Advanced Diver

How did I get to become an Advanced Diver?

It all started off really one lunchtime when I was trawling through the BSAC web site, when I found a section talking about the BSAC considering an 'Advanced Diver' to be fully trained. Hmmm, did this mean that all lower diving grades are considered to be only partially trained? Guess so.

I take the view that diving is one of the sports that I do where safety considerations and risk management are key in avoiding accidents and possible death or permanent disability. To this end I feel that everyone should take every opportunity for additional training in all aspects of diving to make our sport a safer one. The second reason for wanting to become an Advanced Diver, is so that I can run my own dives within the Club, without having to find another Advanced Diver to oversee my every move.

When the Club announced that it was going to run an Advanced Diver training course I signed up. It was only then that I realised some of the other trainees who had signed up were much more experienced divers than me. Oh well, lets see how it goes, I thought. In fact, I think our mixed bunch all learned from each other as well.

The classroom lectures all seemed to go OK. In fact I was quite surprised at the content of some lectures finding that they were just stating the obvious, but I guess the course has to cover all areas and make sure that nothing is missed out. As I come from a strong sailing background, the subjects of chart work, tides, boats, ropes, weather forecasting, etc., were all second nature for me. So all I had to do was swot up on all the diving, reading everything I could find.

Open water lessons came next. One particularly memorable drill was the mask clearing at 20m, not a real problem, but doing this in mid-February in the murky waters off Berry Head when the sea temperature is only 8°C is really something that has to be experienced. Various other rescue drills and incident management exercises followed.

The day of the theory test was upon us. How would we all fare with the ubiquitous BSAC multiple choice questions? You had to work through each question, think about it, and perhaps do some working out, think about it again and then see if your answer matched one of the five possible answers - if so, then good, if not then go back and work it out again. How did I do? Well I passed OK - had a bit of a problem on one question about a North Cardinal mark, but I blamed the long-winded way the question was written, and me not reading the question properly. The rest of the guys on the course all took the piss out of me for this, as being the sailor, this was the one question that I should have got right.

All OK so far, now just the dive marshalling to go. This is the bit that takes lots of motivation to get sorted. Trying to come up with plans for dives to unknown sites takes some thought, research, and lots of effort to go out and pull a plan together. I think this is one of the toughest parts of the Advanced Diver course. Up until now everything had been planned by someone else and pretty much all we had to do was sign up on the list, turn up on the day to do the drills. Now, though, it was down to every trainee to do the work. I worked with Ruth as a joint conspirator on a plan for a weekend of diving down in Fowey. All was looking good, until the day of the call-in, when the good old British weather decided to intervene. So what could we do but cancel the trip and then start planning again for another day? On our second attempt we actually got to Fowey and had a nice day's diving. A few weeks later I then managed some more dive marshalling and fitted in another unknown site.

Was I all done now? Not quite, just had to go through my dive log book and write up my list of qualifying dives.

All done now, and a fully signed up Advanced Diver! What can I say but a very big thank you to all the Club's instructors and members that have helped out along the way. Without your help none of this would have been possible.

Where do I go from here? I am a firm believer that what really matters is not the actual Advanced Diver award, but getting on and doing the diving, and continuing to build experience in a wide range of conditions.

P.S. (Having just come back from a week's diving in the Red Sea) Don't go telling the dive organisation you intend to dive with that you are 'Advanced', as you then get put in with all the PADI Advanced Open Water lot. Go get yourself a BSAC card with the CMAS equivalent of CMAS 3 star printed on the reverse side, then you do not have to start explaining what the BSAC is, or stands for!

David Davies