WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

PATRICK W. O'LEARY

The man who inspired me to become a Diver, My father Patrick W O'Leary. A keen Sports diver for many years and took me on my first open water dive, we went down to that magical depth of 100ft off St Davids, Wales Summer 1976

My Dad, pictured on the SS Lipari, on its way to the Volcanic Island of Stromboli circa 1964, he spent many years there and developed his passion for diving and spear fishing

My Dads diving equipment

This is some of my Dads old dive gear, much of which he made himself, I remember as a boy watching him melt lead on the stove and pouring it into a mould he had made to form lead diving weights. He also spent nights making his own wetsuit out of sheets of neoprene.

The earliest of decompression meters, depth guage, compass, Knife, and one of his famous lead weights.

Some of his other equipment, old style fenzy bouyancy jacket , cylinders, wetsuit etc.

Dads state of the art Le spirotecnique air driven spear gun, everyone else at the time had elastic band driven guns, I used this myself in 1974 for 6 weeks whilst on the Island of Stromboli, following in my Dads footsteps.

Dad with some of the days catch on Stromboli.

Dad is pictured here with Tony Dean, the legendary dive guru of the midlands,Tony formed Aquasport International and Comdean divers, providing sport diving services for the Midlands and diving holidays in the Mediterranean sea. This picture was taken in the South of France near Le Lavandou.

My first taste of diving was here at Stoney cove, Disused quarry in the West Midlands, now one of the biggest centres for sports diving in the UK. In the centre of the picture you can see my Dads new yellow Capri S, the wheels to be seen in.

Then later things get serious.

Horsea Island, Military Diver training school in Hampshire. Soon to be the new home to Portsmouth F.C. This was where i did my initial training as a Clearance diver.We gained our strength and resilience here, both above and below the surface, through mud runs or crawls and endless hours of endurance swims and running around the island with steel oxygen bottles and telegraph poles on our shoulders.

PORTLAND DOCKYARD NAVY DAYS JUNE 1976 THE DAY I KNEW I WANTED TO BE A CD

This was the first time I saw Navy Clearance Divers, they were part of the Navy diving display team, dunking the general public into diving tank in Siebe Gorman standard divers dress. This was the day I thought I want to be one of them. Pictured here is Jim Norman on the left, from that day forward Jim was my hero, the guy in the suit is my old friend Peter (George)Carrahar, who sadly is no longer with us, but often thought about. Ive worked with Jim ,many times since then, he now works for Technip as a Life support technician.