trimix takes more precision because you're working with helium mixes for deeper dives. I'm a certified gas blender, not just a diver who breathes the stuff.
VIP inspection. Visual Inspection Program certified for cylinders. Tanks need annual visual inspections and hydrostatic testing on schedule — I know what I'm looking at when I do one.
The Certs
- • PADI Advanced Open Water
- • SDI Advanced Open Water
- • EAN / Nitrox certified
- • Trimix gas blending
- • VIP (Visual Inspection Program) Inspector
Advanced certs from PADI and SDI both because the training approaches complement each other. SDI leans more toward real-world skills and independent diver development — worth having both cards.
Deepest Dive: 210 Feet
My personal deepest is 210 feet. At that depth you're on trimix, your bottom time is short, and your deco obligation on the way up is not optional — it's a calculation you commit to before you splash. It changes how you think about every dive. Once you've planned and executed a dive that deep, recreational limits feel very different.
Salvage Work
Another thing I picked up: I've done boat and motor salvage work. Rigging lines, coordinating lift bags, working with what's actually on the bottom — that's a different skill set than recreational diving. It's slower, more methodical, and more satisfying when you pull something out of the water that didn't belong there.
What I'm Looking For
I'm based in Florida and travel. Looking for dive partners for:
- • Florida — springs, offshore, wrecks, Keys. There's more diving in Florida than most people realize and I'm not tired of any of it.
- • Asia — Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia. The Indo-Pacific is on my list in a serious way. Visibility, biodiversity, and dive site variety that's hard to match anywhere else.
- • International — open to it. Cozumel again obviously. Anywhere the diving is worth the flight.
I'm not looking for someone to babysit. I want a real dive partner — someone with solid buoyancy, situational awareness, and who shows up to a dive briefed and ready. I'll bring the same.
Interested?
If you want to dive and you want a trained, experienced partner who can also handle the gas side of things — I'm available. Check out the services page for details, or just reach out directly. Tell me where you want to dive and what you're certified to do and we'll go from there.
The water's better than whatever you're doing instead.