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31 August 2012 - Upcoming benefit dive for STARS International

S.T.A.R.S. Benefit Dive Charter on the Len-der

September 16th from 8 am – 2 pm, Milwaukee, WI (Jerry’s Dock). S.T.A.R.S. International has been graced with a very generous donation from Capt. Tony Bach and the owner of the Len-der dive charters with 11 seats for a planned 2-tank shipwreck dive (Car Ferry Milwaukee, Willie) with conditions permitting.  Cost of this benefit dive outing is $100 per seat, and it will be led by Duane Johnson.  A $50 deposit will hold your spot with the balance payable the day of the dives.  As an added bonus, all participants will receive a complimentary deli sandwich and soft drinks following the dive courtesy of S.T.A.R.S. International.  Please contact Duane at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   for specifics, to learn about this event, and how S.T.A.R.S. is developing tomorrow’s Guardians of the Seas from underprivileged youth.

11 July 2012

Tonight's the night that ... we have EFR/AED training.  So there will be no regularly scheduled meeting.  The training session will begin at 5:30pm and end at 10pm.  If you have not signed up for it, you are welcome to attend and observe but you will not be able to participate or be certified.

Our Hooky dive is next Wednesday, the 18th, at 10am at Haigh.  This will be a 3 dive day, morning, afternoon and night.  Bring a lunch and there will be grilling for dinner.

See you all next month!

9 May 2012

Tonight's the night ... we meet!  Doc Adelman is our guest speaker, so come tonight to our meeting at 7:30pm and hear him present.  We hope to see you all there!

Doc has added a certification to his list of certs, he is now a certified internet diver and regalled us with humorous photos related to SCUBA diving from the internet.

27 March 2012

Greetings Fellow Divers!  This has been an exciting month for the club.  We had an excellent Cave Diving presentation at our monthly meeting followed by two  dive trips.  The first to the Keys and the second to wonderfully exotic Brazil.  We will have to wait for a report on the Keys but here in Brazil we had strange conditions.  Diving where we normally would have 30 meters of visibility and water temps between 20 to 25*C we have visibility of less than 10 meters and water temps of ... 15*C.  Since most people here don't use drysuits and only a few have semi-dry or thicker than 5mm this is a BIG issue.  More news soon ...

15 February 2012

Once again we will be visiting the show.  Are you planning on attending the Our World Underwater Film Festival, Saturday, Feb 18, 2012? If so, please join us for dinner at the American Grill in the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel. Dinner reservations are for 5:30 PM. The film festival stars at 7:00pm. The restaurant has agreed to individual checks.  Club members, if you would like to attend this dinner, please RSVP to Mary.  Non-members please use the contact us page so we can make appropriate reservations.

On a totally different note, our very own Kevin Vaughn, past president of the club, has received a very prestigious award from the President-

This is due to his founding and supporting STARS International.  A big congrats from all of us to you Kevin!

21 December 2011 -

We hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful weather.  Hopefully many of you attended our Holiday party on the 16th and had a good time.   We will hopefully get some photos posted soon.  I was in Brazil enjoying 29^oC sunny days.  For the metrically challenged that was in the 80's F.  It was a dirty job but somebody had to do it.

We hope to see all of you at our January meeting!

10 September 2011 -

Keep the 14th open for our club meeting.  We are very fortunate to have reknown underwater photographer Lynn Funkhouser as our guest speaker. 

So please join us at our meeting and welcome her on Wednesday, Sept. 14th at 7:30pm at Mr. Beef and Pizza, 1796 Elmhurst Rd., Mt. Prospect.  See you there!

10 June 2011-

Greetings!  Please note the NEW Forum area of the website.  As a member you can create topics or reply to existing ones.  Hopefully this will become a good place for us to make plans, sell excess equipment, etc.  I created a topic regarding a possible club trip for next year to the USVI.  Let's hear your thoughts!

And tomorrow, 11 June, we have the penultimate pool sessions for STARS in Kenosha.  Just waiting to see how cheap the gas will be!  And working with the kids of course. :)  It has been quite a positive experience doing this, hopefully we can continue with this in the future and grow STARS.

10 April 2011-

Yesterday many members of this club, and others, participated in the inaugural water session for STARS International Kenosha.   In this session we fitted each participant with their own mask, snorkel and fins and then taught them how to kick with fins.  They might have been a little bored at this point but we quickly moved them into snorkeling on the surface.  Which lead directly to the next step, clearing the snorkel.  To reinforce and practice this technique we threw some objects around the pool and had each participant swim around, collect them and return to their adult partner.  The next session is in a couple weeks, when the students will use SCUBA equipment for the first time!  By the way, for Illinois people, the gas station next to the High School, gas was $3.77/gal.  It almost pays to go there and help just to save $0.40/gal. :)  Regardless of the fuel savings, it is fun to do and the kids are excited but muted at times, as any of us with teenagers understand.  My student partner maintained his cool but when I asked him directly he was having fun and I could see the kids together enjoyed the day.  While committing to the full program is a big committment, if you are interested in helping out on occasion, let us know and we can try to work things out.  It is a feel good opportunity and only ~1 hour away.

It is a new season and we have redesigned our site.  Soon we will have the content we had before in a easier to update site so it will be more timely.  So keep coming back, let's see how high we can get that site visitor counter!

And it being prime SCUBA season in Chicago, we enjoyed seeing everyone at Our World Underwater -