SCUBA Diving

[RabbieBurns]

Anyone done it?

 

Just completed day 1 of my 3 day PADI Open Water Certification.. All pool and theory work today, but 4 dives in the sea over the next 2 days.

 

Its really good fun

[Bezwick]

Yeah got mine in koh Tao thailand last august. Great fun.

[HarryMonkey]

Yep, been a BSAC qualified diver for 5 years now. Chair of the local dive club and working hard towards my instructor qualification.

 

Goning to Stoney Cove on Sunday and then off to the Farnes in a few weeks and if anyone tells you that UK diving is no fun then take a look it this video ...

 

http://www.sn2000.co.uk/farnes-2006.wmv

[plexer]

Advanced open water here, did open water at gildy with a school group about 9 years ago now then did advanced in majorca with an awesome instructor.

 

Haven't dived for far too long now but family and finances are the main reason.

 

Love being underwater.

 

Ben

[RabbieBurns]

what kind of suit do you use for the UK waters?

[plexer]

I'm sure diving in the uk is a lot more fun in a dry suit than semi dry.

 

Ben

[Haptic]

Yeah got mine in koh Tao thailand last august. Great fun.

 

Funny you should say that, that's where my friends and I did some diving...Phoenix Diving by any chance??

 

Loved it, great place to do it too....I'm aiming to obtain PADI as soon as I get the chance

 

Joe

[titch]

I use a winter wetsuit here in the UK 5/3mm does me most of the year round although we never go below 10m as our equipment is a bit "ghetto". In the uk we go under swanage pier and also around durdledoor on the south coast. Both nice easy dives. I finished by padi in kao tao by coincidence...think the dive school was called big bubble on the south of the island. Started to do my advanced but never finished it. Is worth doing though as it means you can do night dives and go deeper (although to be honest I prefer to be shallow as you get a longer dive).

 

I would recomend doing a proper course to anyone despite being expensive...gives you alot more confidence especially when you turn up to some shack in asia somewhere who are the only dive company about. At least you know what to look out for!

[HarryMonkey]

I'm sure diving in the uk is a lot more fun in a dry suit than semi dry.

 

Ben

 

Absolutely. I wouldn't even dream of using a semi dry. ... Drysuit all the way for me. I did once do a dive in Stoney Cove with a wetsuit but it was August and the water was a balmy 16 degrees.

[HarryMonkey]

Funny you should say that, that's where my friends and I did some diving...Phoenix Diving by any chance??

 

Loved it, great place to do it too....I'm aiming to obtain PADI as soon as I get the chance

 

Joe

 

Why PADI? Whereabouts in Northants are you Joe? Why not come over to us in Towcester and do your qualification there?

[MYK-IT]

I started this 'won't cost you much!' hobby 2 months ago.

 

Joined local BSAC club, qualified as Ocean Diver and currently progressing towards Sports Diver.

 

I use a 5mm Compressed Neoprene Drysuit (with thermal undersuit), nice and cosy!

[plexer]

Started to do my advanced but never finished it. Is worth doing though as it means you can do night dives and go deeper (although to be honest I prefer to be shallow as you get a longer dive).

 

Not neccessarily as it depends on what bits you do for the advanced open water.

 

Ben

[Haptic]

HI Steve,

I thought PADI was the qualification to go for??

 

If not I'm certainly up for learning about others, I'm based in Kettering

[TechMonkey]

Got my BSAC quals in Canada and then regrettably haven't done any over here. Do have a 7mm semi dry.

Need to find a club nearby but the local PADI I didn't feel right with and there are no BSAC local to me. Need to get motivated and start again.

[plexer]

HI Steve,

I thought PADI was the qualification to go for??

 

If not I'm certainly up for learning about others, I'm based in Kettering

 

Lets not start a PDAI vs BSAC war bit like PC vs APPLE

 

Ben

[ozydave]

Been a bsac instructor for 10 years and a Padi assistant instructor for 5 years.

Done very little warm water diving, prefer to dive in the UK as wreck is my thing.

This will start something....

As an instructor of bsac and padi I much prefer to teach bsac. Just think it makes for a more complete well rounded diver when you out on your own.getting your open water in the nice clear warm water then returning to the uk to dive is a recipe for trouble. Not to say padi is bad just horses for courses

[pete]

Dived all round Oz when over there for a year. Really good fun and make sure you get up the West Coast to HMS Swan, Ningaloo and down Freemantle way.

 

@RabbieBurns

Where you learning? ProDive Sydneycity or out in Manly? (If Tom Bosson's still there, ask him about his power/telegraph poles).

 

I did PADI. Mainly because the impression from PADI was "you pay, you dive, you go to the pub/home", whereas BSAC (or the one I had exposure to) was a bit, "you pay, you dive and then you help us clean the RIB and mow the grass outside the boat shed".

 

PADI probably does produce a larger percentage of rubbish* divers since there's a lot of warm-water tourist churn whereas BSAC is more freezing cold brickpits with rusty helicopters - you have to really *want* to dive to go BSAC, whereas PADI can be spur-of-the-moment.

 

*We rescued a random Frenchman from another boat who'd managed to mount his regulator backwards on the tank (so the screw is pushed into the port, rather than the notch on the other side), jump into the water while not noticing the hissing air and then plunge to the bottom because he was overweighted while trying to breath through a regulator with a clear path to seawater. We avoided that dive shop afterwards.

[RabbieBurns]

Thats me completed the first 2 open water dives.. Air/surface temp 22C and bottom temp 18C.. Used to swim in the north sea in summer and come out blue so this makes a nice change.

 

@pete: yeh manly, its about a 10 minute walk from my house.. theres a whole heap of folks there just now for the busy season, a lot of new arrivals from UK/US/CA etc but ill ask. Still not made it to WA its on the to-do list...

