Kids Sea Camp

By Staff

updated 7:45 p.m. ET July 19, 2005

It started as a simple concept: If you have kids and love to dive, then you should have a place to go have your cake and eat it too. Thus was born Kids Sea Camp.

If I could save time in a bottle, as the old Jim Croce lyrics go, I would like to capture and savor some of the special moments spent at Curaçao Kids Sea Camps — and not just under one generic label that would blur with the passing years, but specific moments that would coax a smile and a knowing nod just with the memory.

The first moment would be the first Kids Sea Camp almost five years ago, when my daughter Melissa was just 6. We arrived at Lions Dive Resort in Curaçao, with the inaugural group of Kids Sea Camp families, just in time for supper. There in the middle of it all was Margo Chornlesky, who originated the idea of the camp. She had two young children, Robbie and Jennifer, owned a travel company and loved to dive. She wanted to be able to have it all when she traveled, to go on a trip where she could dive and do something meaningful for her kids. She wondered if there were other families, single parents and grandparents who wanted to juggle underwater adventures, adult time and kids without dropping anything.

Well, there we were, the test group of 26 kids with relations in tow, and we were about to find out!

That first evening, the managers of Lions Dive Resort weren’t quite sure how to plan the seating for our group. As we stood there deliberating over which families would sit where, the kids all gravitated to the table closest to the water and bonded the minute the shackles of shoes and socks came off. The adults shrugged their shoulders, grabbed a chair and bonded over the first cocktail.

The folks at Ocean Encounters Dive Center — a PADI 5-Star IDC— and Curaçao Sea Aquarium had spent the year communicating with Margo and each other about every detail. They felt that a breakfast buffet would work best: Counselors would connect with the kids there and by 8:30, after the sun-screened hugs, the dive boats would show up for the parents with everyone good to go.

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