Time is running out to register for DJL’s annual  Free Thailand Divemaster competition .All people who wish to start a Divemaster Internship in Koh Tao between 1st July – 30th August have got a chance of winning it for free.

Also the two runners up get a discount! No previous dive knowledge necessary. The warm waters, tropical fish, sharks and white beaches have made Koh Tao has over recent years become one of the best places in the world to learn to dive. Adding to this Thailand offers cheaper diving courses than anywhere else.

So become a professional diver today and work all round the globe in some of the worlds most exotic and unique places. No previous diving knowledge is needed to take part in this chance to become a Divemaster for free. Plus most importantly there is no obligation to work for us for free after like with most free Divemaster Internships.

The draw will be held on the 30th of August so those who are just finishing and those who are just starting both get to see it take place
BOOK BY: 29th August 2011
STARTING BETWEEN: July 2011-August 2011

Davy Jones Locker Diving is now running day trips to 2 of South East Asia’s top dive sites… Sail Rock & South West Pinnacle.

This special offer includes 3 dives – a double dive at Sail Rock and then a 3rd dive at South West Pinnacle.

Price includes equipment, divemaster and lunch/refreshments on board.

DJL is offering this day trip for only 3,000 baht per person.. available to Advanced divers or above.

For more information, or to book this trip email ollie@davyjoneslocker.asia

Check out the video of DJL crew exploring the marine park … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXl7emC4Sa4

Davy Jones’ Locker would like to wish a Happy New Year to everyone who has dived with us this past year.

We’d like to say a BIG Thank You for choosing to dive with DJL during 2010 and we look forward to diving with you all again soon.

All PADI courses, with exception of the Instructor Development Course will remain the same price for 2011.

The PADI IDC will increase by 4,000 baht as of February, but if you book with DJL before Feb you’ll receive it at the old price of 40,000 baht.

We wish you all the very best for the coming year.

DJL Management & Staff

DJL’s November IDC group saw five candidates Sara Wallace(Scotland), Harry Treloar(England), Peter Tausch(Austria), David La Faure(France) and Selina Shariff(New Zealand) all pass their Instructor courses and then all five went on to take the Master Scuba Diver Trainer(MSDT) course. Congratulations to all five of you new Open Water Scuba Instructors!!!! Our Course Director Peter was very happy, but no rest for Peter he’d starting the next IDC Prep course today, keep up the good work Peter I think we may even let you have Christmas Day off for keeping up that 100% pass rate

Pete is patient and knowledgeable and really encouraging. Prepairing for the IDC can be a little intense and Pete was great at being reassuring and thorough. He has a brilliant sense of humor and so much experience. It was a fantastic course and I ended up doing really well on my Instructor Exam (IE), which I credit Pete for preparing me so well for. I am now enjoying teaching here in Koh Tao and have Pete to thank for his time and generosity.

Ankia

Davy Jones Locker offers BSAC Boat Handling courses that are internationally recognised and accredited by the maritime coastal agency. The aim of the Seamanship Package is to give students with little or no skills & experience, the theoretical and practical ability to operate a small powerboat safely. This license will allow you to run a boat up to 10 metres long and is accepted in Australia.

For more information on this course, check out our website;

http://www.davyjoneslocker.asia/en/bsac-courses/133-skill-development-courses/164-bsac-seamanship-centre-no-____484-seamanship-a-boat-handling-package.html

After completing my Divemaster Internship with Davy Jones Locker in the summer  of 2009, I returned home to the UK for University. This summer I decided to return to Thailand to become a PADI Dive Instructor with DJL.

I had great fun on my Instructor Development Course, Pete was a great instructor and I’d like to thank him for helping me pass my Instructor Exam.

I would strongly recommend doing your Divemaster and Instructor courses at Davy Jones Locker. All the instructors there are very friendly and will do their upmost to ensure you have a great time diving in Koh Tao!

Tom McMurray 20, UK

Neil was Super, a brilliant instructor and a sound fella! He really helped Mike overcome his initial fear of diving, as did Tim. He also helped me alot with mask skills.

We had a great time on Koh Tao, stayed way longer than expected, completely down to the excellent staff at Davy Jones Locker.

Thank you so much,

Marie & Mike from Ireland.

Yes that’s right, 4 PADI Open Water students, 2 Divemasters and 1 Instructor from Davy Jones Locker were lucky enough to swim alongside a 5 metre Whale Shark on the students’ second ever dive! The gentle giant was spotted during an afternoon dive at White Rock. What a great way for the 4 students to be introduced to the world of scuba diving, lets hope that the biggest fish in the sea stick around and provide this amazing experience for many more DJL divers!

A big Congratulations to January’s IDC candidates, Harry (England) and Bastiaan (Holland) on becoming PADI Instructors. The guys passed with flying colours clocking up the highest IE scores to date. Both are continuing their dive careers as Master Scuba Diver Trainees and we wish them every success. Thanks to Pete, DJL’s course director for training Harry and Bastiaan and maintaining an excellent pass rate!

