Geoff Woodhead - Dive Master

I was a young kid in the 70’s brought up with lunch time programs like Primus a diver come detective who always got the bad guy. Inner Space with William Shatner and his explanations of the deep, these are what I fed my mind on and other famous divers of the time. These early examples of escapism had such a strong influence on me that I swore I would become a diver one day and experience all the Kudos that goes with it.

From the early nineties I dived solo and unqualified after reading the BSAC manual back to front dozens of time with old kit. Then eventually I decided to qualify with the SAA then PADI to Pro level in the mid nineties. I also worked illegally with a team of Commercial divers for a while and ended up as a shellfish diver on the West Coast of Scotland.

I was an adrenalin junky and non conformist but getting married and having two great kids gave me a sense of responsibility.

My other love has been aircraft I have dabbled with flying and freefall parachuting for a few years. I always wanted to find some untouched warbird with the skeleton and goggles intact but get real that never happens.

So combining my love of diving and aircraft that is were I have ended up looking and researching the last resting places of some great warbirds.

I  now teach computer programs  so have little time for diving so spend most of my holidays on Warbird location projects.

I have dived mostly the East coast of England and nearly all the English lakes.

The most memorable set of dives are Truck Lagoon in Micronesia on the The San Francisco Maru a cargo ship full of munitions mines and torpedoes and the The I-169 Submarine that was lost with all hands due to a failure of one submariners leaving a valve open.

I dived three ships in Scapa including one very naughty night dive in the early hours on a look and don’t touch dive on one of England’s great battle ships.

This was such a buzz diving were you shouldn’t at night solo with just a mate and a small inflaty for boat cover.