The Chamber Day 2014 Committee is pleased to present to you our Flying Dutchman 2014 artwork/logo for this year. This is what will go on the back off all the t-shirts of those who sign up for the Dutchman as well as it will be offered as a poster. The artwork this year is a collaboration between Mark Robman (who did the initial sketch work) and Julie Koh (who worked things into final form).

As usual, the Flying Dutchman is bad news but this time it's for nitrogen bubbles. The Dutchman has been rounding them up and has a load stashed in a cargo net. The bubbles - wearing their little N2 (the symbol for nitrogen) yellow bandanas - are being forced to slide down a rope (we wanted to try to have them walk the plank but couldn't get that to work artistically), where one of our skeleton Dutchman crew is herding them into our floating chamber, where they will be crushed into oblivion.

There's an educational lesson here too because in the real world, when a bent diver comes to our Chamber, it's the nitrogen bubbles in his blood that are causing the problems. So he's put inside our Chamber and pressured. The increased pressure crushes the offending bubbles back into solution where they can be safely dissipated through the natural off-gassing process.

We hope you'll give some thought to joining our Flying Dutchman "Lost Crew" this year, especially if you can't take the day off to go diving. Cost of the Dutchman is only $95, and that gets you the special Dutchman t-shirt (available only to those who join the Lost Crew of the Dutchman) as well as five daytime raffle tickets. Plus you'll get to come up with your own pirate name if you like (or you can use your "normal" name) which will go into a special skull design on the front of the t-shirt. And all proceeds go directly to our Chamber.

So if you can't take the day off to go diving or if there's a non-diver who would like to support the event, signing up for the Flying Dutchman is a great way to do that and help your Chamber at the same time. The Chamber opened for business in 1974 and for the last 40 years has provided unbending service (and yes, we mean that both ways) to the SoCal diving community. Now it's your turn to say thanks with your financial support. Go to www.chamberday.org to sign up for the Flying Dutchman and all the other aspects of Chamber Day 2014.