So.. I was sat in a pub havin a pint and reading the paper. It was Sunday afternoon, it was raining and I was in my home town, Derby. My mind was wandering, I’d been working a lot of hours saving up for a trip to South America, when my attention was suddenly drawn towards an advert in the travellers section. It read something along the lines of ‘DiveMaster Internships, Koh Tao, Thailand.
Now I’d done a little bit of this diving lark and always loved it so I gave the number a ring pretty much straight away and was given all the info I needed; full instruction up to Divemaster, materials, accommodation, my own gear, break-dancing lessons (I’m still waiting for them actually), and all this at a dive school called Davy Jones Locker. A couple of months later, on a sunny Monday morning I arrived on Koh Tao and was taken straight to the dive school. Now I was excited but a little apprehensive about what I’d got myself into. However, I was greeted by the lovely Rosalyn and Luke who quickly sorted me out with my accommodation and made me feel right at home.
Three months, four whale sharks and a ton of parties later I was qualified as a Divemaster… hooray! Ok so my intentions at this point were to continue with my original plan of goin to South America, but in what must’ve been a moment of madness, the good people at Davy Jones Locker offered me a job. I’d be working with my friends, on a beautiful island doing something I love…why not? After seven amazing months of ‘work’ I started to think about the next step, instructor. I hooked up with Pete the PADI Course Director at Davy Jones. After a lot of hard work on my part and a lot of patience on his he got me through my Instructor Development Course [IDC]. Thanks Pete! I passed my Instructor Exam with flying colours and am now working as the shop Divemaster/Instructor. Honestly, a bad day for me is 5metres visibility, a cloudy sky, maybe havin to write a blog. On a good day pretty much anything is possible, and to think that just over a year ago I was sat in that pub in Derby.
Neil Draycott

Hi my name’s Steven I’m from Scotland and I have just completed my open water to dive master course, or zero to hero as it’s known at DJL, I was working in Singapore before I came here and fancied going somewhere for a holiday before I went home and I saw this course on the real gap website so I decided that I would have a holiday and get a qualification at the same time. DJL is a really good dive school it’s not the biggest dive school but I think that’s part of it’s charm, everyone knows you which helps with meeting new people and girls…, the training I got was second to none and all the instructors are a fine bunch of guys and girls Alex, Callum, Emil ,Fred, Hanna, James, Luke and last but not least Si , special thanks to Tim for letting me do the intro to tech with him, nice to know that you’re in safe hands at 45.2 meters don’t think I’ll laugh so much underwater again. I would recommend taking the course to anyone because it’s a great experience and if I can manage to pass anyone can! Haha, the hardest part is just saying good bye to all the people who have became my friends over the past 3 months.
Cheers guys have a laucow for me at the bar!
Steven aka Scotland

After working as a PADI Dive Master and Instructor for two years at Davy Jones Locker I’ve experienced many amazing trips on our high speed RHIB, from diving with the many bull sharks at Chumphon Pinnacle to searching the Gulf of Thailand for sunken shipwrecks. But I always wanted the chance to get behind the wheel, so when the opportunity came up for me to do the BSAC Boat Handling course, I jumped at the chance.
The course started out with an afternoon of theory, learning how to find my way around the boat, basic boat handling and some safety and rescue work. Then the fun part arrived.
Getting behind the wheel for the first time was a little bit scary but my instructors, Les and Tim made me feel really comfortable and with all their experience gave me the confidence to drive the RHIB for the first time. We started with some high speed turns and then moved on to more technical low speed maneuvers. It was a perfect day in the Tao for boat driving, the sea was as flat as a pond with no wind. As we progressed throughout the course I became more confident and learned about chartwork and position fixing using Seacharts and GPS. I got to put everything I learned into practice when my instructor Tim told me he had some GPS marks for some possible ship wrecks in the area. So, using my training we located the marks on a map and planned our day at sea. Sadly, nothing came of the GPS marks but Tim and his technical diving student, Jeremy did a dive to 50metres on a wreck called the Torpedo so the day was not wasted, I learned how to pick up marks using GPS and I logged valuable hours driving the RHIB.
The day came and it was time to take my driving test, I was nervous and admittedly I didn’t drive my best, but I was glad to hear from Les and Tim that I had passed. Now I’m looking forward to more shark dives and wreck expeditions and after gaining more experience driving the RHIB I aim to go on to become a BSAC Boat Handling Instructor at DJL Diving. It’s a great addition to any CV and will help to get a job in the dive industry, especially Australia. So, many thanks Tim and Les for the great course and if anyone wants to do something more than diving then I strongly recommend the BSAC Boat Handling course which is an Internationally recognized license, so you can drive anywhere in the world.

