Diving Archives - Page 19 of 34 - Books by Eric Douglas

Cayman Cowboys featured in a text book

December 11, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Not long after the release of Cayman Cowboys, the Caymanian Compass (the national newspaper) published an interview with me about the book. A year or so after that, I got an email from Pearson Education, a textbook publisher that wanted to use a copy of the interview in a textbook aimed at children in the Caribbean. Each section of the 4^th level text book is based on a different island and the section for Writer’s Inspiration and interviewing skills was on Grand Cayman. Other sections included Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent and the rest of the islands of the Caribbean.

The exercise in the book talks about using open-ended questions and the interview published in the Caymanian Compass is a good example of that.

It is an interesting feeling to know that children all over the Caribbean are learning to perfect their language skills and interview techniques based on something I wrote. The text book was published in 2008. I hope it is still in use.

See photographs from the place that inspired the story or learn about this second edition of the story.

You can also get a Kindle ebook version or a Print version direct from Amazon..

Home of the novel Cayman Cowboys

December 10, 2013 By Eric Douglas

In honor of the second edition of Cayman Cowboys, I thought I would post some photos from Grand Cayman and the location of most of the book, Sunset House. I took all of these photos in December 2011, with the exception of the one of me by the Mermaid. That was taken by Steve Barnett in 2004 or 2005. He was kind enough to give me a copy.

Check out yesterday’s blog on the second edition of the novel or read the book’s description. You can also get a copy in print or as a Kindle ebook directly from Amazon.

mermaid and me — With the Sunset House mermaid. By Steve Barnett

Beverly taking posing tips from the mermaid.

Waves over the iron shore. This is a scene from the book.

New edition of Cayman Cowboys; the novel that started it all…

December 9, 2013 By Eric Douglas

In 2004 and 2005 I spent two weeks on Grand Cayman conducting training for local course directors and instructor trainers. Since I was working I spent time with people who lived on the island. I got a behind-the-scenes look at the island and the dive culture. Those two trips were the inspiration for the novel Cayman Cowboys.

The phrase “cayman cowboy” has a lot of negative connotations. For many people, it is the money runners, Wall Street wheeler and dealers and cocaine cartels from the 1980s that operated out of Cayman to keep their money out of the government’s reach. For others, a Cayman Cowboy came to mean playboy dive instructors who drank hard every night and tried to sleep with all the young female tourists.

My Cayman Cowboys were a little bit different. This excerpt explains it:

“So is that what it means to be a Cayman Cowboy?” Bailey asked. “Saving damsels in distress and drinking all the beer at My Bar?”

“Yeah, in a way. Being a Cayman Cowboy is about doing things your own way and not worrying about the consequences,” Mike said for the first time since Kelly began his story. “It’s also about honor and integrity. Doing what you know is right, regardless of what someone else tells you to think. What Kelly doesn’t mention when he tells this story is that he thought I was right and was working on ways to smuggle her out of town and to safety while I was gathering information. He was in, hook line and sinker. We both were.

“We had our fair share of fun and were in and out of trouble, but the real spirit of being a Cayman Cowboy is always sticking together and backing each other up. If we thought our buddy was messing up, we would tell him privately, but if someone else said the same thing in public, they would have to deal with all of us,” Kelly added.

The novel Cayman Cowboys is about adventure and excitement. It is also about the environment, development and striking a balance between the two. All the while, it is set on a beautiful island, home to some of the most amazing diving anywhere in the world. The backdrop for most of the story is the dive resort Sunset House, a destination operated by divers for divers. Sunset House’s iconic My Bar has been voted the best bar in the Caribbean on numerous occasions. The dives described in the novel are all dives you can make on any given day around the island—well okay there is one night dive that might be tough to set up, but other than that they are all there.

The original publisher of this novel had a really out-of-touch price structure. Unfortunately, I had no say in the matter. With this second edition, the prices for both the Kindle ebook and the Print edition are less than half of what they were. The new Kindle ebook is $3.95 and the print version of the novel is $9.95. Both versions also include the first chapter of Flooding Hollywood as an extra bonus.

Read the full book description or get your own copy and start your Cayman adventure!.

Inspiration for life and fiction from Diveheart

November 25, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Over the last 15 years or so, I’ve had the good fortune to travel quite a bit. I’ve seen some beautiful places and dived many of them, experiencing them above and below the surface. Diving in the keys is always great fun, but I was surprised by what I learned and saw while diving with the crew from Diveheart. I didn’t learn anything about diving, with the possible exception of how much divers can do underwater if they put their minds to it, but I learned a lot about the human spirit.

On two trips to Florida: one to see firsthand exactly what Diveheart teaches to divers and dive buddies and to better understand what it takes to dive with Adaptive Divers; and the second trip to shoot video for the new Diveheart training videos, I saw the joy and appreciation for the underwater world. I saw what Jim Elliott told me about and wrote about in the manuals, how scuba diving can literally change lives for people with disabilities.

On both trips, I dived with Karen and JC. Karen is an incomplete quadriplegic which means she has impairments in all four limbs. JC has cerebral palsy and is visually-impaired. Karen drives her own van and makes stained-glass artwork. JC competes in wheelchair marathons and uses a GoPro video camera to record his own dives and edits them into YouTube videos. In spite of their physical limitations, neither of them is sitting still.

Over the years, I have groused many times about the effort it takes to scuba dive. You have to carry your own gear and it’s heavy and awkward or uncomfortable until you get in the water. And then I watched these two divers and realized how little I have to complain about and how much I have to be thankful for (an appropriate thought for Thanksgiving week). Neither Karen nor JC complained. They were just happy to be out diving and enjoying the opportunity to connect with the ocean.

