Picture yourself after a hard day at the office, you and your buddy strolling along Naama Bay promenade looking for some small respite from the stresses and strains of living in modern day society. You take a right, onto the beach, and as you stroll into the sea, the waves gently licking at your legs, you reach into your little rucksack and pull out a mask. You continue, deeper and deeper into the sea and reach into your little rucksack once more to pull out a couple of hoses, one with a mouthpiece attached. Placing this between your lips you continue onwards and downwards, slowly sinking from the sight of those left high and dry on the beach, to find peace and tranquility amongst the realms of the little fishes.

Are you crazy ? Are you James Bond ? Or even Reginald Perrin ?

No you’re Mini-Breathing. This latest invention of Englishman Robert Hart, straight from the old stable at the bottom of his Essex garden, promises to revolutionise the diving industry. Like all successful inventions, it’s simplicity makes you wonder why no one thought of it before. Let’s take it from the beginning shall we.

Bob was recovering from the anti-climatic millenium experience back in Febuary when he had what can only be described as a brainwave. Running an IDC centre in the UK with a contract at his local sports centre, he does a fair few try-dives in the pool. He found that apart from the logistics of running around with 12 litre cylinders and BCDs, the very look of all this heavy complicated equipment put quite a few people off trying out diving. Also, the fact that PADIs Bubblemaker programme has now opened up the underwater experience to 8 year olds, he was having problems finding XXXS BCDs and sourcing cylinders that were smaller than his new mini-clients.

The answer ? Within a month he’d packed a small cylinder and all the other paraphenalia into a little customer friendly rucksack which easily adjusts to fit any size of person. Thus Bob’s become quite literally your Uncle, enabling almost anyone to try out diving in the simplest, cheapest way possible and then decide to either take it further or stick quite happily with their limited experiences. This has already happened in many other forms of equipment orientated recreation by allowing people to cheaply try and enjoy many various sports without going the whole way. Yachting has its poor cousin windsurfing, powerboats have jetskis, ski-ing has snowboarding, and now diving has Mini-Breathing.

The Mini-B rucksack weighs in at a mere 8.5 kg, less than some peoples packed lunch, and comes complete with an air cylinder lasting up to 40 minutes in shallow water, a bouyancy bladder, demand valve, octopus and contents guage. All this is mounted on a piece of pvc board and stowed away inside a cute little backpack the size of an Essex girls handbag. There’s even enough room left for a spare pair of white stilletos.