The BSAC was a progressive training and qualification regime, based around increasing a diver’s exposure to different skill-sets, whilst broadening their areas of experience. I found the structure both logical and appropriate, there was no incentive to “race” through your experiences “badge collecting” & I appreciated that. I suppose the Army training in me made me very “threat aware”, especially of environments or activities that had the potential to kill me….. The BSAC Sports Diver qualification was a wholly “branch issued” recognition, with no national exam, and based around Ten dives in different conditions or of different types of environment, demonstrating you were gaining scope and scale in your diving. There were theory lectures to take too, and they were also based on exposing you to different types of dive, boats, navigation, deeper dives and situations….. Theory lesson One of Sports Diver training was “Diver Rescue”, dealing with the recognition of dangerous situations, divers exhibiting signs of distress or discomfort, and what you should do in each scenario, how it could be managed, and, if it all went completely Pete Tong…..how to clear Disgusting Annie’s mouth (Resusci-Annie….a Mouth-to-mouth and Cardio-Pulmonary-Resuscitation manikin, beloved of all diver trainers and service personnel alike….), before trying to break her neck, tongue her, and then crush her Sternum………  Thought for the day….is it still 5 to 1 and 15 to 2 and are Tourniquets “in” or “out”……?

  Following completion of the Diver Rescue Parts 1 & 2, one being theory and 2 being practical skills in the pool, came Diving from Boats, and then Underwater Navigation, which then became an open water Navigation Exercise (Nav-Ex) and swiftly moved on to Nitrogen absorption and Gas Toxicity…….You can easily see the safety first approach, the situational awareness development and then the gnarly bits….why do issues occur, what causes them and how do they manifest? More importantly, what can we do to avoid such issues? 

All this followed an easily seen logical progression and I was aligned to it and found it easy to follow, not being the brightest of lights on the Christmas tree, I needed to pay attention to partial pressures, Boyle’s, Henry’s and Dalton’s dusty laws in regards to water pressure, gas pressures, partial pressures and solubility …….. and I did, for once in my life these long forgotten school nightmares had context, they really meant something important to me….they were life savers, and understanding them was an imperative…no one said it was exciting, but then……

  I was comfortable that there was science behind Scuba Diving and the BSAC training was good, those involved took the time to do it well in my branch and I enjoyed the sessions, they weren’t a burden, however, it was all about getting wet and I looked forward to getting my Sports Diver qualification. I put in for it, again, through the Army, and was once again “jammy” enough to get a place on the course at Fort Bovisands with the Joint Services Sub Aqua Diving Centre (JSSADC), I literally couldn’t wait to get down there. It was the 04th July, American Independence Day 1991 that I drove down from Tidworth to Plymouth and parked on the front, looking over the familiar Bovisands harbour late that summer day …..

  The JSSADC courses were always at the top of the game, service personnel are trained to give lectures and they do it well, the divers training us here were the best the Army Physical Training Corps (APTC) had, this was an easy life for them and one of the classic phrases they spat out was “Shit…..Monday….another day at the Office….Oh, this IS the office….ha ha ha” yes, universally hated for that one….and deeply, seriously envied in equal measure, they were just squaddies who knew what they wanted and were lucky, or practiced enough to get it! So the lectures and the dive kit distribution began, I had done this before and knew the score, there was even a little more relaxed approach, and a couple of familiar faces too….first dive was a shake-out, just a straight forward dive out to the Admiralty pattern anchor in the mouth of the harbour, then out to the more open water and a little more depth, then back in to shore. Dive 2 was an Inflatable trip out to the Breakwater, I hadn’t dived there before and was looking forward to the trip, however I was sea sick in the swell, that didn’t matter, you “sucked it up” (not literally…quite impossible tbh) and got on with it, but it was a relief to get off the boat and underwater, where the feeling magically disappeared for some reason? The dive was unremarkable and rated as “boring” in my log, not surprising as the Breakwater has little to endear itself, being large blocks of concrete on a mud bottom, but if you looked there was life in there somewhere…. the viz on this dive not so good at 2-3m….  

The next dive was on the Breakwater too, on this one we did see a Dog-fish and some Anemone’s, which broke the monotony a little, but still not exciting dives by any means. Dive 4 was in Jennycliff bay, just around the corner from Bovisands, and a buoyancy control exercise, so skills and drills, it turned out to be very limited viz too, but we banged that out and got back in the Inflatable hoping for better on the next dive. It wasn’t to be, we were back off to the Breakwater the next morning (08th July ’91) but the viz had improved and we could now see “nothing” for around 6m……..still, we were diving, and every one was increasing our experience and improving our abilities! That afternoon we came back to the Breakwater to carry out Demand Valve (DV) recovery exercises, simulating the regulator (Reg) being dislodged or pulled from your mouth, and sweeping the arm under and around the hose to recover and “clear”…or blow out the residual water from it. We followed that with a mask removal and re-fit, and we were at 12m so things were getting real, and we were doing well too! On the 09th we took the inflatables around to Mewstone Ledges and the Mewstone slabs, quite a different dive in and out of a myriad of rock gullies full of Anemones and Dead-Man’s Fingers, with small fish darting in and out of the kelp, we were luckier with thye Viz too at around 10m this was the best dive so far, easily!

  That afternoon was spent in the harbour doing a nav-ex, and my log book entry reads….”total waste of time” which kind of sums up how it went! I don’t recall much more than being told to swim out on a bearing, and carry out a reciprocal (180′ compass adjustment to come back on oneself) but we were towing surface marker buoys and essentially messed it up a treat…….luckily it wasn’t a “pass or fail” exercise, just skill-building…..definitely “needs more work”!  There was a treat in store for our next day, JSSADC had booked us a hard boat, the “Cee King”, and we were off to Hands Deep, off the Eddystone Lighthouse. The space on the hard-boat was a revelation, no more crowding together shoulder to shoulder in the RIB’s, space to put on fins without taking each-other’s eyes out….I loved it!

