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2021 is going to be a great year, diving, right here in the UK. Divecrew are already working on overseas trips, subject to Covid and air corridors. Get Hammered is always a popular trip to the Red Sea and 2021 will see the brand new luxury boat being used by Divecrew. But, we also dive the UK. Shore and boat dives. Sea and inland lakes.

As well as these overseas trips like Get Hammered, Divecrew are investing lots of time and effort into diving in the UK. There are some incredible places to dive and not all inland lakes either. Here is just a few sea dives: Swanage Pier – shallow water diving circa 6 metres great for new divers. Chesil Beach – an easy shore dive with circa 12 metres maximum depth, again great for new divers wanting to cut their teeth. Lundy and Farnes – ever popular with our Divecrew Divers. Boat dives with normally the first very shallow circa 6-8 metres. Why so shallow? Well when the divers get in the water all the seals know it is playtime. A truly incredible experience and the reason it sells out quickly. Porthkerris – boat dives circa 25 metres maximum depth. Includes wrecks, pinacles and an amazing ‘river’ dives (shallow circa 6 metres) collecting scallops.

Divecrew also have inland lake opportunities for divers pleasure diving and or lessons. Wraysbury near Heathrow is fairly shallow with platforms around 4 to 7 metres and lots of attractions. Vobster is deeper circa 35 metres, again with lots of underwater attractions. Or the NDAC Chepstow (National Diving and Activity Centre) with a maximum depth of 75 metres and tons of attractions to keep divers amused. In some locations one can expect good visibility to be circa 6 to 8 metres.

So cold water diving or should we say COOL diving. You can dive all year in the UK. However, 5mm wet suits may be okay for short dives in the summer, but, to be really comfortable and safe you need to be a dry suit diver. Hypothermia is not good for divers.

Divecrew have a range school rental suits or you splash out with a made to measure suit. Want to stay on a tighter budget? Check out the dive centres SALE RAIL. Just check with the dive centre and or the on line shop. Some incredible dry suits and incredible prices. Quality Scubapro, Aqualung or Typhoon suits reduced in price.

Diving in the UK makes diving overseas a real walk in the park. Buoyancy is pivotal to good diving and being a motor skill, the only way to be good is constant practice. Being in the water regularly makes everyting second nature.

The UK trips do invlove a cost as the boat has to be paid and there is your accommodation. Some UK trips like Swanage and Chesil have a very small fee as they are shore dives. Inland lakes have local fees for diver entry.

Divecrew will post on the web site and Facebook the list of overseas and UK diving opportunities. Divecrew state the diving conditions and recommendation on diving certification levels. Divecrew pleasure dives are always led by a Divecrew Professional. The professional is not there to teach, but, at divecrew we do look after our own divers.

Check out the various options and become a Divecrew Diver.

The Video below is Vobster Quay.

This is a question that Divecrew often gets asked.  Some customers come into our shop and say “it’s cheaper to just hire”.

Do you know that initially they are right it is cheaper, but is that the only measure that you are working on?

Benefits of hiring dive kit

You have more room in your luggage.  If you are travelling long haul, most airlines give you ample luggage room, but some shorter haul destinations are a bit miserly.  But did you know if you say you are a diver some airlines give you extra free luggage allowance.  You also avoid any servicing charges on regulators. To keep your regulators in tip top form you do need to ensure they are fully serviced in line with manufacturers requirements.  In my opinion those are the key benefits for hiring kit.

 

Benefits of Purchasing your own kit

The most significant is the fact that your kit will fit you correctly, it’s always better to visit your local dive store to seek professional advice while trying equipment on.

All too often we see people who have purchased products which are inexpensive, ill-fitting, not fit for purpose online and have had to deal with the hassle of trying to re-coup costs, time and effort sending something back overseas.

Once you have your own kit you become familiar with it and instinctively know how to use it. Adjustment settings on regulators, location of octos, clips and gauges, subtle additions of air into your BCD and finally correct weighting with your equipment.

Another major benefit of taking your own, is that you cannot guarantee the quality of the kit you are going to hire overseas. We often we hear stories of poorly serviced hire kit causing divers an issue. Or they don’t have the size you need, so you must compromise.  Most certainly they will only have unisex kit. Female BCDS will fit women better in the right places, and hire centres are unlikely to be able to offer you these.

Examples of kit defects we have seen about include:

  • Rust from the inside of 15l cylinders being drawn into the regulators causing a rust deposit being produced inside, and probably in the lungs too.
  • A cracked first stage.
  • Burst high pressure hoses.
  • Leaking bladders in the BCD.
  • Faulty regs that are not allowing sufficient air at depth.
  • Spiders crawling out of a regulator Second stage because they are not stored properly
  • And of course you now have the issue of Covid. Do you really want to share a set of regulators that 10’s of people have had in their mouth prior to yours!!!

These are but a few of the issues we have heard of or physically seen.  Some of our clients would never hire again.

If you are a travel diver there is light weight kit out there, travel BCD, travel regulators, travel fins meaning that your weight limit with these gems in your luggage is kept to a minimum.

There are also amazing colours, so everything can match and blend- an important requirement particularly for us ladies.

