We like to try to get to Mexico once a year and this year we got lucky with a last minute trip booked at great rates. We stayed at the Grand Palladium Kentenah resort and would go back there again. We flew from Gatwick with Thompson who had a pretty good approach to dive gear and flew home with them to Manchester - yes the snow got us diverted 100s of miles from our car! Anyway, enough of that - the diving.

This was my fifth trip to Mexico and Al's fourth so we've done a fair amount of diving there. This made for some interesting discussions about where to dive.

I was at home preparing dinner one night just after Christmas when I switched on the news and saw a battle being bravely fought to save a ship which had run into difficulties off the coast in severe weather. The Greek-registered ship was heading for Alexandria but was stricken mid-channel 35 miles southeast of Dartmouth.

Over the next few hours the story changed from attempts to save the ship to attempts to save her crew. A joint French and English rescue mission was launched to save the twenty crew, some of whom were injured after being pounded by force seven gales off the coast and with some acts of bravery the lifeboats were brought alongside the massive ship and all were saved.

Life is a funny old thing. Whilst friends of mine who dive rebreathers head off to Mexico to do a cave course, I find myself sitting in Florida, contemplating diving a rebreather for the first time. The rebreather in question is a Halcyon RB80, the course is GUE Rebreather and the students are me, Alastair and Steve Shultz from Canada. All of us are Tech 2 and Cave 2.

It has to be said that it is not a small unit – but that is fitting as it was not a small decision to make. I’ve been agonising about this for eighteen months at least and only finally decided when Al and I chatted to Jarrod in Budapest in December, allowing us the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of the decision to move. After that decision was made, David Rhea moved heaven and earth to arrange a course for us on the dates we were already due to be in the states to do some cave diving, found a third student and …. Gulp… well the bank balance was taking a serious pounding and we were heading out to the States to see if we had done the right thing.