AP Valves Inspiration Mod 1

2005 brought about significant change in my diving and personal lives, I had been told I was at risk of redundancy, quietly, by a friend at Finning, and without the knowledge of those bringing about such change. That kind of thing is a significant wake-up call, I had been made redundant once before, by JCB, a couple of weeks before Christmas, a time when I was relying on the JCB Christmas bonus to take care of the family celebrations and presents…I got by, just, but it meant using the credit card heavily and that teaches you a hard lesson. Anyhow, I took the redundancy tip-off seriously and got a job which, sadly, would not allow me the luxury of teaching diving at the weekends, as I’d have to travel down to Andover every Sunday evening to be at work Monday morning…..that meant Deep Blue Diving had to close. I hated that, I’d loved everything about training and those who came to the dive club at Fenton Manor, I couldn’t avoid the feeling I was letting them down, these had been friends, some of them for ten years now, but it couldn’t be avoided and there was no one else to take up the club, so, with the heaviest of hearts, I closed Fenton Sub Aqua Club and Deep Blue Diving in the September of 2005

 The exercise of closing down involved selling off the training equipment and, as there was no one taking up the activity anytime soon, I decided on putting sets of kit together and using a new (to me) but well established on-line market to make things a little “e-asier”, as it happened one frequent buyer was based on the route to Andover, which helped us both with “postage” fees…… The kit went, bit by bit, and I had already decided I wanted to put whatever I made back into my own diving for once. I’d wanted to try rebreathers out for a while now as the introduction of the AP Valves “Inspiration” had captured my attention since its appearance on the diving scene in 1996, the year I’d set up Deep Blue Diving on leaving the army….. Now the Inspiration was Ten years in, and had established a small but dedicated following in the technical dive arena, it had proven itself both controversial and, with the increasing interest in deeper and more challenging environments like long cave penetrations, a very capable, if somewhat continually developing piece of “uber-tech” that had definitely piqued my interest

I started to spend time looking for a used Inspiration on the same platform I’d used to sell-off the Deep Blue Diving equipment, there were a few to choose from and I didn’t see there would be any issue if I picked up a decent enough unit and had it serviced by AP to ensure it was in good order. I had a trainer in mind too, Richie Stevens and I had crossed paths a few years back when he had opened “Deep Blue Diving” just a few miles up the M1, much to my dismay at the time. I had thought there would be competition for any diver training or retail outfit, I had not thought that there would be two businesses calling themselves exactly the same, basically on each other’s doorstep! I had spoken to Richie and he came across as a decent enough bloke, ex-military, no harm intended, didn’t even know there was another business called Deep Blue Diving in the UK either. Richie had set up as an exclusively technical operation, his ambitions were beyond those I had for those I trained in the PADI system, even those in the IANTD Nitrox world, Richie was all about Tri-Mix and deep tech diving, so we let things lie between us and eventually Richie moved his business to Plymouth, I didn’t overly miss him at the time to be brutally frank

I had something in mind which could benefit both Richie and me, I had the deepbluediving.co.uk e-mail address (and all the “at’s” eg: [email protected] etc)  and I figured, with me closing the business, Richie could take it on and perhaps discount me a place on one of his Rebreather courses down at Plymouth…..I got back in touch with Richie and he was up for it, there was a space on an upcoming course, all I needed now was to get my recently acquired, newly serviced, AP Valves Inspiration down to Richie and things could begin. I had the unit shipped down to Richie’s direct from AP valves, it had been fully serviced and checked over and everything was ready to go, Richie was off to Malta to teach a course over there and had a failed unit which could not be properly looked at in time and asked if he could use mine for the trip, I thought that was the measure of the man as he could have used it and I’d have been none the wiser, he chose to be up front about it and of course I said sure, no problem! Now I’d added a personal touch to the case before it went off to AP Valves, a 12” Playboy Bunny….when Richie got back from Malta it seemed that had been declared a casualty during a dive and somehow dislodged….no accounting for taste eh!

So what was it that sparked an interest in rebreathers, before we head into training territory? I suppose I am naturally curious in the main, any “new” equipment coming into diving would obviously be of interest, but such a profound and ground breaking piece of kit just couldn’t be ignored. The idea that you could have 3 plus hours underwater on one cylinder fill was quite something. Now I understood the basics, exhaled, carbon-dioxide rich, air was “scrubbed” of the carbon-dioxide by a chemical reaction (to soda-lime which absorbs it) and then Oxygen was added back into the air to raise it back to a partial pressure set by the diver as “optimal” for the dive, known as a set-point, and typically 1.3…….All that Nitrox and Tri-Mix training had not been lost on me, I was reasonably confident with the “mechanics” of the rebreather function, what I had no idea about was the physical operation of the units and the failure mitigations……..what did you do if it went wrong?  Let’s be honest, open circuit scuba equipment has a likelihood of failure too, leaks & free-flows can quickly loose your gas, whatever you are breathing, a failed regulator can seriously ruin your day….but those things were pretty easily rectified, twin-sets & travel gas increase your gas supply, manifolds allow you to shut down a free-flow, two regs are always dived as a matter of course and have been for decades now……but a closed loop, driven by an electronic solenoid and oxygen cells that were only recently NASA “Space” technology…..and that requiring an electric current to read Oxygen levels…….there was a lot to go wrong and, typically, no matter how good your waterproofing, electricity and water do not go well together….especially salt water! 

I finally managed to get down to Plymouth in June of 2006 and met Richie Stevens face-to-face for the first time, he didn’t disappoint, years younger than me, (far prettier too) but direct and unassuming with an engaging demeanor, I couldn’t help myself liking him, I also seriously respected his military past which far surpassed my own service, I was going to be trained well, I knew it, and looked forward to the course from the off. I was introduced to the others on the course and hit it off with another trainee Mike Baker, a studious and intelligent guy who would buddy with me on the training and diving sections of the weekend. Mike had the brand new AP Valves “Evolution” which had different handsets, and a temperature stick through the Soda-Lime to indicate when the Carbon-Dioxide scrubbing was becoming carbon-dioxide “saturated”…..a leap beyond my “standard” Inspiration unit. The first morning was hectic, demonstrations on the units, sofno-lime (Soda-Lime by any other name) filling, electrics & pressure checking cycles, dive-set up & pre-breathing the units, it was fast paced for a reason, we would be out in Cawsands Bay for a check-out dive later in the day and my Green Navy Log records “19/06/06 Plymouth Cawsands bay Rebreather trg with Richie 11m bailout drills time after time! Swimming the line – good drills air in “who cares” out – loads! Buddy Mike” The unit had impressed me, clearly

The next dive was on HMS Scylla, there is a piece on here dealing with the difference between what is and what is not a wreck as far as I am concerned, suffice to say Scylla is not on my to do list, and never was, but the Log records: “20/06/06 Scylla Plymouth Bigbury awkward descent, mask was flooding constantly, poor feeling throughout but skills were good on dill flush Scylla was boring. Buddy Mike” seldom has a ship been described so briefly in my diving history…..Dill is the “Diluent” which is a balancing gas, air, until you take the second or third closed circuit rebreather module courses for the Inspiration when it will become Nitrox or Tri-Mix depending on the module taken. The Inspiration has 2 off 3L cylinders either side of the Soda-Lime canister, one is Diluent and the other is Oxygen. Our third dive on the afternoon run out was again Cawsands bay, nothing to see on the bottom but muddy sand and the odd crab or small fish scattering off as we swam, with Richie showing prompt cards stating various failure scenarios on the rebreathers, which we reacted to according to the training we had been given during the weekend, the next dive records: “20/06/06 Cawsands Bay Plymouth Skills & drills – failed solenoid (closed) diluent flush – several times including bail-out to O/C then solenoid open – Oxygen Off bail to O/C & then return to loop. After this running the line manually injecting to keep 1 bar (on 0.7 set-point) batteries failed & had to bail early but completed 3 runs. Air In – Sure was – Air Out – !! Buddy Mike” I had nearly used all the Air diluent flushing the system for the drills and definitely did not have 50 bar remaining on surfacing…….

I was becoming more confident in the Inspiration with every dive and I was beginning to understand the various failures that can occur when using the units, a sobering thought considering the relative simplicity of open circuit when compared to the multiple and immediately life-threatening potentials of the rebreather, the units were not for those inclined to just kit up and drop-in….. I wasn’t fazed by the potential for failures, every dive, on any equipment, can easily become your last……however I was beginning to understand why the units had earned themselves the rather dark reputation as the “little yellow box of death” or YBoD for short. It is also a sobering thought to remember that there were no specific “unit” failures recorded, so far as I know, rather the underlying “operator error” attribution, to those who had lost their lives over the decade as the units had established a presence in the diving world. I was, by this time, a keen lurker on Rebreather World, the on-line forum where any and all incidents became the topic of heated conversation, often in the earlier days, before there had been any “official” statement as to the circumstances under which the unfortunate diver passed. There wasn’t only the Inspiration either, there were other makes (although the only CE marked unit was the Inspiration) there were, Kiss, Megalodon, CIS Lunar, Prism, Draeger and rEvo’s to name but a few that I recall from the time, those would be followed by the Poseidon, the Abyss and the Oruborous and now several more too! It seemed you could pick your favourite from those that electronically controlled (ECCR) all but minor manual functions like the Inspiration, to those that were almost exclusively manually controlled like the Kiss, and a range of “in-betweens” like the Megalodon and rEvo although I have no personal experience on any of the other models mentioned here

The next dive on the Inspiration was HMT Elk, you can find the write-up elsewhere on this blog (you know where to look) and the Green Navy Log records a great dive too: “21/06/06 HMT Elk – Plymouth Sound – 30m rebreather dive – descent was ok, wreck was fine with the usual Bib & Pollack & one Cuckoo Wrasse, Viz ok @ 3m or so & silty but ok, dive was simple getting used to the Inspiration ascent was ok but last 6m was a nightmare fighting the solenoid – the loop & the suit Buddy Mike” Now it bears saying the most dangerous part of the dive on a rebreather is potentially the ascent…… as the ambient water pressure reduces all your buoyancy will increase as the suit and your buoyancy aid (wing, stab, counter-lungs….whatever) volume increases proportionally. With the rebreather there is an added hidden danger because the partial pressure of the Oxygen in your breathing loop will drop, it’s a physics thing, increase depth, increases pressure, then partial pressure of Oxygen in your breathing gas increases….on ascending where the pressure drops, very quickly in the last 10m or so, then the reverse occurs and your partial pressure of Oxygen decreases…..and can do so to the extent you are breathing too little Oxygen and become unconscious with the potentially terminal effects that can have in water. Here’s the “rub” if you will…..to counter that effect as well as electronics can in the circumstances, the Inspiration solenoid, the means of controlling the injection of Oxygen into your breathing gas, fires and adds Oxygen to try to maintain the reducing level as you ascend (to the set-point you have selected, 1.3 or 1.5 etc)…….anything but the slowest of ascent becomes a fight between the sensor telling the solenoid there is insufficient Oxygen and the solenoid injecting Oxygen into the loop which increases your buoyancy, and your innate sense that increased gas in the system is speeding your ascent, along with swells in the sea, increased suit volume, increased wing/counterlung volume and decreasing depth……..so an ascent becomes a balancing act of air and breathing gas management…..not as easy as it sounds, as I was beginning to understand as I ascended from decompression after an hour on the Elk!