Ultimately you are using life support kit.  You need to be 100% comfortable with the kit you are using, in what is an alien environment to us, can you guarantee this when you are using a 3rd parties equipment?

Our recommendation is purchase your own.  You will be surprised at some of the costs associated.  With some rentals it only takes 2-3 hires to have purchased the cost of a new set of dive kit.

We would also recommmend purchasing DIN regulators rather than relyiong on a compression fit of an o’ring of a Yoke or A Clamp. I have seen diver spend ages trying to find an insert on holiday with a descent o’ring and I have witnessed an o’ring blowing on a dive when over 10 metres down.

Have peace of mind and dive safe- Get your own.

Have a look at some of the Divecrew Packages available in store today.

https://shop.divecrew.smoothconcept.co.uk/shop/divecrew-2012/en/

 

At Divecrew we try not to teach divers as a homogenous group. Everyone is different. So how did we get to the this point? Well first thing is we challenge some agencies as they tend to turn our “sheep” instructors. Instructors being professional should use a range of skills and techniques so that every diver student can be taught in comfort and safety. Working with Deptherapy and injured troops heightened our senses to the individual needs of the divers. The “sheep” mentality is challenged as to what is a technique and what is a standard. For example many instructors talk of a giant stride as a deep water entry. So what is the best entry for a student? The easiest! Simple. The standards state a deep water entry not a giant stride.

When working with the troops, some of whom have missing limbs, it is seen so often that instructors know best. Normally the instructors do not have limbs missing. Therefore, one cannot put themselves in that students place. Sometimes the instructor has to state the output and ask the student how they think they can best achieve it.

Divecrew have been fortunate to work with an autistic group. Many wrote the group off stating scuba was just too much for them. Wrong! The students completed their open water but a miraculous change happened. At the beginning the students were withdrawn. We struggled to get them to participate. Eventually the barriers went down. By the end of the training, the students were laughing and joking with the team. Their confidence went through the roof.

So do we deploy different tactics. Yes we do. Divecrew are multi-agency and believe no one agency has it completely right. PADI, SSI, RAID and BSAC. So what our senior instructors do is work with the agencies standards then add value to the course by supplementing skills and training techniques. Our speciality courses are enhanced giving any diver more value, more skills, more understanding. Once the senior team agree on a skill, the skill and technique is cascaded down through professional master classes. These free classes for Divecrew professionals teach skills, techniques and control. We discuss the psychology of scuba and students. Everything possible is undertaken to ensure our students re well trained and at all times feel safe. We undertake our own Quality Assurance through the senior professionals. So regardless of the course being taught, a Master Instructors may show up to observe. When we have new instructors, they must go through an internship. Unfortunately too many instructors believe once they have the ticket they have the right to teach. Some lapse into bad habits. Some become complacent. Some out of date and out of touch. Unlike some other sports, scuba instructors do not have to have annual assessments to ensure they are up to date and technically correct.

Divecrew believe agencies should do more to teach instructors adaptive methods and how to treat divers as individuals. The psychology of scuba should be a pivotal component in the instructor candidates development. Blindly following a set powerpoint and or a slate, is not conducive to teaching professionally. It makes a mockery of being “Professional Educators”.

So our advice. If your chosen dive centre do not treat you with respect and as an individual, find another dive centre.

We may have been locked down but Divecrew have not stopped innovating. The country’s first commercial BSAC Fast Track Centre is Divecrew. Working closely with BSAC, you can complete you Ocean Diver with Divecrew and return to the BSAC fold trained to dive. Divecrew are used to delivering courses through paid instructors. A typical open water student takes three weekends to complete. This includes theory, confined water and open water. So cutting the time does this mean cutting the quality. No. In short we operate small groups of student divers. We operate with senior instructors. Divecrew is the UK’s only Gold Star IDC Centre. Quality is our ethos our mantle our reputation. We do not take it lightly.

To find out more contact Divecrew working in partnership with BSAC.

So how has the lock down been affecting Divecrew.?

I guess the response to that is pretty much like every other small business.
This is financially the toughest time our business has had in the 7 years we have owned it. In January and February we had a fantastic start to the year, our busiest so far and then Kapow.!! Its like the lights went out. Divecrew doors closed.

After about 24 hours of feeling sorry for ourselves, we decided to take some positive action. We had loads of projects that we had wanted to achieve, but time has always been tricky- so now was the time- no more excuses.
Divecrew revamp, has included:-

Painting some of the shop
Taking up the old carpet that was in a third of the shop and cleaning and staining the floor to match
Painting the classroom, and fixing the floor and door
Put a new roof on the classroom to stop the water dribbling in
Staining all the exterior woodwork
That was just for starters- we are also hoping to paint the container and de rust it, but waiting for the special paint to arrive, and give the outside of the building a lick of paint

Having listened to a few webinars we decided to get more active on our Facebook site – as I am sure many of you have seen.
In times of crisis like this it is important to make sure people still know you are there and ready to open your doors. We want to be ready and waiting and primed for opening- But alas, we are still not sure when that will happen yet and if we can resume training but its important to remain positive, and comment that “If ever there was a time to support your local, small independent businesses, it is NOW and when the doors open again.

I fear some businesses will not make it, so spread the positive news about Divecrew. We are hear and we will come out better and stronger.

Thank you