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As a BSAC diver of three years, with a club which has a 'hardcore' of adventurous divers. I take exception at the previous, regulatory comments surrounding BSAC. Yes all but one club in my area are BSAC(the other being a PADI/SSI hybrid). However I'm currently working in Canada and diving with a variety of different certified divers, the club scene here being almost non-existant. Divers diving out of shop for the main part. Yes BSAC tables are among the most conversative I've seen, having had to teach US Navy and DCIEM tables with my links here, I find that I still prefer the BSAC 88 values, they form in line nicely with my Aladin Pro. I also note that the club with which I dive is 'adventurous' by BSAC standard ie they dive beyond 25m. We wouldn't describe ourselves as adventurous, just deeper divers or recreational divers who routinely dive with decompression stops. Here I find that ACUC/NAUI are (in one case at least) telling students that after 99ft.. death is eminent.. its laid on very heavy handed to 'scrae' them into an exceptible depth range. Yes I got a 'hard time' when the senior instructor reviewed my log book, because of 60hrs last year over forty were beneath 100ft.. much only marginally but the stigma was attached to 'crazy limey divers'. Well this particular crazy limey had to put a lot of dive time in over a period of time to get to dive the deeper wrecks in his area. Most of my diving in around Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland, however we routinely dive on the Cumberland, Laurentic and Rown, which are elsewhere. BSAC as an organisation has tables listed to 52m. Thus the '50m' comment from the previous poster. Would any one like to show me an organisation which routinely allows its membership to dive in access of 170ft... We as a BSAC club dive with redundant systems, here the deeper divers seem to be on octopus systems.. gee bet that's real handy when you are out of air... Yes some divers here do have redundant systems, but in Canada that seems to be only a few. Deeper diving is not for every one. The BSAC insurance that was referred to in the original posting is currently 2 million pound sterling.. third party.. my understandinf is if I drop a tank on the pool deck then my insurance would cover it. Personally I prefer the way my club operates under BSAC to the 'Canadian way'. I will in the near future get my mixed gas training, either in the States or back in the UK... but for air diving I'm quite happy to do it the BSAC way. My ascent will be no faster than 15m a minute until the last 6m which will also take a minute.. since my Aladin is slower I'll follow it. Having attended a variety of National Training level courses in which Mike Holbrook the National Diving Instructor(amongst others) attended I know that he is very interested in how the BSAC clubs do things, over an above the training manual. The wide spread answers given to the 'debate questions' fielded show that many BSAC clubs do things very differently in their areas. None necesaarily any more correct than the next, but when the NDO tells of meeting a sub one day during a dive you don't automatically think he was limited to a 52m dive... The diving may not be 'flag waved' as the BSAC way but the training is there and is available. To each there own, I'm not out to hold BSAC up as the be all and end all, but I'm quite happy to dive under their banner. I'll hold their diving practices over the ACUC/NAUI/PADI/IDEA/PDIC/SSI ways I've seen elsewhere.
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