Our next dive was another skills & drills run in Cawsands Bay and went like this: “21/06/06 Cawsands Bay Plymouth Again Skills & Drills – High 02 warning whilst swimming the line – fine – bail out – back on & dill flush then running Po2 manually off the cylinder – no problems, repeated several times on the run then flooding drills – no prob ascent was great till 6m then same issues – fighting it all the way to deploy – pants Buddy Mike” Was I ever going to master the solenoid versus buoyancy issue….I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t through just yet! The next day we would be on the Rosehill, not a wreck to write-up in this account, one I will look to do in the wreck section of the blog some time perhaps. The dive was recorded in the Green Navy log as: “ROSEHILL WHITSANDS Bay Plym Slow descent – ears taking time to clear – finally enjoyed the Inspiration a great dive even though I was feeling poor! Did the whole wreck – prop – stern gun – up to the boilers & back great dive & buoyancy was 100% better – DSMB up properly at last about time! Buddy Mike & Pete” It seemed I was finally getting the hang of the ascent on the Inspiration and, as the dive record says, about time too! The last dive of the Mod 1 course was on the James Egan Layne, one of my favourite South Coast Wrecks, it has everything, history, drama, and wonderful presence where she sits, skeletal now, in Bigbury Bay split from the emergency steering room and stern with about 100m between her main hull and a myriad of swim throughs and nooks and crannies waiting to be sifted through if the often huge Atlantic swells don’t make the dive too exciting……..This was a very brief description of a great dive on her beautifully rounding off the Inspiration Mod 1 course, the log records: “22/06/06 JAMES EGAN LAYNE a great dive round all of the Layne – much more of a collapse than ever before but great running through the holds & off to the stern then back in  & through to Oxygen flush @ 6m stop to prove linear continuity on the sensors – DSMB & off – great dive Buddy Mike & Pete”…….That was it, it was done and Richie certified me as a Mod 1 Inspiration diver……..where would it all lead from here?

As always it is a privilege to use photos others have taken to illustrate such pieces as this and I am indebted to the late Peter Mitchell for the Elk & Rosehill pictures

Laughing Gas by any Other Name!

OK, so it is a little while since I last wrote a piece on training or continuing my educational diving journey, so now a little more self-indulgence if you will permit me…..oh, and even if you won’t, as you can easily skip this, continuing to read is in your own hands…..

I had done a considerable amount of Nitrox Diving by the close of 1999 and had begun to take things into the “Technical Nitrox” realm, I don’t suppose there is an official determination for what does or doesn’t delineate between Nitrox as a safe gas for diving, and Nitrox as a means of extending dive times, essentially they are entwined. I would, personally, only classify by a particular dive, and the intentions of the diver and the chosen gas mix or dive site, and the aims and conditions implicit. For the purposes of this piece, and bearing in mind I was both an IANTD Nitrox instructor and a PADI Nitrox instructor by this point, and had a background as a BSAC Advanced Instructor…….which meant I could pretty much please myself what I called the diving I was personally doing, without causing a crisis of conscience! If I was extending the dive-time or had a partial pressure above 0.4 then I was carrying out an IANTD Nitrox dive, if the PPO2 was 0.4 and I was using up the gas from the IANTD Nitrox dive….I was diving PADI…..anything else was a “rogue” BSAC outing!

It kind of shows where the industry was at the time too, IANTD knew what they were talking about, the foundation of their courses was Dick Rutkowski, Billy Deans and Tom Mount, from a start point in 1985 from the commercial off-shore diving gas management skills, practically transferred into the deeper or more technical dives of the recreational diving arena. When Kevin Gurr and Phil Short (and a few others), brought the IANTD training to the UK dive scene in the early 90’s, it stepped up the arguments across the recreational dive landscape and had everyone talking. It would not be until around 1994 that BSAC would admit that many of their divers were hemorrhaging across to IANTD to learn the art of Devil Gas Diving, and, in 1996, almost a decade after Nitrox introduction to the recreational diving world, PADI would capitulate it’s “air diving only” stance and develop its “EANx” courses. Having started Nitrox diving with Don Shirley in 1996 I could say I was, at least, early on the uptake, and by May of 1997 I had reached instructor status with IANTD, a milestone in my diving career and one I was secretly a little proud of!

By 1997 I was using twin 12l cylinders to pack in as much gas as I could carry, I was using side-mount gasses in one or  two 7L 300Bar cylinders to ensure extended decompression stops could be undertaken, and I think it’s safe to say I had “strayed” into “Technical Nitrox” territory. This wasn’t every dive by any means, but it was a way of significantly extending wreck dives, and I loved that. It was still a challenge to get Nitrox fills, but, with Stoney Cove just an hour down the road that wasn’t a huge issue when they started supplying gas mixes, and deco gas to those qualified to use it, and there was Budgie at Portland for fills on the dives I loved from my Army days with Toots. I was never a “deep” junkie, one of those divers with something to prove, who constantly prattled on about “60m dives on the Medina in raging channel currents” to try to impress at the bar in the evening, but I was spending 30 or 40 minutes on the wrecks I was diving, and felt far better than I would have diving air. Don Shirley had departed for South Africa to set up an IANTD franchise by 1997 and I had met Angus Cowie and Bob Scullion, Bob ran a dive centre out of South Shields and Angus was training him up on Technical Nitrox and something called “Tri-Mix”….now I’m a curious kind of bloke as you might have guessed………

I had a couple of students that were interested in some deeper diving, they had enjoyed the IANTD Nitrox course I’d ran and were keen on the Advanced Nitrox course, as I took them through the decompression gas swaps at Stoney Cove and had them spend time at 36m on the hydro-box they were shaping up pretty well. We had set-up a deco bar and hung a reserve gas cylinder from it, and run through a dozen reg swaps apiece, all done well, despite the cold after 15 minutes down at 36m in 4’ water, it was winter, somewhere around January/February, what better time to spend twice the time in the water and see if you could still perform skills n drills………. By Christmas of 1999 and New Year of 2000 they were approaching readiness for a trip up to Wastwater in Cumbria, a good shore dive spot which I knew would not get blown-out like many of the South Coast spots in winter, but also hellishly picturesque and there was a bonus as 50m was achievable fairly close to the shore. Now it took to April of 2000 to get everyone organised to get up to Wastwater, but in-between I’d managed to stagger each of them to complete refreshers at 36m in Stoney, and up to Jackdaw Quarry at Capernwray to do some kit swap-outs and problem solving, so by April they were as ready as they would ever be   

The trip up to Wastwater is a long one, the journey (primarily up the M6), is unremarkable, until you get around Lancaster when it starts to become far more pleasing on the eye. Once above Lancaster you need to turn off the M6 and pick up the A590 which becomes more and more scenic until you are in the mountains of the Lake District proper, away from Windermere and the tourists, not that there were many tourists about in early April of 2000! After Newby Bridge the drive to Broughton is gently winding, and once you pass Eskdale you start to get into the hills for real, it doesn’t take long until you can see Scafell Pike and then drop down to the lakeside road, with Wastwater to your front (and within a couple of minutes it’s on your right), as you pass from the Southern end a half mile up and see the odd car parked up, where fell walkers have started out for a day in the hills. There is a hummock on the right after half a mile or so, grassy but with bare rock too, that’s where we parked up and where you will find an area of gravel and shallows stretching out 5 to 10m or so, and it’s here most enter the lake, and immediately below that you find what was an oddly BSAC kind of feature….the Gnome Garden    

Yes, you read that right, there are perhaps a dozen (or were) garden gnomes and a little fence placed in Wastwater which were, when we dived it, at around 35m or so as I recall. Now I will let my dive log describe the dive: “02/04/00 Wastwater Cumbria Deep Dive Down to the Gnome Garden for bottom time after setting up a stage for deco. Viz 5m-ish Air In 230 Out 110 W Temp 8’ Buddys Darren & Jason” You can tell how excited I was from the description…… Now I may be pushing someone’s buttons with this but I don’t care, I cannot see any reason for anyone to take a garden gnome into a pristine glacial lake? I struggle with a mentality that would consider that either appropriate, or entertaining? Is there much to see in Wastwater, no, not really……. it is more a dive for the experience of the surroundings, the adventure of the trip to get there, and the feeling of isolation and peace at such depths, within of course the dive parameters you set to start with. I wish people would keep their litter to themselves, if you have a garden and you want a gnome in it, for whatever reason, fine….it’s your garden, crack on….. But, when you are as fed up with your stupid gnome as anyone else is already, FFS put it in a bin, give it to a friend (to take stupid holiday snaps of in exotic places to “amuse” other like-minded “people”)….whatever, but keep it away from dive sites….all of them!   The second dive of the day went a similar way “02/04/00 Wastwater Cumbria Deep Dive to Gnomes again this time saw a dozen plus up to deco station & out Viz 5m Air In 110 out 40 W Temp 8’ Buddy Angus” Another tellingly short descriptive……….

