Tag Archive
British War Graves
We live in a comparatively free society in the UK. We can park on double-yellow lines, smuggle in more than our Duty-Free allowance, smoke illicit material and even cheat on our Income Tax returns; that is until we get caught. During a summer in the early1980s I had a project in Yorkshire and, living just north of London, I found that I could easily commute if I travelled in the early morning. I drove my exotic sports car at high speed up the M1 each day, leaving at 4.00am, and rarely saw another vehicle on the road. I drove so quickly it was like low level flying without actually leaving the ground. It was also illegal. On the fourth day I was ambushed by a group of police patrol cars that lay in wait, one with a radar gun and the others to block the road. They had clocked me at 140mph. Later in Court, I pleaded guilty and walked away with the opportunity to get a new driving license. I certainly didn’t try to prove that the law was wrong and that I was perfectly safe driving at that speed at that time of day. The law is the law. For many years, in Spain, one had to get permission from the Navy to use scuba equipment. In Greece, if you were merely found to be in possession of scuba equipment on your boat, the vessel was liable to confiscation. These laws were very inconvenient but those that chose not to abide by them had only themselves to blame when they got caught. Thankfully things there have changed for the better. Now there may be some British laws that people disagree with. The subject of wrecks listed as protected War Graves might be one of them. We all know that the lost souls have... More »
A response to “A Divemaster’s thoughtful Rant”
I am glad to see that I am in the good company of Bret Gilliam in wishing to respond to the anonymous JD (are you scared to say who you are, JD?) with a few home truths about divemasters, gleaned from my nearly 50 years of scuba diving. I have experienced all of the following behaviours from professional DMs, some many times: DMs with limited experience, but who think they know it all and treat you like a simpleton DMs who lack flexibility of approach to their job- the 'do-it-my-way or not at all' type DMs who apply silly limitations to one's dive time and depth so one returns to the surface with over half a tank left; some really stupid behaviours in this category DMs who think they are Ian Thorpe & swim like hell, expecting everyone to keep up, thus depriving clients of the opportunity of having a real look around DMs who allocate divers to buddy pairs for their dive, but then insists that everyone start to ascend when the first diver has used their air to 100 bar DMs with no ability to cope with a group with mixed diving skills/experience DMs who do not know the environment they are guiding in DMs who just float around looking bored and making no attempt to look for critters for their clients DMs who use horns, beeps or tap their tank constantly throughout the dive as though they were in the middle of the Paris rush hour traffic DMs who are demonstrably anxious DMs who run out of air before their clients do DMs who give you a harangue at the dive briefing about care of the coral, then proceed to knock the hell out of it themselves because they have no idea where their fins are or who... More »
Helpful Diving Tips & Observations
I started diving in 1959, so I had my 50th anniversary last year. That's not as bad as it sounds since my father, a senior naval officer, indulged my fascination with scuba after watching the first episode of Sea Hunt with me the year before. We then moved to a distant outpost called Key West and my future career unfolded from the first day in snorkeling gear. I was only eight years old when I did my first dive in Garrison Bight under the watchful eye of an "instructor" who never left the comfort of his deck chair on the pier as I blundered through mask clearing and other exercises and occasionally surfaced to see if I was doing things okay. "Yeah, you're making great progress," he assured me while opening another cold beer. "Now go under the boat and scrape the barnacles off the props and rudder." I guess that was probably the first edition of modern "specialty" courses. But I managed to survive over 18,000 dives to date and have developed a certain perspective over the years that might be useful to other divers. Here are a few tips: 1.You can usually learn more by watching a diver unpack and assemble his gear than from reading his logbook. 2. A diver's experience and skill is more often inversely proportionate to the number of patches on his jacket or c-cards in his bulging wallet. 3. The best insurance policy to make sure the boat captain picks you up after a drift dive is to borrow $50 from him prior to stepping off the dive platform. 4. Never exceed the depth of your ability and training. 5. To get in shape to look your best in a figure-hugging Lycra dive skin, forget the conventional weight loss programs. Try the Ultimate Motivational Diet: You can eat anything you want... More »
Coping with Murphy’s Law
It goes without saying that sooner or later even the best-laid dive plans go awry. And usually when you least expect it. But even when the worst occurs, a well trained diver can manage his new circumstances if he is conditioned to always have a contingency plan to implement. "Murphy's Law" has an infinite series of disasters lurking for divers whatever environment they choose to explore: caves, rivers, quarries, deep walls, or even shallow reefs on drift dives. Let's examine a few curve-balls that get tossed the way of these intrepid explorers. Most scenarios will involve low or out of air situations or isolation from surface support. Low air crises are typically initiated by one or more of a combination of events that often involve entanglement, getting lost inside or outside the wreck, equipment failure, poor observation of gas management rules, or unpredictable natural catastrophes such as break-downs of the wreck structure itself. How the diver reacts to these types of stress may determine his ability to survive. There are plenty of suggestions for generic guidelines in gas management that may involve various implementations of the cave diving community's "rule of thirds" (one third of starting gas volumes for initial penetration, one third to come out on, and one third in reserve), or less conservative rules if no penetration or decompression ceiling is anticipated. Key to all gas volume planning is matching the plan to the diver with the highest breathing rate and the smallest volume of breathing gas carried by the team. This should allow a reasonable margin of safety in most circumstances. Entanglements in fishing line, old nets, electrical wire, wreck debris etc. are a matter of routine for many divers. The assistance of a buddy diver can be invaluable in extricating a trapped diver but individual self-rescue should be the... More »
Nightmares of the Scuba Police
Diving used to be a fairly laid-back and non-confrontational leisure activity. In fact, in the early days most divers were generally considered to have a few screws loose but that was part of the appeal. The idea that diving was inherently a flirtation with a real or perceived danger was pretty much a "given" by both the participants and their amused observers. Everyone seemed to get along just fine, and with the advent of a fledgling "dive travel" industry that allowed the sport to be pursued in the hospitable and intriguing islands of the Caribbean or Bahamas, diving became a true family sport for the first time. But over the years, our sport has increasingly become burdened with the ugly spectre of a crusading right wing "scuba police" determined to save divers from themselves. Since the late 1980s, the trend of progressively more restrictive regulations in the sanctimonious guise of "safety" is rapidly turning the sport's experienced divers into alienated and angry consumers. Most importantly, there is no quantifiable data to support such rules as depth limitations, mandated no-decompression diving, absolute bans on alcohol consumption, denied use of diving computers, limitations to numbers of dives per day etc. Significantly, DAN and the UHMS have reversed their recommendation on not flying within a 24-hour period following diving for the simple reason that there was no evidence to prove this rule's validity. During the period that this recommendation was observed, some overzealous resort operators used it as an excuse to deny diving to vacationers on the day before they departed. Interestingly, those operators that were most rigid in enforcing the 24-hour flying rule were those that sold "inclusive dive/hotel package plans". They were, in essence, denying a portion of the pre-paid diving service to customers citing this arbitrary "safety" recommendation. Many customers that purchased a... More »
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