PADI necessary hidden skills

[BoltSnap]

If you pay for my time, I would have to charge you enough to cover commercial liability insurance, HSE medical, and a whole host of other costs as providing diver training commercially in the U.K. is classed as work. My charge out rate is £2,500 per day, the same as when I get asked to ‘help’ when on holiday.

However, if you joined my BSAC Branch (£7.00 per year), BSAC fee (£70.50 per year) then your training is free.

I wasn't being facetious, I am serious. I'd like to be able to go diving in the UK when I visit there. I can join a BSAC club and pay the fees but I need to have a concrete schedule for the training/orientation if I do it.

 

[BlueTrin]

What's the cost of membership?

It depends of the club.

Basically you have to contact them and ask them.

Clubs are usually non profit organisations run by volunteers. Depending of the club they may ask you to contribute more than money if there is a need.

The costs are usually used for a selection of the following:

• Renting a few hours at a local pool every month so you can train/practice
• Buy equipment so you can train new divers
• Air fills/moving the cylinders
• Some large clubs have their own RHIB

I would say it’s usually around £150-£200 a year for London clubs. Around £50 goes to the main branch of BSAC, the rest to your club.

The main advantages of joining a club are:

• you get to access the pool every week for 1 hour
• you can have additional training whenever it is possible
• the club will organise dives regularly and you’ll get to dive with the same people
• you get to meet with a lot of friendly scuba divers which makes it easier to organise your own dives when you need buddies

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I've seen enough of them panicking during a free descent in the blue without reference.

Seeking clarification, but what reference do bad viz divers have in comparison?

I remember my first dive trip off Molokini's back wall. "I can see the bottom 200 feet below!" lol

 

[jborg]

I haven't had the opportunity to dive in deep, blue water yet (newish diver and then pandemic travel moratorium...) but I've done a lot of blue water sailing. There's a special kind of vertigo-like feeling when looking down into thousands of meters of ocean that just ends in blue and more blue. Perhaps that's the feeling, not lack of reference per se. (Splashing in dark, low viz murkiness is cozy, comparatively.)

 

[TMHeimer]

Interesting. Up here, if you attend a formal club class, you pay for it. On a non-profit basis, but the instructors are compensated for their time. And when you've graduated you go diving with your clubmates.

On a strictly personal note, I probably wouldn't appreciate if my membership dues went to pay for a n00b's 1* class. I'd happily dive with them, but I'm not particularly motivated for paying for their training to be able to dive with me. I guess that just shows how things are different around the world.

Sounds somewhat similar to U.S./Canada, except the classes aren't done by clubs. There are clubs of course for certified divers, but they don't get involved with training new divers. I wouldn't join a BSAC club with all the requirements. Then again, I wouldn't join one here either. Whatever works.

We have freinds who do that Habitat (?) deal where they go to a place that has been wrecked (hurricane?) and work on re-building homes, etc. They do get a day or 2 off to relax, but do pay the entire cost of their trip. I may consider doing that deal, but not if I'm paying to be working. I suppose I'm a bit selfish. I wouldn't want to pay for a dive club membership and have work (other than obviously with my own gear, etc.) and teaching responsibilities as well.

 

[Esprise Me]

It depends of the club.

Basically you have to contact them and ask them.

Clubs are usually non profit organisations run by volunteers. Depending of the club they may ask you to contribute more than money if there is a need.

The costs are usually used for a selection of the following:

• Renting a few hours at a local pool every month so you can train/practice
• Buy equipment so you can train new divers
• Air fills/moving the cylinders
• Some large clubs have their own RHIB

I would say it’s usually around £150-£200 a year for London clubs. Around £50 goes to the main branch of BSAC, the rest to your club.

The main advantages of joining a club are:

• you get to access the pool every week for 1 hour
• you can have additional training whenever it is possible
• the club will organise dives regularly and you’ll get to dive with the same people
• you get to meet with a lot of friendly scuba divers which makes it easier to organise your own dives when you need buddies

Sounds like a pretty good deal for those who are short on cash, long on time and energy, and want to dive a lot. Maybe not such a great deal for less frequent divers, or those who have demanding jobs that pay well but leave little free time to relax--perhaps a more common complaint in the US than in the UK?

