WHERE IT ALL STARTED

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.

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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.