Hopefully, I can do this in the scope of a definition that will be seen as a constructive post, and a good thing
This term was NOT coined to refer to any divers outside of the Cave diving world, a place where every dive is potentially far more life-threatening that even the most advanced dive for a recreational diver....which also means, that if you are not aware of this context, the ideas expressed may seem to be "over the top"...But, in Cave diving, the description really does take on an entirely different meaning....
so please try reading this definition with Cave diving in mind..
A Stroke by George Irvine definitiion: "
The term 'stroke' refers to someone who, knowing there is a better system, chooses to dive in a less than optimal way. It applies to those instructors who encourage students (who know no better) to exercise Personal Preference, in order to sell more equipment; it applies to those who don't plan their dives; those who dive beyond their abilities; who dive deep on air; who take unnecessary risks; who do big dives using unfamiliar gear; who's only reason for diving is depth. Diving with strokes moves us into an area where our safety is no longer in our own hands. Strokes are sometimes highly 'qualified'. Often they seem very confident - usually because they have no concept of the danger they are getting themselves, and you, into." George M Irvine III
The birth of the term, Doing it right, came from a reporter interviewing George, and asking why so many cave diving groups around North florida were dying like flies, and yet the WKPP was enjoying a zero death record, with the biggest cave dives on the planet....George answered, that his WKPP divers were not dying, because they were "Doing it Right"....clearly suggesting that the cave divers that were dying, were making major mistakes...and among these, things like diving without a line, diving with insufficient gas or the wrong gas, diving with no buoyancy and trim which causes silt-outs, and then getting your self into a virtual blackout, being lost, and dying from this....and on and on....DIR had the directives to prevent each of the death scenarios.
The Stroke term was within this conveyance.....for a Cave Diver to avoid a death in-cave, they had several things they needed to avoid....Since certain types of people can cause major problems on a Cave dive, it was important to describe them--to paint their picture, so cave divers could SEE this person, and avoid death due to their bad ideas, bad behaviors, etc.
In today's parlance, and for Recreational diving---Can we use the word Stroke, and should we? My answer for this......
Very rarely is "Stroke" useful for Recreational Diving descriptors, and the reasons follow:
- Where Caves will try to kill you on almost every dive( metaphorically).....Recreational diving allows dozens of mistakes daily, and even when some of the most foolish mistakes are made, such as running OOA, the recreational diver can always run straight up to the surface with a free ascent, and mitigate the mistake with a minimum of fuss--the same mistake in Cave would have been a death sentence.
- Other divers with behaviors that would be deemed bad or dangerous by DIR Cave divers for Cave diving, would NOT be offering the SAME threats in open water dives to potential buddies. In fact, most of the Stroke behaviors for the cave diving world, would at worst generate sloppy diving issues or some Free Ascents without catastrophic incidents, most of the time -- when this occurs in an open water, recreational dive area. So the question becomes, if the Stroke behavior does not really create the jeopardies in Open water that the term was useful for in Cave Diving, then would it not be mis-used for open water diving, for most instances. My personal experience has been that in the last decade, I have only seen one person I would label a stroke, and the Stroke word was really NOT useful in it's original context for this person---I was actually misusing the adjective, because this individual was very UNLIKELY to actually kill any open water divers with the behaviors they were promoting. Without the Dire Consequences for certain behaviors, the Stroke designation is a complete exaggeration, unfounded, and unfair for most uses.
- There are a few people that GLORY in being perceived as a Stroke....they actually like the notoriety, and as a form of contrarian in their daily lives, they enjoy saying and doing things that are unsettling to others....I believe the word Stroke can be used for some of these divers, and that they would enjoy the application of it....AND, that it should be clear enough that the actual meaning of the word for this type of person will not be met--that it is like saying that "Dan viciously tore into the Strip Steak, as hungry as he was"....and clearly, vicious was not possible for the actual eating behavior, nor was tearing into it.....however, for a conversation among friends, where creativity in expressing yourself ( being amusing) is deemed desirable, I think most should agree that in some limited situations, there will be places this Stroke Adjective can be used for amusement, and it will do no damage to anyone---and it will NOT be taken to mean what it was originally meant to mean.
- I think this "Definition" of mine, is the key to understanding the word Stroke, and that I have every right to re-define it here on Scubaboard--re-define it for ALL members that have a different understanding or definition of it....and since I was the most prolific of the original people conveying what DIR meant to the recreational divers of the world( on rec. scuba) and since I got all my understandings of DIR and uses of descriptors like STROKE from my Dive Buddy George Irvine--who had tasked me with disseminating DIR to the "unwashed masses of rec. scuba ( that's a mis-use to be amusing, get it? ) .... because of all this, it should be easy enough for most here on SB to see the truth in this, and it should also be clear that when I used this adjective to describe one of all of our favorite CONTRARIANS, it should NOT have been seen as me trying to make an insult.....