Perhaps it’s just me, but I see diving as one of the last places on Earth where the mindless throw-away mentality of the ignorant is (or was) seen….. sadly now, more and more, there is litter appearing on dives, it’s a tragic result of our abuse of this planet and its resources……. Anyhow, let’s focus on the positives more eh! After the second dive I got chatting to Angus and he suggested giving Tri-Mix a go, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard of Tri-Mix, it features in IANTD training throughout the courses, with regards to kit configuration and gas mixes to suit dive depths and Oxygen parameters. So I agreed to run through the introductory course with Angus and take a dive with him in a month’s time off South Shields with Bob & the team. The book learning was simple enough now, Don had killed my math demons and I could work through gas mixes and Oxygen toxicity, adding Helium into the mix was simple enough, after all, I would not be blending the gas, just analysing it and taking account of the decompression obligations of it. The impression is that Helium is added for deeper dives, quite correct, however the impact of adding Helium is not usually quite so well understood without an actual course behind you, Helium takes longer to wash safely out of the blood, meaning your decompression will be more intense, with more stops and longer durations, as you progress through the water column. The balance of less likelihood of Oxygen toxicity and the resultant potential unconsciousness or loss of function, is weighed against time required to surface   

Tri-Mix was an obvious extension of the diving I was doing, there had been a gentle and natural progression to deeper diving which I didn’t particularly recognise at the time, even though it was happening to me. My first Tri-Mix dive was with Angus off the South Shields coast on a wreck Bob had only just discovered and had yet to identify, it appears in my Green Log as “Tri-Mix Dive Newcastle” and transfers to my little Red Log as it was a wreck no matter what it was called…. “21/05/00 SOUTH SHIELDS UNKNOWN VIRGIN WRECK Off South Shields (Direct in line with white hotel & tower) A “Massive” wreck @ 54m bottom depth. We hit in at the shot at 50m and only managed 15min bottom time on Jasons air consumption. The only piece we saw was the hull which stretched off well beyond the 10m viz even in the dark. I really enjoyed the descent & had a great dive even on the crowded shot & deco station, Jason missed his 12 9 & 6m stops & could have died” I had to stay to complete my stops, it’s a brutal thing to leave a friend to his fate, I had tried to hold Jason on the shot but couldn’t, his suit valve malfunctioned and he was just too buoyant. The only saving grace, and the reason he is still with us today, was the short duration of the dive, Jason had hoovered his gas, we called the dive half way through expected bottom time to ensure he had sufficient to achieve his stops and transfer onto 80% deco gas…….. It saved his life, but the journey back to shore was a tense one, Jason in a sleeping bag on oxygen the whole way, luckily without any bend…..and very luckily he stayed that way

Jason’s nightmare ascent had not put me off Tri-Mix, I still dive it (despite being over 60 now), when there are good deep dives to do, but you will hear of some of those reading elsewhere in this diary of a madman. I think there is something more to be said here too, the key is that Tri-Mix is just another tool in the box, it has an advantage in what would be considered by most to be very deep dives, those in excess of 50m where Air and Nitrox are no longer a way forward, indeed where Air itself starts to become toxic, and adding Oxygen would compound the problems. Nitrox works down to around the 40m mark (depending on your mix, and the PPO2 limitations set by your agency), 21% “normoxic” Air can be, and is, used between 40m and 60m, but with an increased likelihood of narcosis, the performance impacts of which can manifest in various ways, but are most often described as similar to the effects of too many beers at a bar….. poor judgement, impaired physical performance and, often most debilitating, an increasing lack of clarity or increasing state of confusion. Tri-Mix offers an “Equivalent Narcotic Depth” in almost the same way Nitrox offers an Equivalent Air Depth, just by using an additional gas, Helium, in the mix……the results are simple, less chance of narcosis (through partial pressure of Oxygen above 1.4 (PP02)), the down side of the addition of Helium to your breathing gas……longer decompression requirements……. And, as Helium is an expensive gas, a far more expensive dive!

Whenever Tri-Mix comes up in my thoughts, I drift back to my first dive course ever, sat at the bar in Fort Bovisands after a dive off the Glen Strathallen at around 10m or so, I was talking with two very experienced BSAC divers, senior members of their respective clubs, they were doing deep dives on Tri-Mix which was practically unheard of in recreational diving at that time (1990), they were adamant they would likely be ostracized if the others in the club found out, and no doubt they were right, but what I recall most was that these were not typical thrill-seekers but studious and kind of intense people, a recently separated woman and her new boyfriend, I mention that only as, to those who might know the circumstances, it may ring a bell in BSAC circles and verify the very early use of Tri-Mix in recreational diving at the times I recall. The conversation was detailed in regards to planning and equipment, but my personal take and comment to the divers at the time was “I don’t ever see myself diving beyond 20m, unless there was something really compelling to see” …… Famous last words….. I have often recalled that conversation whilst sat on long deco stops too 

Without the pictures the story would not be half as interesting, my sincere thanks go to those who’s skills far surpass my own in underwater & land photography: Derek Aughton, Mark Milburn of Atlantic Scuba, Underwater Adventures and Gary Newbold. And for the scenery on land: Mr A Stephenson

Epilogue: 17th January 2022

It is with Deep Sadness that we say farewell to Tom Mount, Founder of the International Association of Nitrox & Technical Divers. Tom was an Inspiration to generations of Divers including myself and Tom will be missed by the Diving Industry and those of IANTD alike

So…… What Is “The Dark Side” Really Like…….?

  So now there was a period of reflection, had I gone “one step beyond” had I lost the plot? I had planned to teach PADI divers on the various stages to scuba diving, from Try-dives to “Open Water Diver”. I had expected to take some of those divers on to Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver and even Dive-Master……I had not planned on taking divers beyond that really, but now……..now I was starting to really think where this might take me…….and where that might lead others, if they had a mind to follow! I decided if I was going to teach Nitrox, in any form (PADI were also beginning to explore Nitrox courses at the time), then I wanted to know it inside out! I had some PADI courses set up after leaving the Army in June of 1996, some personal friends, some family members and a couple of divers looking to finish off courses, started with other trainers on holidays, or having had extended time between dives and needing to freshen up skills before passing off the courses. I took these on between July & October of 1996 and then set up my First PADI Open Water Course at Fenton Manor, it went well and I eventually had another Four Divers to take through the Open Water Dives at Stoney Cove. All this activity proved to me there was enough interest locally to give Diver Training a serious shot, and Deep Blue Diving was a reality, I was excited!

I managed to get in a couple of Trips to Anglesey at Treaddur Bay, I had trained Ellie’s Step Father, Tim, and we managed a weekend of coastal dives around the wreck of the Hermione and a couple of shore dives there, down the Tidal Gully to the Left of the beach, a scenic and enjoyable couple of dives to gently introduce Tim to the Sea and tidal diving, but these were distractions……. I wanted to give Nitrox more attention, it was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, I loved training divers, don’t think I wasn’t having a ball, I was, but I knew there was more to do, that diving had even more to give me personally…..and I wanted more from diving. I had met Jason & Darren training my first Open Water Course and they were keen to get more diving experience, that meant I would spend more weekends teaching at Stoney Cove, Dry-Suit Diver, (I didn’t charge for these, I wanted divers to progress from Semi-Dry-Suits used on the Open Water Courses, I just believed it was enough of a stretch to dive in thick Neoprene, without adding the complications of inflation on the Dry-Suit, to an Open Water Course) then Advanced Open Water Diver, and then Deep Diver and Search & Recovery…….Then there was my Second and my Third Open Water Courses at Fenton Manor and weekends at Stoney…….my dive-log was looking like a tour guide for the place, “16/11/96 Trg Dive-Stoney-Leicester O/W Dive 1 Skills Viz 4m W/Temp 8’ Air In 200 Out 150”……. “16/11/96 Trg Dive – Stoney – Leicester O/W Dive 2 Skills Viz 4m W Temp 8’ Air In 150 Out 100” dozens and dozens of dives described in the same way, (I did get to take a weekend trip for some of the divers down to Portland in March of ’97, diving off Mal Strickland’s Rib, we managed a couple of decent dives in and outside the harbour and on the Countess of Erne, a favourite introductory wreck dive of mine, but the most of my diving was Stoney, on the shelf at 6m…… for hour after hour) …… in fact it wouldn’t be for another 6 months, to May of 1997 until I got the chance to dive Nitrox again, when Don invited me down to Portland to assist him, as his Dive-Master, on an Advanced Nitrox Course he was running there…..I said yes…… immediately, Stoney Cove would have to wait!   

  Don’s student for the Advanced Course was James, an accountant who divided his time between Skiing and Diving after what he casually described as “18 weeks of intense work for clients, preparing end-of year returns”……Shit, I was doing something wrong, I worked 50 hour weeks at JCB and then virtually every weekend at Stoney……I both liked the guy and hated him in the same breath! But James had brought opportunity and Nitrox diving, and I felt blessed! It was great to see Don again too, it had been a while and we had a lot to catch-up on. Don was looking at taking on an IANTD National Facility franchise in South Africa with a pal of his, an ambitious enterprise given that country’s political “fluidity” and the racial tensions still very much in evidence, it wasn’t something I’d have considered, but then Don was an adventurous soul, he’d recently achieved cult status as the First diver on Kitchener’s HMS Hampshire, (a solo dive at 50m) lost 05^th June 1916 off Orkney, (only the First of Don’s long list of diving achievements) if anyone could pull off a facility in South Africa my money was on Don Shirley!

