Padi/ Bsac

[Custer]

DrSteve once bubbled...
That kind of answer is why I would never dive with you Custer. What started out as a serious discussion as degenerated. I am fed up of you calling into question every "anecdote" I relate. The information is out there and if you use the search function of scubaboard I am sure you will find it. The very diver who did the rescue at 200 feet is on this scuba board. I forget the exact thread but it was within the last 2 weeks and was either basic scuba discussions or deco discussing narcs. You search for it.

Sorry, guy, you don't get it. It's not my job to verify your anecdotal stories. If you refer to an incident as fact, you should already have a cite, not insist that I search though (maybe) two weeks of scubaboard posts to verify your allegations.

If you intend to present a coherent counterpoint, I shouldn't have to even ask for your cite.

You insinuated that BSAC has problems with PADI safety, and made grand allegations as to why. You should be able to prove that. It's not my job to make your point, it's yours.

DrSteve once bubbled...
So what would you do? You lose track of your buddy and watch them swimming down a wall. What do you do? This isn't a "more than my jobs worth" situation it is a life or death situation. You can let them sink and know they will die (going deeper won't help your narcing buddy), surface and get the DM, (xcept by that point poor buddy is dead of O2 poisoning but was mercifully unaware due to being narced off his gourd) or try and rescue them yourself until such point as you deem that you are putting yourself at too greater risk.

Couldn't tell you. Speaking as a PADI three day wonder, I not only have never lost a buddy, I've never even let one get into the slightest trouble. It's all in the PADI OW manual. All this disaster must be a BSAC thing.

No wonder they don't let you out of the pool for three months.

 

[GreenDiverDown]

Dang! I thought that this was gonna be an original PADI bashing thread but it's just the same ole' crapola.

The "profit>fun>safety" thing was pretty cool.

I'm glad that I now realize that this is in "fact" PADI's goal. I missed that part in my IDC. Now I can change my whole way of teaching. I'll be a stuffin my pockets with them thar profits. Yee hah! I'm gonna be a rich man!

And...

Does BSAC really crank out an equivalent PADI "master diver" in just three months of pool sessions? That sucks!

SA

 

[budgy]

I think the pool can be very boring and time consuming I also thought at first it was just a waste of time. We can take a person straight off the street and strap a cylinder on their back and assist them to swim a few lengths underwater, we call it try diving. Our training approach is different because most people who come in off the street looking to learn diving are not regular swimmers. The 3 months pool training of one hour week is +-12 hours and possibly taking them snorkeling on weekends gives a novice a chance to develop some water fitness. We expect novice divers to be able to snorkel swim continuously fully kitted for at least 100m on the face and 200m on the back. At first many novices find this hard, whilst for a regular diver its a stroll.
Pool sessions are not expensive most pools are owned and subsidised by the local town or county council and you rarely pay more than the nominal cost of entry generally less than $5 per session. Branches generally provide equipment, air and instruction inclusive in the annual membership fee. Clubs here are able to get grants and sponsorship for equipment, so membership lowers the cost of participation. Trainees get free use of club equipment and free air fills at our branch. Our master diver training assesments are not done in the pool, they are a continuation of basic training . Usually people don't have enough diving experience in their 1st year for master diver training and whilst very simple for regular divers those who don't dive regularly often won't have enough water fitness and skill to pass the assessments.

 

[Ian Wigg]

Can I chip in an just make the point that you can do the BSAC Ocean Diver course (AOW equivalent) in about 3 days if you use a BSAC School rather than go the club route.

 

[cdiver2]

BSAC will not work in the USA as it it the land of instant gratification, why work at something for weeks when you can put another dollar in and get it today.
Not a bash its just how it works if you look at the life styles of the US & GB they are worlds apart.

 

[diverbrian]

There is no way before I went to Providenciales that I would have even thought about anything going down to 200 ft. I was five ft. off the bottom on all my prior dives. My deepest dive prior to the Caribbean was about 70 ft. I had 35 dives before I did that and by that time, I was well qualified to rescue someone if I needed to.

