Lunch and Dive Discussion

Hello everyone,

Last weekend I had lunch with my mom's friend's cousin and her husband. Yvonne and Calle live in Stockholm, so my mom's friend offered to get me in contact with them. It was great to meet them and explain what I've been doing in Sweden. Lunch was delicious, but I also learned a lot while there! Calle was in the Swedish Navy when he was younger, and he worked on a rescue-submarine, which is a little sub that can go down and attach to a larger submarine during emergencies. He had to scuba dive as part of his work with the navy, and he later worked in a dive shop.

It was great to see pictures and learn about navy diving. He also showed me a picture of these rescue-suits that people in a submarine can use to get to the surface. It's basically a dry-suit, and there's enough air inside for someone to breathe while going up to the surface, since the air expands as the person rises. So the person would go into a hatch-tunnel-thing (I don't know submarine terminology!) with the suit, then they'd fill the hatch with water, open the top, and the person swims up to the surface if there's an emergency to get out.

Back in 1990, Calle and his friends found a shipwreck (from within the last 100 years, so not Swedish cultural heritage) when one of his friends did research at the maritime archives. I believe he said the ship was built in the early 1900's and sank in the 1940's. They actually purchased the ship, since the insurance provider of the ship was still an existing company. Then he and his group of friends took a boat to the ship and salvaged some findings from the top and the first level down. I got to see pictures of some of their finds. What an interesting thing to do with your scuba diving friends!

In Yvonne and Calle's living room sits a copper diving helmet. Calle has used it before, but it was in use for about twenty years before he got it. I tried the helmet on, and boy, was it heavy! Of course, underwater, the weight wouldn't be an issue.

Me wearing Calle's copper dive helmet

At the end of the afternoon Yvonne showed me pictures of South Africa, since they lived there for a year. I got some good  South Africa diving suggestions from them, and it made me really excited to go to Cape Town! Of course, I'm excited for Egypt and Turkey before then, too. I still can't believe I have this opportunity to go to so many wonderful places.