   The IANTD Advanced Nitrox course is both technically demanding, and emotionally punishing, working out Best mix, Fraction of Gas, Oxygen Percentages, Best Mixes, Maximum Operating Depths, Target Operating Depths, Equivalent Air Depths, Decompression Obligations, Deco Mixes, Gas Switches & Bail-out’s, Oxygen Toxicity Units and Units of Pulmonary Toxicity (UPTD’s), then working out minimum surface intervals and going through the same process again for the second dive, calculating off-gassing in the available time between dives……and that was before we analysed our mixes and re-calculated on what we actually got from the Gas bank! I loved the intensity, this was a different and more focused diving, this was stretching every nerve and every brain cell I had left, and I was just an observer, a Dive-Master there to ensure there was a back-up for the student if the Master had an issue, but I took it as seriously as if I was the student and it was a different world, one where you couldn’t just roll-in and take whatever came up, this was methodical, planned, execution…..and I knew it was for me, I could feel the engagement kicking in, the focus, the heightening of senses, the Dark Side had won and I knew it, diving would not be quite the same ever again!

  The first of our dives that weekend was a decompression skills assessment, planning the dive, diving the plan, kit configuration, skills tests….James and I would not get off lightly, Don wanted to know we had done our homework! In reality this was a shakeout dive to ensure the cob-webs of “scuba” were far removed from our reality and the kit was good…..the right tools for the right job, executed flawlessly…. “03 May ’97 Nitrox Dive – Portland Bill – Adv Nitrox Course – Basic Dive Management & Deco Discipline Configuration Checks. Viz 6m W/Temp 11’ Air In 220 Out 90 Buddy Don Shirley – James”

  Even my dive Log was starting to look different, I noted the duration’s and mixes in the margins faithfully, 40% mix, 2 @ 6m Deco 50%, 2 @ 4m Deco 50% (3L Pony). This was as serious as my diving would ever get….or so I thought at the time! I must admit, looking back on the weekends dive entries it reminds me of the time very well, I remember the anticipation on the trip down, I had met Don at his former home (following his recent divorce) and we had traveled the remaining miles from Worcester to Portland in a multiple of conversations, Nitrox, Solo Diving, Portland & Budgie, an ex- Matelot mate of both of us. Budgie started a diving business diving from the Breakwater Hotel, and latterly owning & running the Aquasport dive hotel, along with his Dutch Girlfriend of the time. I was looking forward to saying hi again to Budgie, another mate who I respected and admired in equal measure to Don, and someone I had taken Toots diving with many times on Army Sports afternoons, I knew and loved Portland and the Breakwater, it did the best Cheeseburger & Egg (Yeah…with chips!) in the business, an after dive treat I loved!

Our second dive of the weekend was on the Bombardon and Tug, now there is some controversy about what exactly the “Bombardon” units alongside the Tug under Portland Harbour are exactly. The photo I rely on for the description (above) is the only one I’ve ever seen of Bombardons and the detail is somewhat lacking but it seems convincing, the “Beetles” of the Mulberry system are too short to be what is alongside the Tug

      Contemporary descriptions (Web Resource: “dday.centre/d-day-technology-mulberry-harbour.html” Accessed 01/08/2020) have Bombardons as “Long Steel constructions, cross shaped, used to form part of the breakwater” but seem to agree that “Whales”, or the roadway sections of the Mulberry Harbours, are “Steel roadways of up to 3,500ft in length, comprised of bridging units supported by “Beetle” pontoons.” The photo below shows what are likely adding to confusion as I think there is at least one section of the “Whales” between the Bombardons, but that is my opinion, and nothing more!

  I logged the dive as: “03/05/97 Nitrox Dive – Portland Bill – Adv Nitrox Course – Skills Dive on the “Bombardon” & Tug – Great dive after drills see wreck log”

Now I clearly indicate you should check out the “little Red book” here (my Wreck Log) and the entries in there have always been where I “wax Lyrical” on wrecks, or at least, expand a little on the wreck…… The entry for the Bombardon & Tug, the first time I had dived them notes “Nitrox IANTD Inst Cse Drills in Zero viz (Kicked Silt) then around the wreck for a look, she tipped the Bombardon over & towed the tug down which rests on its side with ½ in silt, great swim up between the two of them, Atmospheric & would have liked more time to ferret about but it was great to hang on 5 min deco above the barge & see the outline disappearing in the murk.”  By now Don had mentioned he asked me to DM the dives to enable me to take the IANTD Instructor route….. “If it was something I might be interested in?”…..now…… Don being ahead of the game….Don has history there, as any of you who have read the Jamaica, or Falklands pieces on here will have perhaps picked up on……..

Our third dive of the weekend was on HMS Hood, that iconic WWI Pre- Dreadnought battleship, a Royal Sovereign class ship that had been the pride of the Navy (in several of her iterations, especially the WWII variant, sunk by Bismarck). For many years HMS Hood had been a go-to dive in Portland, she was a “slab”, lying across the Southern Harbour entrance, acting as a torpedo block to prevent attacks, like that of Scapa Flow, when U 47 under the command of Gunther Prien sank the Royal Oak. Hood was impressive, I likened her to a tower block on its side she was that big, I had dived her before but this was different, Don was to make this a decisive dive for me, even if unknowingly!

    The dive on HMS Hood took me back into the realm of wreck penetration, something I had first carried out on the Port Napier in the Kyle of Lochalsh two years previously, (another post, soon to be on here….you know where it will be!). I wrote the dive up in the log: “04/05/97 Nitrox Dive – HMS Hood – Portland – Adv Cse- Skills Dive – Semi Penetration after skills & longer deco, see wreck log”

The little Red book says: “HMS Hood IANTD Nitrox Inst Cse Drills – Then down seaward side & limited penetration along a tunnel within near-light zone – presumably a galleyway along the upper deck – that was one of the best dives on Hood but strong (1K) current made control awkward”  I remember Don putting me through a range of skills, the ones sticking in my mind being the removal and re-fit of my deco bottle, and the no mask swim, some 25m or so, and then the “gas chase”, a nickname but a descriptive one……..your buddy is allowed to set off finning as if he hasn’t noticed a separation, you allow 10 seconds and then exhale all gas, then you are allowed to begin to swim after him, get his attention, calmly, indicate out of air, and commence taking his alternate air-source. Now that all sounds quite simple sitting in a comfy chair in your favourite bar, or coffee shop……when you do it at 15m or so, in cold water, often in low visibility and for real, it is a more “immediate” experience……. if nothing else, it requires focus, and composure…..precisely why it was trained in the first place! The rest was all about the Hood, and a great dive it was too, the first time I had ventured in and amongst her upturned hull, and the confusion of rat-runs possible at various points along her massive flank. I gained a new love of HMS Hood as a dive that day, and in combination with the IANTD training, waking in me deeper commitment to diving in a measured and planned approach, I gained a whole lot more from that weekend than many others I had taken so far

 I think this was the weekend that diving really became an obsession with me, up to this point I knew I could dive and I had dived pretty extensively, this was where I took a step beyond “diving” and irrevocably set myself on a path of discovery focused primarily on wreck diving. Don would use the wrecks of Portland harbour to cement James’s Nitrox journey and, unwittingly lead me to conclude there was really only “Wreck Diving”, that all other diving was just “diving”, it was all about getting to a wreck, exploring that wreck and deciding it either was….or wasn’t safe to get inside and around every part of the wreck you could conceivably see or access. The rest was just “decompression”, it could be great deco, and there might be wonderful marine life and fantastic eco-systems around you…….but it was the wreck that mattered…..it was all about the wreck!

Devil Gas and the origin of species

The Falkland Islands Expedition had been an adventure, I had enjoyed the wilderness and isolation of the South Atlantic, it’s wild cliffs and storm lashed coasts, the ever changing weather, (think Scotland or Northern Ireland on steroids), and the self-sufficient approach to our diving too. This was not Jamaica and the laid back sun-drenched coast, with its powder Blue Sea, it’s white sand beaches…. and “Iree“…. this was drama on a daily basis, dark and gloomy skies, often heavy and grey with Cumulus and Nimbus clouds, its rain lashed headlands and the ever changing winds, one minute gentle breezes, then an hour later whirling dervish mistral, building to storm force gales at the whim of the Gods. Truly four seasons in most days…..and this was the Falklands in summer!

  The time spent there was, truly, adventurous diving, the little inflatables were tiny specks on the vastness of the South Atlantic Ocean, we were always focused on the sea-state around us and the weather reports, mindful that weather builds there very quickly, it didn’t take much to go from a diveable state to life-threatening, and change came on quickly too. Don had secured some kit deals before we left England, he had anticipated the need for rugged, easily serviceable regulators, and talked Poseidon into a military discount for those on the expedition. It gave us options, use our own regs and deco rigs, or use common expedition Jetstreams and Cyklons which Don had upgraded to when he started to use “Nitrox”. Don had to keep reasonably quiet about his Nitrox diving in BSAC circles as it was colloquially known as “Devil-Gas,” its use banned in the BSAC world since 1992. Now that had me interested, I knew the Poseidon’s were great regs, (I also knew I couldn’t afford them) here was a way of getting to use them and evaluate whether they were worth the extra £100 above the cost of most regular dive regs…. Then there was this “Nitrox” stuff…..what was all that about?   

