“It was always, all about the training”

All through my diving career, I have been aware of the value of training, currency, and constant practice of safety drills. Too often, I have seen experienced divers get into serious difficulty because they failed to manage a minor issue. An issue that their training had equipped them to solve easily. Conversely, I have always had respect for the diver who dedicates his first dive on a liveaboard to a gentle skills practice. 

Recently, I dived in the cenotes of the Yucatan peninsula. Initially, I found the experience very uncomfortable. Only the sound words of briefing from Olaf, our guide, the rationalisation of his safety briefings, and the adaptation of a constant emergency plan allowed me to grow to love the experience. Training is not just something that teaches us to dive, good training and diver education gives us the skills to adapt to new environments, new equipment and, most important of all, incidents. 

Learning to dive

I learnt to dive on the Great Barrier Reef in 1992. Apart from the usual buoyancy and safety training, the SSI course entailed a series of academic sessions on all matters diving. Only one person on the boat owned a dive computer, so all of us we were all trained on U S Navy (1952) dive tables and the use of a dive watch. 

Even though this was an entry-level open water course, we were trained thoroughly, and repetition and comfort to precedence over achievement. Our academic training included decompression theory, and the need for safety stops and how to do and calculate decompression stops. It was impressed upon us that we should not decompression dive, unless we had more experience, but we did all the training. 

On the way home to Britain, I passed through the United States. I was so hooked on diving that when I found myself in Seattle, I went around the entire youth hostel asking if anyone was a diver and “did they fancy some shore dives”. A competent, enthusiastic, and pleasant American agreed to dive with me. We took a city bus to a dive store next to the underwater park in Edmonds, rented equipment and staggered down the shingle beach. Wrapped up in 7mm wetsuits and a hood, I was a little surprised by “Northwest” Pacific diving. In addition, we had no computer and no dive watch between us. When I asked to rent one, I received a blasé, if truthful, response:

“Don’t worry, you will run out of air before you run out of time at 30ft.” 

Underwater, it took me a good 5 minutes to adjust to 5m visibility and 15°C water temperatures. My fin strap broke at 11m; I was not overly phased and finned back on one fin to shore while my buddy had a giggle. Dumping my kit with my buddy, I raced off to the dive shop in my wetsuit to get a replacement. Apart from that, the dives were fun. I had pulled off my first two cold water dives with no orientation whatsoever. My initial training and a degree of confidence had simply carried me through. 

On returning to United Kingdom, I realised two things very quickly. I needed more training to dive in British waters, and I definitely needed my own dive watch. I hunted around in the back of Diver magazine looking for a dive school. I found John Weinberg, a brilliant educator and highly experienced diver. He operated out of a flat in Hammersmith, a pool in Richmond, and his assets were a red Ford Transit, 10 sets of kit and another superb instructor called Karen Shaw.

Two choices

At the time, there were two choices for dive training in the UK: The British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) or PADI. John was BSAC and PADI instructor. I chose BSAC as the training seemed to my inexperienced eye to be more involved. I achieved my sport diver rating after numerous rides in John’s Ford van, a series of dives around the South of England and an exam.  

So taken was I with diving that, after a year, I decided to continue my education to dive leader. Here, I learned how to read admiralty charts, interpret a shipping forecast, to roster divers and even more decompression theory using the BSAC ’88 tables. Oxygen administration and an RYA powerboat for divers course completed where I wanted to be. I had no desire to take my training any further. 

Three years later, in 1995, I took the fateful decision to open a dive centre. I felt my BSAC dive leader rating would not be sufficient to run a dive shop, and that I needed to be able to teach people to dive. I knew this was going to be a short career in scuba diving, as a career in journalism beckoned, but I had to become an instructor. In the mid-1990s, there was only one choice to teach commercially and independently of a club or school in Britain, and that was PADI. 

The Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) was taking the UK dive scene by storm. With a course that lasted only 5 days and the principle of no-decompression diving, people were starting to learn to dive quickly and then go on holiday. John finalised my rescue diver crossover, and I flew out to Fethiye in Turkey to do my Dive Master. 

