Sunday, December 13, 2009

That Holiday Feeling

We celebrated another successful year with family, friends and colleagues, ending the year on a high note as that holiday feeling creeps up on us once again.

Have a very Happy Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

Drum Beat will be closed from 15 December 2009 to 4 January 2010.




Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Congratulations

We are indeed proud to announce that Michael van Niekerk, Drum Beat’s Affiliate for the Western Cape, has been re-elected to serve a further four year term on the international Board of Directors of NAUI Worldwide.

The acronym NAUI stands for National Association of Underwater Instructors

Michael is in fact the first and still the only South African ever elected to the Board of Directors of any international diver training agency.

Formed in California in1959, with its current headquarters in Tampa, Florida, NAUI Worldwide is the most respected and the largest non-profit diver certifying organization in the world, whose members offer a full range of training programs from Skin Diver through Instructor Course Director, with dozens of specialty courses including Nitrox and Technical diving. Tens of thousands of NAUI member instructors, dive businesses, resorts, and service centres are located in countries throughout the world.

It is interesting to note that all US astronauts (who train at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas), are required to undergo scuba training as an introduction to ‘weightlessness’. For this purpose, NASA, the agency responsible for the United States space program selected NAUI as their agency of choice. The result is that every astronaut is NAUI certified.

We are indeed proud to be associated, even indirectly, with an organization of this stature.

Congratulations, Michael.

For further information on NAUI in Southern Africa visit www.nauisa.org