  I had plenty of time to talk with Don over the 3 weeks plus we were in the Falklands and Don, outside the BSAC diving clique, was pushing limits, he had obviously been seduced to the dark side for some time now, he didn’t say when and wasn’t really forthcoming, this was no enticement, just an answering of questions whenever they came up, and, although there were plenty of opportunities, I didn’t want to be rude or feel that I was playing inquisitor. There was plenty to occupy Don running the expedition, he didn’t need me adding anything to that pressure but I had questions, why were BSAC fighting any attempt to bring Devil Gas into the fold….and why the fcuk call it “Devil Gas” in the first place if you didn’t want it to get even more coverage? Perhaps the biggest question of them all, what exactly was it and why was it nicknamed Devil Gas…….? I was a shit Padawan, I managed to push nitrox into far too many conversations to feign a “passing” interest, I wanted to know what the fuss was all about and Don was the only person I knew who had used the stuff….ergo I was his shadow….and Don……he had become Gas-Yoda! Don was keen to point out there was nothing “special” about Nitrox, he didn’t know why it had been slated as “Devil Gas” in the higher echelons of the BSAC but, privately, he wasn’t sure the senior BSAC divers were ready for anything else new, or cutting edge? I had some sympathy there, I had my own experiences when going straight for a Buddy Commando stab jacket over an adjustable buoyancy Life Jacket (ABLJ)…..I was in “too much of a hurry to embrace “new” and “potentially dangerous” kit, having too few dives to make such decisions wisely”….. as far as some in TIDSAC believed

  I quizzed Don on what Nitrox was and he took the time to explain, apparently it was nothing more than a custom “mix” of Oxygen in the air we naturally breathed to dive, it was all down to percentages and something distant from my school classrooms of a decade plus ago…partial pressures……. Now I had always hated school, I hated the confinement in dreary classrooms, the bored and disaffected teachers, the stupefyingly dull subjects, I mean, Latin FFS…. (How many Roman Centurions would I ever get to speak to…?), algebra, trigonometry….statistics, God just kill me now….but most of all, the absolute epitome of mind numbingly shit subjects…… in the entire panoply of scholarship…….. was Mathematics. I have zero to the Nth degree empathy with Maths, I would rather mow a stately home lawn with my teeth than sit through a 20 minute Maths lesson…….. so the minute Don said, “…It’s simple really….the normal 79% Nitrogen to 21% Oxygen ratio is adjusted in the gas mix to give an equivalent shallower depth to that being dived….giving an elevated Oxygen level in the blood, reducing the decompression obligation or increasing the safety factor exponentially….” I just glazed over and any interest died. Don might as well have said Acta Deos numquam mortalia fallunt (look it up…)

  I was not going to get any further with Nitrox and might as well admit it, it was Math related and I hated Maths with a driven passion. Figures move on a page when I look at them, they still do, they won’t stay still long enough for me to make any sense of them, I’d tried, don’t get me wrong, I don’t just refuse to take on new things, but in school I just did not “get” maths. I believed I was just plain “thick” and so did my Math teacher, I made no excuses for it either, I was happy to look him straight in the eye and tell him Math was a shit subject and I couldn’t give a Fcuk if I didn’t understand calculus or formulae….I could count and I could add and subtract, that’d do me! That wasn’t going to help me with Nitrox though, but I think it sparked some buried teaching instinct in Don, perhaps he identified with my rebellious nature, perhaps he saw something of himself in me, maybe he was just interested in a challenge, but he was clear…..”Col, even you can learn this stuff….if you want to…..It’s easy and I can teach you….if you want me to?” Now I was not convinced at the time, but I wanted to know more, I had the sense I would be near the front end of something new, for perhaps the first time in my life, and that pricked my ears up……and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go……..not just yet

  So over the remaining weeks I would ask Don, “so what are the advantages of this mixed gas then”, and the answers were interesting, really interesting, Nitrox allowed you to spend more time in the water, if you took enough gas with you, it was “Gas” now, not “Air”…. Which kind of made sense as Air is a mixture of gasses to begin with, I remembered that when I first started diving from way back in Physics classes, 79% Nitrogen, 20.”Whatever”% Oxygen with the remainder “trace” elements like Argon…… So I was comfy that Air had become Gas…..I was, unknowingly being unwittingly seduced….ever closer to the Dark Side. So what was the benefit other than “more time”, because I knew some of the UK diving I was doing you wouldn’t necessarily want more than 30 minutes bottom time, UK waters were as cold as the Falklands for most of the year and, even if your core was able to take prolonged immersion, your fingers suffered, and that made operating your kit difficult towards the most dangerous part of the dive, the final ascent….no one wanted to fluff their air control and end up in a missed stop, or risking embolism on a fast ascent! Was Nitrox a “deep gas”?

  I was approaching 40m dives on some occasions now, and didn’t want to end up pushing myself into something I wasn’t ready for. I was progressing at a comfortable rate, not number crunching, if a dive was good at 10m that’s where I was, if it had something great to see at 35m then fine I’d go there, but there was never a sense of let’s go deeper for the hell of going deeper, I didn’t “get” that either, usually the viz was poor and there was little to see at 35m in UK waters, why push that to 45 if there was nothing but rock sand and kelp waiting for you….? But Nitrox wasn’t that sort of Gas, increasing the amount of Oxygen in the breathing gas was actually restrictive, increased partial pressures of Oxygen  (PPO2) could be fatal beyond 1.9% and the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD) recommended a maximum of 1.6% PPO2 and only when a dive was considered low stress and low physical effort at that, otherwise their maximum recommended PPO2 was 1.4%, so you were actually expected to consider Nitrox a viable Gas to around the 40m mark, anyhow, and as Don pointed out, at this time you would find it difficult to get Nitrox mixes beyond 2 “standard” mixes, 32% and 36% with, if you were lucky enough to have a broad minded dive centre, 50% and 75% as ”decompression” gasses, and only then if you had an Advanced Nitrox ticket.  

Now Don was leaving the Army soon, as was I, Don knew of my plans to set up a dive business once I had settled in my new home-town of Uttoxeter, and he offered to do some work leading me into Nitrox and seeing if I was happy where it would take me, before I made any commitment. That wasn’t just commitment to the learning of even more new practices and techniques, after all, I’d only just taken the leap across to PADI, and that had been an eye opener and far more effort than I’d expected (as those of you who have read the piece on PADI Training will be aware), but this commitment would see me need more investment in equipment too. Nitrox was an emergent technology and necessitated dedicated regulators, O2 cleaned cylinders, dedicated decompression rigs and the investment in training….but it was enticing, the benefits seemed undeniable, clearer decision making based on better Oxygenation during the dive, if you used Nitrox mixes on no-decompression, or “standard” bottom time dives, (equivalent Air depth diving) you were far safer, as your blood Oxygen level was higher throughout the dive, and if you wanted to use it to extend your dives, you could combine higher Oxygen percentage decompression gasses with the extended dive times, and reduce the decompression obligation so you were out of the water quicker than you would have been on Air….what wasn’t to like, I was sliding deeper towards the dark side with every conversation, I wanted to know all there was to know before I spent penny One! I wasn’t confident that even Don could teach me the math required for Nitrox diving…..but I was beginning to feel that eventual surrender to the force was inevitable…….

After the Falkland dives were wrapped up, with our last dive in Port Stanley sound on the SS Kelly 03^rd February of 1996, I said my farewells to the expedition team and began the glide path to my own event horizon in June of 1996, when, after 9 years, I would be free of the British Army and have to fend for myself amongst hordes of the uninitiated….or “Civvies” as those in the services know them. I had arranged with Don to carry on with Nitrox, and to actually get into the water and try the stuff, it would be back to Stoney Cove in Leicester, and we arranged to meet up there on the 10^th of March ’96, it would be cold in Stoney in March…..I wasn’t truly sure I wanted that much longer underwater if I’m truly honest……… Don took me through the do’s and don’ts before the dive, Percy, one of the divers from the Southern Craftsman expedition had decided to join us too, he had been thinking the same as me and obviously had similar conversations with Don whilst we were in Port Stanley, perhaps even beforehand…. And so to Stoney Cove, 10^th March of 1996 and a series of Nitrox dives…the log book recorded: “Nitrox Dive – Stoney Cove – Leic Diving Nitrox for the First time. Spent 20 min @ 20m & went through double reel deployment drills. Certainly felt less fatigued & was “clearer” throughout the dive Viz 0-10m W/Temp 6 Air In 225 – Out 100 Buddies Don & Percy” The dive was completed using 31% Nitrox. That was quickly followed an hour or so later, following some surface code workings and Gas re-fills, and was recorded so: “Nitrox II – Stoney Cove – Leic same mix but practicing reel deployment. Definitely less fatigue & clearer thought processes. More involved dive planning. W/Temp 6’ Air in 100 out 50 Buddy Percy”

  I had 10 days to learn the rest of the planning and precautions stages of Nitrox diving, then we were back at Stoney to finish off the IANTD Nitrox Diver Course, my log book records, 20 March 1996: “Freshwater Dive- Stoney Cove Leic. Finishing off Nitrox Course, planned and executed a deep dive and deco stops. Really Green hue to everything but good. Viz @ 35m (5m) practiced DV swapping for deco mix. W/Temp 4’ Viz 5m Air in 225 Out 100 Buddy Don & Mik” We had completed that dive using 30% Nitrox as it was deeper, and we needed to lower the PPO2 for the water temperature and work- loads expected. We went right back in an hour or so later this time on a 40% mix and the log again records: “Nitrox – Stoney Cove – Leic 1.5 hr surface interval – change of mix & back in – Viz good (5m). W/Temp 4’ Air in 220 Out 140 Buddy’s Don Mik Toots” This was my One hundred and Seventy Third dive to date, I was beginning to get the hang of this diving lark….and it seemed I’d never stop learning either!

There’d been Partial Pressures of gasses, Fractions of gas, Best mix calculations, Units of Pulmonary Toxicity Doses, a whole new set of decompression tables to work through, gas switches for decompression, Maximum Operating Depths, “best” Fractions of Oxygen….. and a whole host of kit configurations to look through, along with drills for deployable surface marker buoys (DSMB’s) and gas analysis, cylinder markings and gas logs to go through…. The last few months seemed to have been a self-inflicted blur of dive related learning on a scale I’d never have dreamed possible, but it had opened up another opportunity as Don had said, “you’re finding the diving easy, you’ve adapted well and despite what you said, you don’t have a problem with the Math”……..It was true, Don had approached my Maths deficiency with a degree of insight I had never been exposed to before, after the first half hour of working fractions he turned to me and said, “……..trust me….stop thinking “why”…..just follow the steps I show you every time and if the answer you get is the same as mine then it doesn’t matter “why” does it…..?” I couldn’t argue, I just did what Don said, I followed the steps he gave, slowly at first, but with growing confidence, and the figures started to match…..I was doing Math….it was nothing short of a fcuking miracle and if old “Etty Johnson” (E.T. Johnson, my form Math teacher) of KGV could have seen it, he’d not have believed it in a million years. So I’d learnt another way to dive, and I had another step if I wanted it, Don would be happy to take me on to the Advanced Nitrox Course……. if it was something that might be of interest…..? I could feel a disruption in the universe…….could I ever truly give myself to the Dark Side……

Professional Association of Diving Instructors…..the journey to the Dark Side……

Pay and dive immediately…. I’d heard some of the BSAC club members scoffing at those presenting PADI qualifications trying to dive with TIDSAC, those conversations never really went well and indicated the deep mistrust the British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) held for those who dared train elsewhere. Confederation Mondiale des Activites Subaquatiques (CMAS) was the French, joint, world governing body, along with the BSAC….. at least in the European and, latterly, Asian countries, the growth of PADI had spread across the Americas and dominated the US, despite showings by smaller training organisations like Scuba Schools International (SSI) and National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), and there were “Technical” dive organisations beginning to make a show, the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD) had started to make headway, somewhat against the flow, advocating “Devil Gasses” such as Nitrox and Tri-mix. The world of scuba diving had, somewhat unknowingly, become a battle-ground, Amateur versus “professional” instructors, Air-Divers or “Sport” divers versus “Technical” Divers, the times they were a changing….(sorry Bob)….