In our Stress and Rescue course, they taught us to not make another victim. Control and plan the dive so that these things don't happen in the first place. Does this sound familar to anybody? Dive within the limits of the least experienced diver on the buddy team. I could go on. They didn't cover rescues that could put me personally at risk until I took my DiveCon (ie. coming up to assist a panicked diver who would love to grab your regulator and drown you) course.

We covered towing tired divers, recognizing trouble (and hence steering away from it), and dive planning in our open water course. Oh yes, the most important rule: ANY DIVER IN THE BUDDY TEAM CAN CALL THE DIVE ANY POINT IN TIME FOR ANY REASON (OR NOT EVEN GIVE A REASON). Does this sound inadequate? And my course didn't take three months. You see it is not "instant gratification". It is practicality. It took me a month and half to certify. The money was not important either. I work 50-60 hrs a week on nothing but off-shifts in the summer. I don't have the TIME for a three month open water course. Many people don't, so we make do and dive within our limits. We expand our limits as we continue diving if that is what we wish to do.

I say again, if you feel comfortable in a system that requires you to be in a pool for three months, be my guest. In the US, it wouldn't fly. Most of the divers here want to get in the water and learn by doing. Their money will go down the road to the store that teaches the class that they wish to take. I am glad that you are thrilled with your training if you went the BSAC route. I will assure you that I feel that my training and that the training that I assist with is not inadequate for our location either. The customers (other divers) are happy and have good buoyancy control or they do it again.

Bottom line is that the systems are different. What works for one diver or locale may not work for another. Let's quit bashing each other and try to help each out when they ask for OBJECTIVE advice. The difference in those systems may allow someone who is asking see something in a way that they didn't think of.

 

[divermasterB]

bermudaskink once bubbled...
I am a PADI Instructor and I just want to add a few points:

1) Most recreational diving takes place in tropical waters

Do you give your students PADI carribean open water diver cards?

If not, then you need to consider the fact that you are training divers to dive in open water anywhere. If you teach with the attitude your students will only be diving in tropical water, then you are doing them a great disservice.

 

[DrSteve]

IanWigg - There have been BSAC schools for a long time. They still teach the same syllabus as a branch, but full time.

DiverBrian - yes it makes perfect sense...plan the dive, dive the plan. If everything works no problem. If you are drilled then that kind of thing shouldn't be an issue, it'll be second nature, but the problem is it isn't. No one plans to have a diver emergency at 60 feet for 2 minutes follwed by resumption of normal diving.

I will relate to you diving in the Keys with about 30 feet of visability and 30 feet, with some random diver. I looked around and saw him. Looked again a few seconds later and he's not there, look around 360x360 and nothing. I surface...oh he decided he needed to surface and was back at the dive boat. With another (now ex) buddy who has well over 100 dives - planned our dive (navigation exercise with about 5 foot visability) and agreed we would stay above 20 feet. 20 feet should have been easy, that was the thermocline, you can at least feel it. We go down, and then whoosh he's heading for the very murky bottom, so much for our plan. I surfaced swearing a lot.

No amount of planning kept these two divers within the plan and as a result screwed up my diving. But I'll ask/say again, if you saw your buddy swimming down rapidly, would you really just let him go? Is your training that ingrained? Wouldn't you try? That's where that boring pool time comes in. I know I would let them go after a point, but if it was my wife my judgement might be very clouded.

 

[Ian Wigg]

DrSteve once bubbled...
IanWigg - There have been BSAC schools for a long time. They still teach the same syllabus as a branch, but full time. .

I know the BSAC schools have been around for some time but no one else had mentioned it so I thought I would make the point that you can actually get BSAC qualified (to AOW equivalent standard) in three days which in my opinion blurs the PADi/BSAC argument a bit.

Just as a point the sylabus , up until the introduction of the the new 'Ocean Diver' course, was slightly different between the schools and clubs. This was the reason for the introductuion of the new course to replace both the old school based 'Ocean Diver' and the club based 'Club Diver' entry level grades.

 

[DrSteve]

Ian - yup it does. I was centering my arguements around the Sports Diver cert (when I was with BSAC it was novice, SD, dive leader, advanced. When my dad did it, it was novice, 3rd, 2nd, 1st class diver with 1st class being almost unattainable).