Under the tutelage of Steve Chappell and Tony Cook, a pair of ex-servicemen who ran me ragged, with endless rescue practice, leading dives, early lectures before diving and revising physics and physiology late into the night. The day after I qualified, I flew back to London and to John Weinburg, who was by now a PADI Course director. He scheduled me onto an IDC, and in May 1994, after a steep learning curve, I attained my coveted PADI instructor rating. 

Back to Turkey

I went back out to Turkey to gain experience with Steve and Tony and then flew to India to start my dive centre. I moved the centre to Tanzania in 1999, a bit older and much wiser. By now, we were large enough that I was hiring instructors. The first of whom were excellent. But as time drew on, I noticed a marked change in their teaching methods. 

PADI Instructor training had changed and by 2010, I was actively looking for an alternative which mirrored the PADI training I had received in 1995. In 2012, I crossed my entire dive centre over to NAUI. Soon after, I qualified as a NAUI instructor trainer. With total academic freedom, we were able to create a tailor made scuba diver course and demand a very high standard from our divers. Our philosophy was to teach people to dive for life, not just their holiday.

Don't worry

Years later, when I apologetically discussed my move to NAUI with my friend Simon Chance, formerly my contact at PADI, he replied:

“Don’t worry, Raf, I knew why you switched. For you, it was always, all about the training”.

Unwittingly, he perhaps paid me the kindest compliment of my career. 

The by-product of the enhanced level of training that I had received was that more confidence in my own diving. This led to longer dives at depth, and because we only had access to air (21% O₂) I found that when we led advanced divers, we were “going into deco” more often on the second dive. This was especially the case with some of the conservative computers appearing on the market. 

My more experienced divers would simply seek permission to explore the walls of Pemba at depth, decompressing on the way up. If they were well-trained, I would agree. On one occasion, my dive computer failed mid-season. Times were very hard, and I could not afford a spare. So, I simply dived the rest of the season on tables until a kind incoming guest could be found to bring me a replacement from Europe. In the meantime, a friend and I took the opportunity to use French Navy tables, explore a bit deeper and decompress on return. 

My “short career” as a dive centre owner instructor ended in January 2017 when we sold up and left Tanzania to continue our dive and safari travel company. As soon as I was released from the paperwork of running a dive centre, my annual dive count increased. Four dives a day with my new clients were the norm on liveaboard dive vessels. In 2019, I had a further shock to the system when we took a group of divers to the Antarctic. Reading up on the issues that might (and did) occur, we spent hours in a British Quarry diving in drysuits while practicing “frozen valve” shutoff drills. 

Twin sets

Two years ago, when COVID was supposedly ending, we took a group of divers to a rather deserted Red Sea. We found ourselves sharing the boat with three tech divers. Two of whom used rebreathers, and one was on open circuit. As the week went on, and the dives became shallower, Vinnie, a retired Luftwaffe pilot stripped down to twin cylinders and joined us, “recreational divers” for some dives. His set-up piqued my interest, and he happily explained his “alpinist” configuration. Vinnie became a friend, and we coordinated our trips to coincide. As we dived with Vinnie more often, some of us tested the water with twin sets and became hooked.

I was lucky in that I had been diving, on and off, with a steel backplate and long hose since 2012. I owned multiple regulators for polar diving, so the simple addition of a twin-set bladder and instruction on valve drills had me and Paul snooping around at 40m on walls or deep inside shallower wrecks with a pair of S80’s slung on our backs. With our computer gradient factors set at a conservative 40/75 every dive became a deco dive. 

Now my friends who have managed to get past the last paragraph, could be forgiven for spitting out their tea; for I have never been the most enthusiastic of deep divers. However, with the added security of a twin set, if the water is clear, and if there is something to see, these deeper or longer dives became attainable with a serious safety margin. 

I write this sitting on a plane returning from Istanbul and reflect that after 31 years of diving, 29 of them professionally, I find myself yet again experiencing something new within the sport. And because its new to me, as soon as I finish my chores in London, I will be going back to Turkey for more training. For no matter what the diving discipline, no matter what the training agency, as Simon says: “It is always, all about the training.”