 

Had a google, is BSAC the British Sub-Aqua Club ? If so, is it just a UK thing or are the qualifications internationally recognised?

 

Signed up for 2 boat dives for next week now as well.. think I may as well just do the advanced course when Im done too..

[HarryMonkey]

I did PADI. Mainly because the impression from PADI was "you pay, you dive, you go to the pub/home", whereas BSAC (or the one I had exposure to) was a bit, "you pay, you dive and then you help us clean the RIB and mow the grass outside the boat shed".

 

PADI probably does produce a larger percentage of rubbish* divers since there's a lot of warm-water tourist churn whereas BSAC is more freezing cold brickpits with rusty helicopters - you have to really *want* to dive to go BSAC, whereas PADI can be spur-of-the-moment.

 

 

Then I'm afraid you got told wrong. I'm not gonna get into a BSAC v PADI war as there are good and bad in both. I've dived the warm waters of the Red Sea as well as here in the UK. The big advantage for me to dive with BSAC is that I have a whole host of people that I know, that I can dive with every weekend of the year whether that's planned or spur of the moment. And if being part of a club means I can have a weekend's diving for £50, then I don't mind hosing down one of the two £20,000 club RIBs at the end of the weekend. I dive because I want to dive, because I enjoy it. I will be qualified as an instructor by this time next year (hopefully) and will be able to give something back to the sport that I love.

 

 

Had a google, is BSAC the British Sub-Aqua Club ? If so, is it just a UK thing or are the qualifications internationally recognised?

 

 

BSAC is the biggest dive club in the world and is the sport's governing body here in the UK. The qualifications are slightly harder to get ... requires more open water dives in a variety of conditions, however, they are recognised all over the world.

 

 

If you can dive in the UK, then you can dive more or less anywhere. Don't forget, for both BSAC and PADI, you are only qualified to dive in the conditions encountered during your training. So if that is lilmited to a wetsuit in warm water then that's all you can dive. Whereas a cold brick pit in February covers me to dive in pretty much any water that I come accross.

[plexer]

What Steve said

 

Thats why when I did mine I did the open water in the uk and then did advanced whilst on a 2 week holiday, learning to scuba is something I'd always wanted to do and got the opportunity with the previous school I worked at to do it.

 

Cold quarry, semi dry, lovely

 

But now I want a nice dry suit to keep me warm

 

Ben

[nikaso]

I did my Advanced Open Water with PADI back in 01 out in the gulf of oman, warm water, fantastic sealife with my favourite being on the night dive the instructor took us to the bottom and got us all kneeling and then told us to turn our torches off, then he showed us what bio-luminescent plankton can do by writing his name underwater......absolutely breathtaking, cue 5 minutes of us like kids on bonfire night with sparklers. The boat on the way out and back had an electric blue wake from the plankton as well, it was truly great.

 

Quick PADI & BSAC anecdote, my then girlfriend was BSAC trained so we used to have friendly banter, my PADI instructor used to say the problem with BSAC is you end up having to spend 5 hours training before they let you snorkel (obviously tongue in cheek), I did get the impression that PADI was more accessible for the interested individual and delivered a nicely packaged qualification. The impression I got from BSAC was the training was longer and more thorough and would probably make you a more rounded diver but when you are on holiday you don't necessarily want (or need) to be as capable so long as you are aware of the limitations of your training. I certainly wouldn't jump in the water over here without training in cold water.

[HarryMonkey]

Quick PADI & BSAC anecdote, my then girlfriend was BSAC trained so we used to have friendly banter, my PADI instructor used to say the problem with BSAC is you end up having to spend 5 hours training before they let you snorkel (obviously tongue in cheek), I did get the impression that PADI was more accessible for the interested individual and delivered a nicely packaged qualification. The impression I got from BSAC was the training was longer and more thorough and would probably make you a more rounded diver but when you are on holiday you don't necessarily want (or need) to be as capable so long as you are aware of the limitations of your training. I certainly wouldn't jump in the water over here without training in cold water.

 

I wouldn't want to jump in the water anywhere with anyone as my buddy who hadn't been trained to bring me to the surface, administer rescue breaths and get me out of the water should anything go wrong. Things can go wrong at any time through no fault of your own or your buddy and if you haven't the experience or training to deal with it then it can get a whole lot worse very quickly.

[contink]

Waiting for my income to improve a bit so I can rejoin my club and get back in the water again...

 

BSAC Sports diver since about 2000 and Farnes was without doubt one of my favourite dives, especially since a grey seal yearling decided he liked my dry suit colours so much that he was going to hug my leg... Blown away moment I will never forget... Fascinating watching your bubbles being dive bombed by cormorants (think those were the birds) as well..

 

*goes all dreamy*

[HarryMonkey]

Waiting for my income to improve a bit so I can rejoin my club and get back in the water again...

 

BSAC Sports diver since about 2000 and Farnes was without doubt one of my favourite dives, especially since a grey seal yearling decided he liked my dry suit colours so much that he was going to hug my leg... Blown away moment I will never forget... Fascinating watching your bubbles being dive bombed by cormorants (think those were the birds) as well..

 

*goes all dreamy*

 

Going back there in a a few weeks. Did you look at the video in Post #3? ... might just bring back a few memories.

[nikaso]

I wouldn't want to jump in the water anywhere with anyone as my buddy who hadn't been trained to bring me to the surface, administer rescue breaths and get me out of the water should anything go wrong. Things can go wrong at any time through no fault of your own or your buddy and if you haven't the experience or training to deal with it then it can get a whole lot worse very quickly.

 

From what I remember of my course we covered those things but like I said I would certainly do refresher training.