Against that landscape, there was a soldier facing his own paradigm shift, I had become disillusioned to an extent, I’d picked up an injury in Northern Ireland, nothing dramatic, a fall in a fire trench overgrown in a forest, a very heavy patrol sack and an unyielding ankle, resulted in a tear to the Peroneal tendon sheaths in my Right ankle at the back of my leg. The injury meant I’d no future with the infantry, and I had no interest in remaining with the REME, it was a devastating realisation and it posed a significant question…..what the hell would I do next…..? The immediate future was secured, the Army looks after their injured and I had been put on the waiting list for an operation at Wroughton (a RAF facility actually called Princess Alexandra Hospital) up the road a little from Tidworth, it would take a few months to recover from the op and build back mobility in the ankle, but it would end the pain, and hopefully get rid of the tendency to limp a little, which was more irritating as it looked and felt like a “sympathy” thing to me

  After the operation and towards the back end of the physio piece, I’d built enough strength back up in the area and the scar had healed enough to get back into the water, I’d got a slot on the Jamaica Experience exped and I wasn’t going to let that go, the physio agreed with me, it would be great therapy as the finning would exercise the remaining tendons….I loved the guy! So I had some soul searching to do, Jamaica was a good enough place to do that and I’d chatted with Don Shirley whilst I was on the exped (Don was leading it). Don was coming up to his 22 year point and was considering his next move, he was getting into “Technical” diving and offered to keep in touch and the conversation drifted to PADI over a couple of days, the “American” nature of the courses, the opportunities there might be in “Civvie-Street” (the hated term the military use for “normal” life, or put another way, a life outside the military anyway) Don suggested I talk to Mal Strickland, an Army Major who, with his cohort WO1 “Jimmy” Dowling, pretty much “were” the Army Sub Aqua Diving Association (ASADA) and had a line into Fort Bovisands for “Re-Settlement” courses. Resettlement was the Army’s way of ensuring a soldier leaving the service (after a minimum of 9 years’ service), could get help towards a career change, say a lorry driving course, farriers certificate, or in my case a PADI professional scuba instructors certificate……I was intrigued, I had no desire to end up working in a factory for the rest of my life…just shoot me now ffs!

I talked to “Mal” and we got on fine, so much so that he asked my CO if I could be seconded to Warminster, down the road from Tidworth, to take care of the maintenance of the diving kit, outboards and compressors for ASADA until I was finally released from service. I was over the moon, away from Major bloody Andrews, and working on something other than knackered Tank engines….bloody marvellous! I truly enjoyed working with Mal and Jimmy, they were old school and they were divers to the core, Jimmy was going on the same course I had asked for and that tuned out to be fortuitous too, more on that later! I worked through the kit, mask straps, fin straps, outboards, I managed a week’s course down at the Commando boat squadron learning how to service and repair their outboards and came back to blitz through the ASADA motors, something Mal was chuffed with as they started pretty much first pull after a bit of a tweak. The compressors were a different kettle of fish, these were in need of specialised attention and a couple of them probably beyond economic repair, but I knew the issues, there just wasn’t a way to sort them. It didn’t take Mal and Jimmy long to get enough interest, and by September of 1995 the PADI “Open Water Scuba Instructor” course was arranged, the dates set December of 1995 and so, to Bovisands and re-settlement……..

  I arrived at Bovisands after a maul down from Tidworth, I’d spent the weekend back in Uttoxeter with Ellie and the boys and driven back to Tidworth to collect my dive kit, I’d loaded that and then driven straight down to Bovisands, I was, to put it mildly….fcuked! I met up with Jimmy Dowling sat in the little Bovisands bar that evening, I was in bits, and I’d fcuked up too……badly……there was a medical form that needed my doctor’s signature, and I was now about 200 miles from any chance of getting that. It seemed my course was over before it had started, how in hell had I missed that, I had been tested more times than a plague suspect over the last 3 months, I couldn’t be more “fit” if I’d tried, barring the now fully healed, but still very fresh scar on my ankle from the operation….Let me have a look at the form Jimmy said…and I sheepishly passed it over, yep, I’ve seen that done before he said, and took out a pen……..doctor’s signatures, they are so bloody scruffy…….I was saved, and forever indebted, I had to promise to get the med centre to sign me off immediately on my return to Tidworth, but it was “sorted” and we were “on”

The next day was endless form filling in the morning, course support materials issued, joining forms checked, a hundred signatures to give, and then finally kit check and lunch in the Fort Café. I loved that café it was like a truck-stop but for divers, and the breakfasts were good, so was the coffee! Then we assembled down on the slip and were assigned groups for the skill-tests, these were expected to be demonstrated perfectly and they were scored, something that added a little focus for those of us who had been observed before, but never had the additional pressure of a prescribed grading and a pass fail score requirement. How many steps constituted a good demonstration of a mask removal and re-fit? What exactly was a “Fin pivot” and how did you demonstrate perfect control of buoyancy, in a shallow harbour, prone to wave surge…….whilst maintaining your posture and your composure….and clearly rising on inhalation, stopping, and then falling on exhalation, without losing the plot, and either face-planting the bottom on descent, or lifting your fin-tips off the bottom on the ascent phase……this wasn’t as easy as it sounded! I was starting to think PADI instructors were a little better trained than I previously thought!

  There were other things to learn too, not just the specific steps to deliver training but the way PADI carried out actual diving was different, there were planning tools used, the “Recreational Dive Planner” or RDP, the US version of the BSAC “Table 88” decompression tables, but based on a commissioned study of “normal divers” not the US Navy divers test results, or Haldane’s Zurich experimental findings. There were other more subtle differences, the BSAC “6m Decompression Stop” had become a 3 minute 5m “Safety Stop” as anything with “Decompression” in the title scared US lawyers far too much apparently….. There were exam questions by the dozen, all based around the PADI training system, and it was an overwhelming amount of study to master in a short and activity based timescale. PADI had a love of submersible plastic “Slates” there were at least a dozen of the things, everything for each of the Open Water lessons and more for the pool lessons, they became another piece of dive-kit attached to your Stab Pocket, on a piece of bungee or para cord, and each lesson was prescribed in detail, there was nothing ad-hoc about teaching PADI diving! I was gaining a grudging respect for PADI, one I hadn’t expected, weren’t all BSAC Instructors the best in the world….wasn’t British diving the toughest there was… I had not long completed my BSAC Advanced Instructor course, it had been a pre-requisite to “equivalence” in the PADI cross-over instructor course I was doing now, and it had been a tough course too, but the added unfamiliarity with the PADI framework and dive support materials was a burden, this was tougher than expected!

  I had taken my BSAC Advanced Instructor course knowing I would probably take the PADI Open Water Instructor course shortly after it, I had an idea, or the germ of one, to set up a diver training business in Stoke on Trent, just down the road from where I would live once I’d left the Army, with my girlfriend Ellie and our new family. I couldn’t wait, but I also knew I’d be hard pressed to justify the expense of diving to those who would depend on what I could provide, once I’d no regular income, or as I started to work my way in civvie street. I had no idea what I would do for a living now the Army was creeping into the rear view mirror, so in September of 1995 I had taken myself off to Bovisands for the weekend assessment of the BSAC Advanced Instructor exam. This had all the hallmarks of a BSAC National Instructors holiday, we had Tony Hoile with us, Bob Brading as an examiner and Lizzie Bird, practically BSAC Royalty! Norman and Joy Morley had told stories of these guys I’d been listening to for years, and it was an honour for me to meet them. I’d been told one thing by Norman before I went….teach, teach, teach….never let there be a quiet moment, if you’re sat on the boat and you’re not trying to pass on some “nugget” of your experiences then you aren’t doing enough….I took that advice seriously, I must have bored poor Bob Brading to death with my knowledge of Ribs, Knots, Charts, Tides and weather….but it worked, I’d even seemingly impressed Lizzie Bird, she was very complementary in the wrap-up, I’d “managed to find a safe area to train a circular search in very marginal weather” that she’d liked, “without getting line tangled or the surface buoy dragged down, even in a running current when other dives had been blown-out”….I’d passed, I was delighted! I still have an autographed copy of Lizzie’s wreck diving book too, it’s a great read!

Back to the OWSI exam….I had phoned Ellie the first evening following our introduction to PADI and the PADI instructor manual, after I had spent literally 30 minutes staring at the accommodation wall thinking, can I do this? Is this all falling around me like so much broken glass? The Open Water Instructor Manual set out exactly what you needed to achieve in all areas, the knowledge was in there, you just needed to identify, quickly, where you would find the exact information necessary to answer. We had all been told to use sticky tags to essentially “index” the quick reference points we would need for the Instructor exam, I think a couple of the candidates had gone overboard with multi-coloured tags everywhere down the pages of their manuals, I’d gone for a “less is more” approach, some “criticals” I knew would be in the exam, and several broader chapter look-ups, it meant I had to be sure I knew how deep to look, if I got bogged down in page searches time would tick away….but if I couldn’t see the wood for the trees it would do so too……it was a fine line!

