Dave’s memorial plaque found again

What is lost can sometimes be found again…

What a surprise in Dave’s Cave when Gary and Carina took out a group of certified divers on a two tank dive trip on the west coast. For the second dive that morning, the group went to Dave’s Cave, aka Labyrinth or The Maze. The site is located by the seawall on the North-West of Rarotonga. It is a shallow dive through a series of large overhangs, swim throughs and smaller caverns underneath the surf-zone in front of Nikao Social Centre. Amongst the divers in the group was Craig, one of our regular snow escapee divers. Craig used to dive with Cook Island Divers back in the days.

Namesake of Dave’s Cave

On the boat in between the dives, Gary and Craig chatted about Dave Simms, who the dive site is named after. Dave used to work with Greg Wilson at Cook Island Divers in the nineties and Craig remembers him well. Sadly, Dave passed away in the late nineties. A memorial plaque was installed at Dave’s Cave in memory of it’s name giver.

Dave’s lost memorial plaque

Unfortunately, due to the location of the site and vulnerability to storms, Dave’s memorial plaque had disappeared since 2007, buried under a massive pile of rocks and sand. Gary and Craig talked about the plaque and how great it would be to find it again.

Memorial plaque found again

The dive was led by Gary. Towards the end of the dive, Gary pointed out the area in which the plaque was last seen nearly two decades ago. Literally a few seconds later after signalling to the divers, Gary looked ahead and spotted the plaque! He showed it to Craig and the other divers, who all couldn’t believe their eyes. Overfilled with joy, Gary and Craig then moved the plaque to a slightly less exposed, temporary resting area. Our team is now looking at finding a more secure spot to permanently install the memorial plaque. Hopefully the plaque will be more secure and withstand the elements in the future.