Having finished up with the ADAS Scientific diver course in Hobart I’m off on my next big adventure. This one is a big one and I’m really excited about it. I have winged my way over to Europe where I will be until late October before heading over stateside to the U.S.A.

Arriving at my first destination of Gothenburg, Sweden on Friday I have been here for three days staying with the fantastic hosts, Delia Ní Chíobháin and her partner Johan Enqvist. For those of you who don’t know them, Delia was the 2006 OWU European Scholar and is currently working at Bohuslans museum at the commercial underwater archeology unit, which covers the West coast of Sweden, and Johan is the co-founder of the dive company Oxygene.

Johan had arranged for Delia and myself to visit Poseidon, have a look behind the scenes at the production of the Poseidon products and also take Poseidon’s Discovery rebreather for a spin! Something that I was very excited about. The Discovery is what Poseidon is marketing as the first recreational rebreather. Let me tell you, having used it, it’s extremely user friendly,  a push of a button and the unit performs all the necessary pre-dive checks for you. It’s very impressive.

Our host for the day was Sverker Palmgrad, Poseidon’s Sales and Area Manager who very kindly took a lot of time out of his day to give us an enthralling run down on Poseidon’s history, show us around, and gave us an in-depth look at the Discovery.

The Poseidon building has it’s own diver testing facility in the form of an indoor pool. We soon found ourselves geared up and ready to jump in with the unit. It was my first time using a rebreather and I absolutely loved it! Initially it feels very different breathing underwater on a closed circuit system compared to conventional SCUBA. The sensation of gliding through the water with no noisy bubbles and no longer being able to regulate ones buoyancy with your lungs was strange at first. From the start of using the unit I felt very comfortable and was soon doing laps of the pool not wanting to give it over to Delia for go. I really enjoyed the experience. Delia who didn’t try the unit on her scholarship year was as excited as I was to give it a try.

After the visit to Poseidon Delia and I wandered the streets of Gothenburg taking in some of the sight of this beautiful Swedish city.