Welcome to episode 9 of the Gray NATO, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches.

I'm Jason Heaton.

And I'm James Stacy.

Today we're talking about how we got our start in diving, why we love it, the gear we use, and some of our best dives.

Later we've got a healthy dose of Q&A. Both of us are back from some adventuring and you better believe we've got some fully fresh final notes.

Today's topic is diving, you know, we wanted to give some background on how we got into diving and some of the things we learned along the way.

Jason's been diving for years. I've been diving for a few years.

You know, what we're really hoping to do is I think encourage people to give it a try.

I think it's an under-appreciated sport. I think there's a handful of people who have kind of an experience with it and a few that have tried it

maybe on vacation and then a whole group of people who think that it you know it looks

interesting in video or things like that but then don't actually give it a try and I'm hoping we could talk some of you off the couch and

Into your first dive experience. Jason let's talk about how you got into diving you've been been diving for many years. Where did it start?

Yeah, I've been diving about 10 years. I got my start in 2006. I've got about probably upwards of 400

dives now.

Initially, I was one of those people that, you know, kind of was always intrigued by diving and I loved watching videos, looking at photos, reading books about it, but I just wasn't, I don't know that I was confident enough to kind of make the move. I thought that it was going to be a pretty intimidating sport to get into.

I think it kind of is an intimidating sport to get into.

But you know, the great tie-in, I think, especially for our listeners and for this show,

is that the reason I actually got into diving was because I had an interest in dive watches. You know as I've talked about in

earlier episodes I got my start in watches when I was back in high school I got a

SACO dive watch and then back in 2006 I picked up my first I guess what you call high-end dive watch which was the

omega planet ocean and I just felt like if I own that watch it was like I was looking

at that watch and I thought I really need to learn how to dive if I'm going to wear this thing.

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