  I loved the Hands Deep dive, it was our planned “Deep-Dive” from the outset and we descended in great visibility, something I had not seen so far and around 10m and better at times, to a depth of 38m, by far the deepest dive I had done to date, and 3m deeper than it should have been, as my buddy was determined to push the envelope until I called “time” on him… This was a great dive but at 15minutes long, it showed everything Mr Boyle had been talking about in a very tangible way! This was my lucky day as our next dive would be right across the sound at Whitsands Bay, a good half hour plus on the Cee King, during which we ate lunch and chatted, far easier than a RIB, I loved the boat!  I have written up the James Egan Layne in another post (Wrecks) so I won’t repeat it here, suffice to say, it was my First ever wreck dive and I was hooked…..and am still……. 29 years later!  The last day we went back to the Breakwater to finish off our skills with a controlled Buoyant lift, simulating the recovery of a buddy in trouble off the sea floor or from depth, it went well and proved another lesson to us, it takes a calm and measured approach not to lose control in such circumstances, and practice definitely makes perfect………..This wrapped our Sports Diver course up nicely, I was impressed and grateful to those at JSSADC for giving us all a bloody good week’s diving…..hey ho….back to the office on Monday eh…..Lucky Bastards!    

  If you wanted to dive as a member of HM Forces in the ’80’s & 90’s there was only One way to go…..literally……. The British Sub Aqua Club, or BSAC as it was known by One and All in the day! There were very good reasons for that, the Army and indeed wider services, had a “duty of Care” towards their servicemen and women. That meant sports, if they were to have military participation, should be controlled by a regulatory body with reputable, approved training standards and supporting, structured training. It was an imperative the participant was insured to whatever degree of risk was associated with the activity, and that the governing body had a transparent and public administrative body. That meant of all the Scuba Diving agencies, BSAC was the organisation service personnel were permitted to join and pursue whilst in the military, it also meant many garrisons encouraged joint, or sometimes solely service, branches “within the wire” allowing civilian members to access otherwise closed military facilities like Tidworth   

  Those of you who have read the “Early Days” piece will have some insight into my early diver training, the first step into Roberts Barracks Pool in Osnabruck, West Germany and, following that, my week long Novice Diver’s course at Fort Bovisands in Plymouth. You will not, perhaps, have much of an idea yet of what that entailed back in 1990 as a member of the BSAC. The Novice Diver qualification, split into 2 sections (Novice 1 and Novice 2….. predictably….) allowing you to dive in open water buddied with a Dive-Leader or higher, comprised of a mixture of 13 formal theory lessons and in water skills demonstrated in a pool, to begin with, and then progressed into open water. A gentle start, nothing more than a try-it type dive usually began the process, as mine had…..and then there was a swimming test, nothing grim, 100m freestyle, no timing, no pressure, just a casual swim and then off you were sent to the unit medic, to get a chest x-ray, confirming there was nothing physically wrong with you that might cause respiratory problems during training, or later on whilst actually diving.  

  Then you began the theory side of scuba diving, Branch diver training (the BSAC branch structure), Basic equipment, signals, causes and effects of pressure….. all logical progression and building you a solid educational and practical foundation, at a pace you could manage. There were good branch training regimes and great branch training regimes, there were probably some not so good ones too, but luckily I never encountered any. You have to understand, those teaching you did so out of a love for the sport not for any other reason, there was no financial gain, BSAC was a club environment, pay your membership fee and you could request a club, or advanced instructor (if your Branch was lucky enough to have One) take you through a lesson plan or skill-test. This was both good and sometimes not so good, not every Branch was so encouraging of new members, some were far more “dive-only” oriented, taking the RIB’s out at the weekends or diving as regular (very clique….) groups, but not fussed about bringing in newer divers. Luckily that wasn’t usually the military Branches, who were far more used to a high membership turnover, as personnel were posted in and out of units in various “cycles” depending on their “cap-badges”

  Whilst it only took me a week to get the Novice 1 & 2 training completed at Bovisands on a military BSAC course, it still had to be signed off by my Branch diving Officer to become “official” but that was practically a rubber stamp exercise in military branches, which were very familiar with the course standards of the Joint Services Sub Aqua Diving Association (JSSADC) and their military qualified Sub Aqua Diving Supervisors (SADS) instructors. The SADS course was intensive, military supervised throughout, and you didn’t pass through unless you were “of the required standard” ……it wasn’t a trivial attendance course as it qualified the individual to run diving activities as “Officer in charge” no matter what rank the SADS was militarily speaking (literally a corporal SADS would out-rank a colonel “diver” )in that situation……..awkward, but necessary. So now I had the first rung on the ladder, what was next…….

  The real aspiration every BSAC branch diver had was Sports Diver, at that level you were no longer considered a “Novice”, not the most inspiring of accolades if we are being honest about it…….but definitely a motivation to progress…At Sports Diver level you could “buddy-Up” with another Sports Diver and dive as a pair without needing to see the dive as “being led” so to speak, a dive of equals if you prefer, although even then one of you would “assume” the lead on the dive to ensure there was “direction” rather than ambiguity, an unwanted condition often leading to a vacuum of inactivity, often at a time where that might not be constructive, or even “safe” in underwater circumstances……It would take me almost a year from that first open water dive in Fort Bovisands Harbour to make the Sports Diver level……..