My name is Tory van Dyke. I began SCUBA diving at the early age of 17 years old. I always wanted to be a diver, from my earliest childhood recollections of watching the fictional Mike Nelson character and “Sea Hunt” on TV in the fifties and sixties. My dad, Kenny van Dyke, had a small dive shop operation that he ran out of his Mountain Shop ski shop in Portland, Oregon, during the summer months. Although he didn’t sell any diving equipment to his students, I sure enjoyed looking through the Skin Diver magazines and checking out all that brand new dive gear on display at the shop.
The brand new galvanized steel diving tanks, double hose Aqualung regulators, face masks, duck feet swim fins, spear guns, and diving knives sure looked good to me and made a lasting impression in my young mind! This early inspiration, when I was just eight years old, further fueled my desire to become a SCUBA diver and an undersea explorer.
I worked busing and washing dishes at The Harvest House Restaurant just down the road from my neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. My next-door neighbor, Mike Heffernan, owned the restaurant, so it was a natural for me to go to work there and make some money. As I put in my hours and the money began to accumulate, I began thinking about taking a course in SCUBA diving. My old friend and former next-door neighbor, Mark McCarty, had taken a certification course through his high school a few years earlier. He helped me to find a good dive shop to take my classes.
I signed up for classes at the Aquarius Underwater Center, on Barber Boulevard in Southwest Portland. The shop’s owner was Gary Rubottom. The facility offered a certification course in basic SCUBA diving for around 50 bucks. The certification was with N.A.U.I., the National Association of Underwater Instructors. Mark had taken his course from a NAUI instructor down in Eugene, Oregon, and he recommended NAUI as the best certification agency. N.A.U.I. was known throughout the diving industry for its high standards and excellence in diver education.
I signed up for the course a little before Christmas in December of 1971. The course was going to be six weeks long, with one classroom and pool session a week. Aquarius Underwater Center was a new brand new facility, complete with a special indoor heated swimming pool at the shop. The pool had been built specifically for basic SCUBA diving instruction. It had a special four-foot deep ledge, about five feet wide, on one side of the pool, running the full length of the pool. This area was for suiting up with the gear, and then sitting underwater on the ledge with your feet hanging over the edge. Your instructor would observe and instruct you from the deeper water in the pool. Everything was tailored for beginning SCUBA diving instruction, and this made it very safe and comfortable for introducing new people to the underwater equipment used in SCUBA diving.
My instructor for this course was a man named Tom Hemphill. He was a welder by trade, and worked as a diving instructor part time, sort of moonlighting for extra money. Tom loved diving and had started out diving about ten years before this time. He had received his underwater instructor certification from NAUI in 1971. Tom and I became good friends and we have maintained our friendship throughout these many years.
Mark helped me select some basic diving equipment, like a mask and some fins and a snorkel. I also got some wet suit boots and mitts. Later I got a US Divers Calypso III single hose regulator. I still use this regulator today. It has been a real workhorse and a very reliable piece of equipment. I have overhauled it about three times, replacing essential o-ring seals and high-pressure seats and diaphragms. Mark had a US Divers ‘Nav-Con’ single hose regulator that he had used for his training in open water. He eventually gave this regulator to me, and I still use it as a backup on dive jobs.
So, I completed my basic instruction course and had all my own diving equipment fully paid for prior to my open water check out dives. I even had enough money to cover the motel bill and meals for the weekend of open water training, held at the Sunrise Resort Motel in Hoodsport, Washington, on the beautiful Hood Canal.
The weekend of diving went very well. The weather on Saturday was cold and stormy, with lots of wind and rain. Sunday cleared up and greeted us with lots of sunshine, blue sky, and warmer air temperatures.
Tom and his diving assistant, Bob Harms, both spent a lot of time in the water on Saturday, checking out everyone in the class on their basic open water skills. These two guys were both in custom tailored, nylon two style, Harvey’s built Wetsuits, and they both got very cold in the mid-February 48 degree salt water of Hood Canal. They probably spent more than four hours in the water that day, which is a long time for a wet suit equipped diver, and hypothermia took its toll on them.
The topside weather on Saturday morning was quite brisk, and the students were moved right along through their various diving skill performance tests. I think there were about 20 new divers in the group. By the time the first day’s diving skills were completed, Tom and Bob were ready for hot showers, the couch and TV in their motel rooms, with lots of hot coffee and warm electric heat from the baseboard heaters.
I was raring to go night diving, and Kathy Harms, Bob’s wife, was willing to be my dive buddy around 8 o’clock that night. We had a great night dive, where I tried out my brand new Darrell-Allen rechargeable diving light, with its 120,000 candle power bulb. The storm has passed and the stars were out, and the water was flat calm. It was great! I was using my brand new Harvey’s stock size quarter inch thick wetsuit built in Seattle, Washington, and I wasn’t one bit cold!
My tremendous enthusiasm for diving and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream kept me plenty warm in the cold North Pacific Ocean water. Also, I just made the one tank dive for about thirty minutes and got out of the water. Unlike Tom and Bob, who had so many students in the class to instruct and review, making their in-water time extensive and very cold. I guess that’s the difference between paying for the experience and being paid to give the experience. I’m pretty sure that Kathy didn’t get paid though.
The very next morning, my dive buddy in the class and I got up early and made a great dive under the Hoodsport Marina docks, right out in front of our Hood Canal Motel room. It was a great dive, with very clear water and lots of sunshine filtering down into the depths. Tom and Bob were somewhat surprised to learn later that we had been diving on our own already that morning. The openwater classes didn’t start in the morning until 10 am, and we had already been diving down at our motel at 8 o’clock. Anyway, we ended up going on a boat dive later that day up at Pleasant Harbor, which is about twenty miles north on Highway 101 from Hoodsport. The boat was called the Doris L, owned by Tom Hink. It was a silly dive right outside the small entrance to Pleasant Harbor and around the corner, but the experience of diving off a boat was excellent. I call the dive silly because we travelled such a short distance to get to the dive site. I would later learn that boat diving was the best way to reach all the best diving sites, some of which were just around the corner from the boat harbor entrance! Boat diving is the best way for a SCUBA diver to reach the best dive sites in any given area for undersea exploration.
From this early beginning introduction to SCUBA diving, I eventually became a N.A.U.I. certified Underwater Instructor. I worked with Tom Hemphill for many years teaching SCUBA diving to many students. Tom opened his own dive shop in Vancouver, Washington, in 1974. Many hundreds of people learned how to SCUBA dive safely and enjoyably thanks to Tom’s efforts and his love for SCUBA diving. I owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Hemphill and the great kindness and enthusiasm he extended to me, helping me get the right start in learning to SCUBA dive. For that I say, “Thank you very much, Tom! You did a great job!”