ANDI Instructor #7454

        Growing up in Hamburg, Germany I guess you can say my diving career began during the summer of ’72, when a close family friend appeared with brand new diving equipment at our local lake.  Already enthusiastic snorkelers, my father and I (8y at the time) immediately plunged in with him.  All three of us dropped to the sandy bottom at around 40’ and swam around for about 10min.  Just imagine the picture for a moment: We had no suit, no BC, fins from Woolworth, not even a pressure gauge and only one regulator to share between the three of us – BUT! I had an “authentic Jacques Cousteau diving knife” longer than my shin.  Looking back, it probably has been one of the more “unwise” things I have done - but still, it has left me with one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood and is probably an important reason for my affinity to the sea.  Needless to say, after this rather unorthodox start my father and I were hooked and decided to put some formal training around it.  During the winter of ’72 we got our first CMAS certification in the Baltic Sea.

    A couple years later I started to work as an assistant scuba diving instructor on Malta in my summer breaks.  In college I took on underwater rugby and amateur free diving.  Dive trips have taken to some of the most wonderful places in the world: Adriatic Sea, Bavarian & Austrian lakes, Caribbean, Maldives (Indian Ocean), Malta, North/Baltic Sea, Red Sea, Sardinia, Sicily, Spain.  All of my dives had been on conventional equipment with compressed air (even the deeper ones).  Driven by curiosity and nudged by friends I started to venture into the world of rebreathers in 2001 – And there is NO WAY that I am going BACK!

Specialty Instructor Designations

1754 Timberwood Blvd
 Charlottesville, VA  22911
 434-964-9200