The exam looked at PADI standards, the minimum pass-fail criteria for students and for courses, there were a hell of a lot of them, as there were a hell of a lot of lessons in both pool and Open Water, and then PADI procedures, what to do, when to do it and what it meant to do so, another whole set of do’s and don’ts, which if you failed to get 75% correct meant you failed the exam. As if that wasn’t enough there were then the theory exams, physics and physiology, equipment, dive skills, using the RDP, all very precise answers and even though they were multi-choice, time consuming and unlike the BSAC approach, very much a US version of scuba diving training. Following that there was the classroom presentation, a part of a PADI classroom lesson in reality, demonstrating your presentation skills as much as your ability to dissect part of a lesson, and present it effectively enough in a short appearance in front of your fellow candidates. I wasn’t worried in this area, I was used to presentation, and despite my knock-back at the BSAC Club Instructor exam, where I had been introduced to a little self-doubt, that had quickly passed and I’d returned to the confidence I always felt presenting subjects I had researched well….This was the part of the Instructor exam I least feared

Following the Instructor Exam, and a brief time with Ellie and the boys at Christmas, I was off to the Falkland Islands for a month with Don Shirley. I was really looking forward to just diving again, no demonstrations, no multi-choice, no pressures, just real dives in the sea, for the joy of diving….a million miles away from Fort Bovisands and the worries of a potentially wasted re-settlement course, at around £2k, and an uncertain future without a job to go to in civvie street………I can’t remember if we were told on the weekend we had passed or failed, or if we were notified by post at a later date, too much time has passed and to be honest, I had a lot on my plate at the time….but it all turned out alright in the end, I had passed and could now call myself, officially a “professional” dive instructor………..I had, officially…….. Turned to the dark side

 I had completed my Club Instructor Training Course at Bulford over the weekend of the 12 & 13 of February 1994, having just got back from diving Cyprus (another post or Two on here), the course was a prescribed one, comprising, as I recall, of pool-work and presentation of theory topics to the other students, which then was critiqued in order to provide feedback. I had no problem with the course, enjoying the training and taking away from the attendance an “Assistant Club Instructor” status which allowed me to apply for the Club Instructor exam, where I would be tested in the same way, a presentation, a pool lesson and then the written exam. The first attempt……. I failed, I got the “Thin” letter…. how the hell did that happen, the pool lesson had gone well, no safety slips, no demonstration slips….(I was positive), could it have been the class presentation, I had a dull subject but had presented no worse than some I had watched and (I thought) better than average……. I was gutted, but it was what it was….if nothing else, it served to kill any Hubris I might have been feeling up to then and it didn’t deter me!

  I put right back in for the next exam dates I could get. I don’t see the point of looking too hard for blame, I prefer to move on and, where possible, “up”, but it had pissed me off and there didn’t seem any good reason for it………. but what the hell! On my next attempt in November of 1994 I sailed through, no nerves, no anger, just raw determination to stick it right back up those who failed me last time, this time it was all new people, I was exactly the same person presenting, it was practically, to all intent and purpose, the same subject (given the classroom subject was less dull as I recall, but I struggle to remember exactly what either were today tbh) but a completely different result, and I had a straight pass…….. 15^th November 1994 was a good day……. redemption!   

BSAC Advanced Diver

The BSAC Advanced Diver Qualification was all I had in my sights before Former Yugoslavia, I hadn’t considered training other divers, apart from the help given to those joining the dive club in the usual way people do, military newly posted in, or coming in with friends, the odd civilian looking for dives and not nervous around the military, or the long established members seeking adventure at the weekend, a buddy to dive with, or someone to ask when you didn’t know what to do on a particular dive. The BSAC was an informal club environment for the most part, the military nature of TIDSAC meant safety was paramount, and there were a few more structured aspects to training, but it was still a relaxed way to learn your diving!

   I had just come back off one of the most adventurous dive weeks I could imagine in Lochalsh, deeper dives, drift dives and fantastic wreck diving, and there was more planned just a short week later, I was booked on an Advanced Diver Course back at Bovisands with JSSADC. Things were ramping up and I was getting some damn good diving in. The BSAC Advanced Diver qualification was there to show your progression after your Dive Leader qualification, it was planned as a personal development and as a leadership piece, the aim being to funnel you into different diving situations making you a more rounded diver. The Qualification Record Book summarizes the expectations: “10 open water dives to be completed from at least 5 different sites and on at least 5 different dates. Each dive to have a minimum submerged duration of 15 minutes. Dives should show experience of any 4 of the following:- Night Dive/Zero Visibility dive, Underwater Search/Recovery Operation, Dive to 40m/Dive with decompression stops/No clear surface dive. The Advanced Diver must log a further 5 hours underwater after qualifying as a dive leader; the above 10 dives counting towards this experience.” 

  I had a wide range of the dives I would need to demonstrate the experiences expected of me for the Advanced Diver level, the JSSADC course offered a way of getting the formal lectures, delivered by highly skilled military trainers, and get more diving in too, what could be better! The theory was a big part of the Advanced course and it was pushing you to look far wider than anything to date, Small Boat handling, Charts Tides & Weather, Basic navigation……..and there were practical demonstrations, Boat handling, underwater searches, compressor operation, dive equipment reviews and physics & physiology theory too! You were required to act as a Deputy Dive Marshall and following that to demonstrate you could successfully Dive Marshall club dives, it was an opportunity to not only gain a perspective on different diving situations and more adventurous, deeper or more complex diving, but to take a more senior role in your club and understand how to give much more back in so doing!

  The Bovisands dives took place following the theory lessons, usually there was a lesson in the evening following the day’s activity, and sometimes one during the surface interval, if the taskings weren’t too limiting. First dive in the log, on the 21^st July 1995 goes: “Small Boat – Plymouth Sound – Tinker Reef Shakeout dive off Bovisand, a hunt round the gullies 5m viz in amongst small Wrasse for a ferret – very pleasant W/Temp 17’ Air in 220 out 125 Buddy Chris” Then we were straight into diver rescue skills for a couple of dives the next day to get us back into the swing of things and to prove we were up to speed on controlled Buoyant lifts and air-sharing ascents

  Then there was the dive planning and marshaling piece, we were expected to plan dives in buddy pairs, assign diver coxn’s, safety divers, dive objectives and sites….it was all great stuff, a feeling that we were far more in control of events, not just taking part! The next Log-book entry: “RIB Dive – Mewstone Slabs – Plymouth A dig round an old favourite in the gullies – found an old concrete mooring buoy & chain for larger vessels) & plenty of life – Wrasse – Starfish – Plumrose Anemones etc – great root! W/Temp 17’ Viz 4m Buddy Chris Air in 220 Out 120” another on the 23 July ’95 pushed us back on a previous dive-site popular with the JSSADC: “RIB dive – Breakwater (West) Plymouth ferret about another good site at the edge of the sand where it meets the S/Blocks two very good size Wrasse came to peek. Plenty of life – good dive W/Temp 17’ Viz 3m & hazy Air in 190 Out 120 Buddy Chris”

Our next dive was on the wreck of the Glen Strathallen, a former trawler converted to a luxury yacht, scuttled off Bovisands as a dive attraction April 27^th 1970. Now I am not a fan of ships sunk as attractions as any diver who has dived with me will probably tell you, I didn’t know at the time that the “Glen” had been purposefully sunk, I won’t include it in the wreck section for that reason, whatever is sunk deliberately is not a “wreck” in any sense. There was little left of the Glen Strathallen some metal deck fittings, the boiler and general bits and pieces, but she made for an interesting dive on the day as the little Red book notes: “Glen Strathallen formerly a “Gin Palace” the Glen was commandeered then returned after the war, then used as a classroom & then sunk & used as a “Dems” exercise. She’s flat but in the shape of the hull the only large feature is the boiler & it’s resident Pollack, they’re fair sized. The rest is a hunt round plating & nooks & crannies with plenty of life to see low key & interesting. Viz round 3-4m…”

  The Advanced diver course now moved into the “search and survey” diving realms for a couple of days, we were schooled in search techniques, Jack-stay, circular and compass searches we added survey techniques….. measuring and plotting squares and circular searches combining points of depth and obstructions and weight assessment, lift requirements, equipment appraisals…..It was all interesting stuff and far more oriented to commercial activities than sport diving to me, but the BSAC was a wide remit organisation, it was BSAC divers that found and co-ordinated the raising of the Mary Rose amongst other large scale enterprises, it was only a couple of years before my course that they had stopped using charges (explosives) for removing stubborn ships Propellers a whole different ball game!  My log book notes: 24^th July “RIB Dive – Cawsands Bay – Plymouth underwater work laying bottom line for a circular search All sorted clean and sharpish…..” and a day later: “RIB Dive – Ramscliffe Point – Plymouth Bottom & Viz survey of an area – measuring by circular search & plotting bottom conditions…” and finally on the afternoon of the 25^th July: “RIB Dive – Bovisands Harbour – Plymouth Survey of a cannon to lift at a later date Very interesting doing charting & assessment….” These were progressive dives getting us used to additional tasking underwater and the equipment we would need to carry out search and recovery and lift operations, I remember the most valuable lesson of them all clearly……..keep off the bottom and don’t make the viz any worse than it already is….lessons I would never stop teaching others later in my diving journey!

The last couple of dives of the course were far more like it, we headed out to the James Egan Layne, probably the most dived shipwreck in the world at that time, one I loved and couldn’t wait to get back onto! We elected to dive the stern section on this occasion, I had not dived it previously but had heard it was a good dive, I wrote it up later saying: “1^st visit to the James Egan Layne’s stern section, down the shot to 22m and took a look round the area, the stern is heavily rotted and is covered in Anemones. Lots of fish life, Wrasse, a nice John Dory, one huge Bass and plenty of Whiting & Pouting. There are areas where you can get in and about the stern & root, but I couldn’t find the rumored “shells”, very good root & a lovely photogenic wreck. A great dive. Viz 5 – 7m Air In 200 Out 90 W/Temp 16’ …”

Although we took a dive on what we expected to be the Persier the next morning, sadly we saw nothing of the wreck save a couple of bits of metal that could’ve been from anything really, we were in the vicinity of the wreck but definitely not on it! And so that afternoon we motored across the sound back to Bigbury bay and onto the James Egan Layne for our last dive of the course, this time onto the main of the wreck, but it wasn’t the dive it could have been, an Atlantic swell had built overnight and my log book records: “Down on to the main bow section, viz down to 2m due to weather & an incoming tide, lots of buffeting about, uncomfortable & not that enjoyable. Eerie but banged about too much for any enjoyment Air In 200 Out 75 W/Temp 17’…” That was it, over…a week of Advanced diving had shot by and I’d loved every minute of it, all that remained was to select the dives and get them signed off to go with the lectures I’d already completed over the last year and have Adrian, the TIDSAC DO at the time, sign off my Advanced qualification……

Croatia had certainly given me a direction I had not really considered up to this point in my diving. I had been diving since August of 1990 and I had 46 dives by the close of the tour in November of 1993. Not a great amount by anyone’s estimation, including mine, but I had undertaken some training, some breakdown of skills into easily repeated steps, necessary to show those venturing underwater for the first time how to achieve tasks such as mask clearing and regulator recovery, and it had been commented that I was good at this, and patient enough to make a difference to those who struggled a little initially, and , to be honest I had enjoyed showing people the underwater experiences I loved……..