 

[Edward3c]

I wasn't being facetious, I am serious. I'd like to be able to go diving in the UK when I visit there. I can join a BSAC club and pay the fees but I need to have a concrete schedule for the training/orientation if I do it.

As a qualified diver there is no requirement to do formal training, you just dive on your current qualification. As for joining a club to dive it’s (£70 BSAC) and whatever the branch charges (anything from £7 to £350).

An extract from the BSAC website:

• Invite the potential new member to ‘road test’ your club by joining a club diving day/trip (if their qualifications are valid). Also, invite them to borrow dive kit, if needed, from the club. You are covered by your third party liability for your guest diver to join you as long as:
  - They are visiting with a view to joining your club/BSAC (if they have no intention of joining they would not be covered).
  - In addition, you are currently covered for your guest divers liability towards you but this is restricted to seven visits in any one insurance year.
  Do you still have a third party liability insurance question relating to guest divers? Email wendym@bsac.com or call +44 (0) 151 350 6218 for advice.

 

[Miyaru]

Seeking clarification, but what reference do bad viz divers have in comparison?

I remember my first dive trip off Molokini's back wall. "I can see the bottom 200 feet below!" lol

Quite a lot of low-viz experienced divers are used to determining descent speed by looking at particles floating in the water, or by simply following a slope.
I remember briefing a group of instructors (!) to do a negative entry and drop as fast as possible below 25m, otherwise they'd overshoot the divesite in the strong current (Ari atol, Maldives). They overshot the site three times in a row. After getting back on the boat again and again, jump four was successful.

Determining depth and distance in crystal clear water can be overwhelming when combined with a strong current. Especially when you see nothing but blue during descent in all directions. The experience you have until then, turns out to be of little value in a totally different environment.

For some reason, colder seems to be better. Many instructors, teaching in the cold-water areas, look down on the tropical holiday divers and regard the OW course in the tropics as useless. One reason is that the course was done in 4-5 days. The OW courses I taught in the Maldives were 9 dives of 60 minutes. That's 540 minutes of in-water experience.
The water temperature here is too cold for 1-hour dives, unless you bought your own perfect fitting wetsuit halfway through the course. And the 1-hour pool session are usually 45 minutes of in-water experience. And is 1 hour per week of diving better than 2x 1 hour each day?

The only competition element in diving should the amount of fun you have. Especially in the beginning.

 

[BlueTrin]

Sounds like a pretty good deal for those who are short on cash, long on time and energy, and want to dive a lot. Maybe not such a great deal for less frequent divers, or those who have demanding jobs that pay well but leave little free time to relax--perhaps a more common complaint in the US than in the UK?

I think your remark is very valid: you probably want to dive fairly frequently, locally and/or want the social aspect to make the most of the club.

I agree that wanting to do some local diving is a good reason to join a BSAC club: they usually run a calendar of dive trips for the year and most dive trips are local. In my experience, the local BSAC club trips are often cheaper than a similar trip you’d book with a dive shop, probably because the organiser is a volunteer. As an added bonus, you get to dive with your club buddies instead of random people.

There are as well SSI/PADI dive shops in the UK. From my experience people who are infrequent divers (for example wanting to get certified before to go to Thailand to dive) tend to get certified with these shops.

Myself, I did my OW and AOW with PADI, I did not know about BSAC until I looked into doing some UK diving. If you google “scuba diving certification London”, the first page is all PADI shops.

However, without joining a BSAC club, I would not have met so many local divers and I would have missed out on a lot of knowledge about the sites and charter boats.

 

[KenGordon]

It isn't just the cost of the membership, you have to actively participate in the club's activities including filling tanks, cleaning the club's boat, etc. It is a major commitment of your time and effort and not simply paying a yearly fee and get training for free, there is a lot more involved in terms of time and efforts. Your diving day doesn't end when you arrive at the dock and get off the boat!

That depends. If diving off a club boat then yes, but my club mostly dives off of charter boats and we just go home and clean our own kit. Having a bunch of people get together and commit to having the whole boat means we can be in charge of the choice of site, be sure, subject to weather, that we have spaces and be diving with people we know.