Talking to one of the volunteers on the video shoot, I asked Wilhelmina Stanton (a Scuba Siren specifically focused on Diveheart) why she gives up her own time to help people with disabilities dive. Her reply was simple: “Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?”

Indeed.

Spending time with the people from Diveheart, volunteers and divers alike, reminded me of all the gifts I have and to shut up when I start to complain about some minor problem. It also inspired me.

The latest Jackson Pauley/Withrow Key short story includes a character inspired by Diveheart. The story is called Caesar’s Gold and follows Jackson Pauley with his nephew Zach, a double-amputee Afghan war veteran, as they uncover the mystery behind a buried vault on Withrow Key, a diary from a long-lost pirate and the disappearance of an archaeologist.

An excerpt:

“Can I ask you how it happened?” Lucy asked, a little uncomfortably.

“My legs? It was in Afghanistan. An IED…an improvised explosive device. It hit the Humvee I was riding in. Honestly, I didn’t even realize I was hurt until everyone around me started running toward me shouting. They stabilized me and sent me home pretty quickly. Everything was a whirlwind.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Lucy said.

“It’s okay now. I was pretty depressed for a while. I went through all the rehab and everything, but I felt like I wasn’t a whole person any more. But then I met this guy. His name is Jim Elliott. He runs a program called Diveheart and he told me I could learn to scuba dive. I already knew how to dive from my time in the Marines, but I thought that was over. Me and some other guys in the same shape all got in the pool. Jim and a bunch of volunteers let us have fun. I took the classes and got my civilian certification. In the water, it’s like the bomb never went off. I can swim and explore. It’s fantastic!”

“That’s really cool, Zach. You do need to slow down a bit, but I have to say that to all the new divers,” Lucy said with a wink.

This is the third of three blog posts about Diveheart and the development of a ground-breaking set of training materials to train adaptive divers and adaptive dive buddies and instructors to learn to scuba dive. Go back and read the first two installments including the beginnings of the Diveheart training materials and the video shoot process for filming training materials. .

Making a Diveheart training program

November 18, 2013 By Eric Douglas

From 1998 to present day, I’ve developed adult education training programs, mostly for the recreational dive industry. I’ve participated in photo and video shoots, and written scripts to teach people to use everything from AEDs to Dry Suits and a lot of stuff in between. Working with Diveheart to produce training videos to teach Adaptive Dive Buddies and Adaptive Scuba Instructors how to work with divers with disabilities was definitely a new one for me, though.

Probably the most important skill a prospective Adaptive Dive Buddy learns is empathy. It takes an amazing amount of nerve for an adaptive diver to trust her Adaptive Dive Buddies to care for her underwater. Day-to-day, a person who uses a wheel chair might rely on others for help, but failure to receive that help does not result in the person drowning. Or suffering through the pain and trauma of a burst ear drum. Or any number of other potential problems.

The second most important skill is handling task loading and stress in the water. As an Adaptive Dive Buddy for a disabled diver, you have to be ready to take care of your own buoyancy and equalization, while handling buoyancy and equalization for the Adaptive Diver as well. With the Diveheart system, you’re never alone in the water with an Adaptive Diver, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be prepared for emergency situations.

To simulate the potential challenges Adaptive Dive Buddies will face, we filmed (above and below water) divers with blacked out masks or with their legs strapped together and their arms immobilized. There is nothing that will teach empathy more effectively than taking a diver underwater without any ability to swim, control his own situation or even pinch his own nose to equalize. Once you’ve lived through that once, you will forever have a healthy respect for what an Adaptive Diver does every dive.

To capture the video and still images we need for the manuals and online training, we brought in two industry experts. There is practically no one better at shooting video in the Florida Keys than Frazier Nivens. He has years and years of experience shooting in the local waters, equally distributed between shooting critters and divers. Ken Berry worked for 15 years as the Executive Producer at PADI and then a few years at DAN and now for himself at LivingWater Media. No one in the dive industry knows more about producing training videos and organizing divers to perform, and repeat, skills above and below water.

We shot video for a week in the Keys, including a day and a half on dive boats provided by DJ Wood at Rainbow Reef. The staff there was great and really in tune with the needs of Diveheart and Adaptive Divers. Every time you see three divers on the screen, there are at least five people in the water including the three divers, the director and the camera man. Often, there were seven or eight to make sure everything was done correctly and to capture behind the scenes photographs and video at the same time.

One of the most amazing parts of this process was that the on-camera divers were all volunteers. They were all Diveheart Instructors and Adaptive Dive Buddies who donated their time to polish up their skills at a dress-rehearsal and then even more time to spend time underwater being put through the proverbial dive-ringer to perform and repeat skills underwater. They had to do skills over and over, allowing the camera to capture “establishing shots” (wide angle) and then the same scene from medium and then close up to allow for “cut-aways”.

Often, when you are teaching, if you sit back and pay attention, you can get more than you give. This was one of those situations for me. I learned so much from the divers who gave their time to volunteer for this unique organization it was incredible. And I realize just how much every day.

This is the second of three blog posts about Diveheart and the development of a ground-breaking set of training materials to train adaptive divers and adaptive dive buddies and instructors to learn to scuba dive. The first installment Diveheart: Imagine the Possibilities (November 13), discussed the idea of taking Adaptive Divers diving. The third installment (November 25) will include lessons I’ve learned from working with Elliot and some of the Adaptive Divers I’ve met through Diveheart.

On November 25, I’ll also be releasing a new Jackson Pauley/Withrow Key short story with a character inspired by Diveheart. The story is called Caesar’s Gold..