On my first dive back in the UK, Bowleaze Cove in Dorset, I had buddied up with Dave, a new diver working up to Sports level, the Viz was appalling, I described it as “Nil” in my log-book, but, rather than bin the event I got Dave to sit with me in the dark playing Naughts & Crosses by torchlight…..it saved the dive and Dave said it took away the apprehension of such bad viz, clearly that made a difference. It was recognising in myself, situations that were “edgy”, or times when slowing down and taking stock was a far better idea than just “forging ahead”, perhaps, that made a difference to those I dived with. There were a few in the club who were keen to dive with me out of preference and I took that as a huge compliment

Norman, the TIDSAC DO was encouraging and supportive, allowing me to assist at every opportunity we had at pool sessions, and giving me the Dive-Leadership Theory lectures through April of 1993 in preparation for the Dive-Leadership in-water assessments. There were 4 of these, all taken by a BSAC Advanced Diver “observing” as the candidate “led” a Dive-Leader or Advanced Diver on open water dives. The aim of this, was clearly not to risk inexperienced divers with an untested trainee, but to allow the trainee to prove his competence “leading” more experienced divers in various situations, during which “problems” would generally arise, allowing the trainee Dive Leader to recognise behaviors, or potential “situations”, in relative safety and carry out corrective actions to guide the dives back into safe practice…….. The culmination on the Fourth dive was a Safety & Rescue Skills Test, essentially a rescue of an unresponsive diver from the shallows, somewhere around 10m or so, and the safe recovery whilst administering rescue breaths, and undertaking kit removal to facilitate beaching, or boat recovery, and due care until onward transmission into medical supervision was practical

It took nearly a year to get the Dive-Leader assessment dives complete, my First being undertaken April of 1993 and my Final, Rescue assessment dive, taking place on the very same day exactly a year later, 04th April 1994. I was delighted to pass as a Dive-Leader, it was a 12 month journey, but I had enjoyed it, immensely, and by the April of 1994 I had already applied for, and passed the Assistant Club Instructor Training Course at Bulford over the weekend of the 12th & 13th of February ’94……I had decided I liked training people, I got a great deal more out of the satisfaction of taking others diving than I had ever believed I would, more, I knew than I had to put in……I loved it, and now I was eligible to put in for my BSAC Club Instructor exam, I could barely wait!

I slipped into diver training without really noticing it if I am really honest about things. I was going to be in Croatia for a long stretch and would get limited time to do anything remotely useful, unless it was outside the UN envelope, anyone who has served with the UN will likely agree, it is not the most joined-up of enterprises and struggles to do anything effective when the mandate is “intervention” rather than positive action. I had been given a break by my boss Chris, he recognised there wasn’t much to write home about and approved a diver training programme, it had Two pay-offs, firstly down time at Pleso, (the Zagreb airport we were stationed at whilst rotating around 4 outlying regions), could be used productively, not just sitting around drowning in Heineken at the Dutch bar (an impromptu bar in an ISO container where you could get hammered on Heineken if you were invited in by the Dutch Signals contingent), secondly it was a tick in the seniority ladder, organising a recreational programme in a UN deployment, with multi-national access and integration, could not go unnoticed when the promotion board sat…… The local liaison officer Nick Stansfield, a decent enough officer ( a Captain, or “Rupert” to those of us at lower altitude) came along to ensure his box was ticked, and that everything was set-up legitimately…… no one would appreciate a death on this tour, let alone one on R&R…….

So the scouting had already taken place (see the post in general diving on Pula), the contacts had been made to get us into the water, and now we had higher echelon approval! All that remained was to let each unit in Pleso know that there was scuba-diving on offer, and we could see if there was any take-up. I had the BSAC lesson plans from the manual and knocked up some support materials on cards, this was before significant technical slide sets were generally available, and we were stuck, incommunicado with the outside world pretty much. This was in order to limit the communications opportunities significantly bored squaddie’s often make use of, which invariably end up in negative publicity for such international enterprises….(pissing off the senior ranks, who then have to justify themselves in the broader limelight, and often to the world’s press….…) I decided on an advertising campaign and came up with “Try Diving…. you wear rubber and it’s warm, wet and smells of Fish!”.…..which was instantly banned (never understood why tbh…..)and changed to a bulletin, put out to each unit offering “R&R diving courses” to the Finns, the Dutch, the French and the Norwegians we had serving alongside us……..and they came…..

Our first course saw a small take-up from the Dutch Signals Battalion, and a couple of guys from my own 24 field Ambulance support group, including my room mate Phill Talbot, who appears in the Cyprus piece on Vera K elsewhere in this blog. It was a pain doing a day’s work and then delivering a couple of hours on Buoyancy, the laws of depth and pressure, or Dive kit and underwater signals, but it was a distraction from the Dutch bar, which helped keep the blood/alcohol within reasonable levels…..or so I told myself! I didn’t keep a score of how many we trained but it was a steady stream of all ranks, I had Majors down to Privates and everything in between, where there were language issues we asked the guys to bring along an English speaker, and then worked out translations on the technical stuff as we went along….and it worked, the guys passed the academic side before being allowed to book the weekend of practical open water diving in Pula

There was an amazing co-incidence that had taken place earlier in this tour which had passed me by completely…. I had been outside the paymasters office, about to get some local currency, (which we took as Deutschmarks as the taxi-drivers gave a far better rate for the German Mark than we got for local Croat Dinars….) and had overheard a heated exchange between the paymaster and the Officer Commanding (OC) a woman at that time, unusually. I can’t remember her name but the paymaster was a Captain, one Ned Middleton, who would become pretty famous for his Red Sea and Maltese wreck-diving books, and someone I got to know a little later on in life. Ned called me in to the office, looked at me and said, “…….and you heard…..Fcuk all….. right Son….” to which I answered, no idea what you mean Sir! which was obviously the right answer as I escaped with my Deutschmarks and, later in life, I got a couple of Ned’s books, autographed 1st editions, and a better explanation of the event (and a bit of background too) when I related the incident back to him. Ned’s a top bloke and I thoroughly enjoy his books, which can only be described as “un-paralleled” in terms of accuracy and research, I strongly recommend them, brilliant reading!

The skills tests went well, there wasn’t a single failure throughout the whole tour, which was a bit of a miracle to be honest as diving isn’t for everyone, but it seems to suit military personnel of all nations very well. The bay was a superb training area, with shallow beautifully clear water. A little further out there were rock outcrops with shoals of small fish everywhere and it got a little deeper too topping out around 15m to the extent we dived it. I regularly took part in the skills tests and was often used as a demonstration dummy too, I got wet, we had fun, there was even a bar on site which opened conveniently enough in the evenings, and served from mid-morning at weekends. The place was perfect for what we wanted and after an afternoon intro on arrival, and a day of training and skills tests we followed up with a couple of Rib dives a little further out from the bay on day Two of each weekend course, the guys loved it…..and so did I!

There were various dives to complete out from the Dive Centre off the quay-side, we even found a Brass Shell timer from an old WWII bomb intended for the Pula port, the casing itself sat off to one side 5 or 6m or so, probably still full of the high explosive packed inside it after decades underwater…. I logged 11 dives out of Punta Verudella, several shore dives, and 6 RIB dives in all, the majority being 10-20m with 2 over 25m and a couple into the “washing Machine” mentioned in the caves and cavern section of this blog. Every dive was great fun, the headland is rocky outcrops, with pine trees all the way to the sea, giving a most picturesque view from any location around the Murgon’s bay and offering plenty of tunnels and swim-through’s which are always enjoyable. Although the fish-life was there, it was generally smaller, pretty coloured fish, I saw my first John Dory and my first Spanish Dancer in the bay and always loved the myriad tiny fish darting away from us as we approached, I was lucky to have fallen on the right place at the right time and Croatia endeared itself to me through my diving there, in Punta Verudella

A little later in the year I took a couple of second time divers down the peninsula a little, a couple of kilometers or so, just to try a shore dive, November of 1992. The viz was a little less than usual, we were in off the shore and round the headland a little, so as the light dimmed in late afternoon things were just a little gloomier. It was a good dive, we swam around the rocky headland and down to 8 or 9m just enjoying the fading light, and the independence of a different location, a bit of a minor adventure given we didn’t take torches. That was a mistake really as we nearly got run over by a returning fisherman in his small skiff, luckily he saw us waving our arms before things got too close, but it served as a reminder not to take anything, including daylight for granted!

All in all we ran 7 weekends over the 7 months we were in Croatia and I reckon we trained 20 or so multi-national soldiers from at least 5 different countries, not a bad start to a career in diver training, and not one I had ever intended embarking upon. I said at the beginning of this piece that I slipped into training, that is true, but I actively sought out the next steps, I enjoyed being part of the training programme I had set up in Croatia, I couldn’t sign off the divers myself though, that fell to Vlado. The qualifications the lads earned were CMAS rather than BSAC awards, equivalent and just as legitimate, some might say even more “international”, but on my return to the UK I asked my DO to let me join some of the training programmes there, something I would eventually take over and run myself………and it started in Croatia, in clear Blue warm waters….

  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……..