The contest began with a duet and our lovely ‘ladies’ performed a version of ‘Year 3000’ by Busted which had the audience wincing to the beat. This was followed by a classic solo and dance performance from the Spaniard crooning ‘Don’t cha’ by the Pussy Cat Dolls. Ollie’s performance was not bad but not quite good enough to knockout Johnny’s alternative rendition of Five’s ‘Everybody Get Up’! The X-Factor panel of judges consisted of our very own Simon Cowell (Neil, DJL DM), Lou (Alex, DJL mentor & Instructor) and Madonna (Rachel one of our own former DMTs). Neil was so disappointed with all the performances he had to leave the building! Either way we thought they were both stars and give them our very special thanks and congratulations on completing their Dive Master course. They both worked really hard over the past 3-6 months are going to be great dive masters and will be missed by us all here.

Back at DJL Diving…we say ‘bring on the next snorkel test’!

Buoyancy World is a new artificial dive site that has been designed to take the strain off of some of the most commonly dived dive sites on the island. The new site will contain a large number of man made structures, including a giant lizard, a concrete butterfly and a bamboo forest. In addition to the weird and wonderful structures that will make the new site so interesting, a number of fixed objects will also be added, with the aim of these assisting in the teaching of buoyancy control.

However, before the structures for the new site can be deployed they must first be built. The building phase of the project has been going on over the last few days, and today saw several of the larger structures nearly reach completion thanks to the hard work of all the volunteers.

The volunteers were divided into small teams, each responsible for different aspects of the building project. These roles included welding, steel cutting, rendering, meshing and my personal job of the day, smashing coconuts into tiny pieces to use as stuffing for the structures.

As the day went on, and the blisters came, a real sense of camaraderie was built up between all of the volunteers. I felt privileged to work on a project with a group of people so passionate about preserving the underwater world of our beautiful island. I have no doubt that the new dive site will be absolutely amazing. I look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months and can’t wait to see which aquatic life will end up calling it home.
James, Instructor at DJL

I led a team of technical divers from Davy Jones’ Locker to dive a shipwreck 54 nautical miles north east of Koh Tao called the Pangan. We chartered a boat from another dive centre, which was a converted fishing vessel and decided to tow the DJL rib to use as a safety boat.

Travelling out over night we arrived on the mark, dropped a lazy shot and ran some 56 meter profiles on the ship. After completing a successful days diving we began our journey back, the north east trade winds were evident and we had one metre swells coming across the starboard bow. After relaxing on the top deck for three hours the ship stopped dead in the water and the captain appeared a little flustered. He started pointing to the engine room so I went to investigate only to find the room full of water. At this point we got all our bilges together in an effort to pump the water out. The water level was still rising. One of the bilges was an independent engine; this started to flutter then conked out after trying to restart the Honda engine for several minutes.

I made the decision to abandon ship as the water was coming in too quickly then pulled the rib along side and starter to get her ready. I shouted to Gary to strip the twin sets, regs and wings and grab the extra gas we had taken along for our compressor. With the help of the team we tied the compressor and the twin sets down to the chartered boat. The captain dropped the anchor in an effort to stop the windward drift. I finally took the bags, the 4 tech divers and the thai crew away on the DJL rib. As the fishing boat left the surface we took one last look as she took her last breath, screaming with air intake. The GPS showed us to be 28 nautical miles from Koh Tao with an overloaded rib that was taking on water half an hour before sunset; we were not having a good day! We were unable to contact anyone on our VHF. After 2 hours of bailing water we crept into Hin Wong Bay, secured the rib and headed for the bar!

With a compressor and 5 twin sets on the sunken vessel I started thinking about salvaging it. We had a mark for the ship but they rarely sink in a straight line so we had to pick a good weather window as I expected the search to take some time. After 3 weeks we got our break and with a team of eight (four bottom and four support divers) we set off, this time using our big boat and rib. Again travelling overnight to the mark, we arrived on station at 06:00 and started to search using the rib. After around 20 minutes I picked up a return and after running over the anomaly a few times found that it was a bigger return than the expected target. This was around 70 meters long with a 5-metre beam rising from the bottom. As this wasn’t our target I continued to sweep, searching with the trusty trade winds. Four hours passed and I decided to return to the first finding. I dropped a shot on the mark and our first team entered the water for a look. An hour later they surfaced and reported a large sand mound with holes dropping through 3-4 metres, indicating an old sub bottom shipwreck. Excited by our find we continued to search for the compressor and after another 4 hours we located her just less than 1 nautical mile away from our original mark.

We got straight to work and I descended the shot line carrying another line to secure the compressor. This would allow us to relocate the compressor if the lift failed. I tied the shot to the bow and noticed a large hole, evidence of a collision. Luckily she was sitting upright so I quickly located the compressor at 62m and secured the second line. As I returned to the shot I came across the twin sets, cutting the rope that was tying them down we lifted them across the bottom of the shot. Whilst tying them off I clipped a bag on the line and started my ascent. After running the decompression I got onto the boat and briefed the team on the upcoming lift and carried out a dry run. We prepared the bags and lines on the boat then Gary entered the water. After 10 minutes the bags were on the surface. We lifted the compressor onto the boat, followed by the twin sets. The team then completed a second dive to free up the shot and on the way recovering the boats compass to return to the ships owner.

By Tim Lawrence, Davy Jones’ Locker