I remember meeting John for the first time. Big hair and boundless enthusiasm, ready to start his BSAC Dive Leader course. I knew that whatever happened on the course, it would be really good fun. Working on a pretty flexible timetable, as of course he was on holiday we got stuck in to the training. As he had done the theory part of the course some time ago we decided that it would be best to run over it again. Luckily for me John had a PhD in Mathematics. He was pretty switched on and breezed through the theory and exam in the first few days.
BSAC Dive Leader water skills
Now of course we could get on with the good stuff, in the water. Within the programme we had to complete a number of different dives, dealing with many different skills. Starting slowly with a check up dive it was clear that John had done a lot of diving. He was of course enjoying the fact he didn’t have to wear a dry suit and 14kg of weight for once!!. So it made for a nice change in conditions for him.
As we progressed through the training dives he seemed to take each one in his stride and was constantly looking for new challenges within the course. One dive in particular stands out. He navigated us from no-name to twins (2 different dive sites) in current and in no more than 2m visibilty. No mean achievement. The more we dived together the more we enjoyed it. This led to a real diving friendship developing between the two of us.
Towards the end of the training, we headed onto the dry practical lessons and with this experience and by this stage, knowledge of our shop and boat, had a great time running things and working with the other members of the club and boat crew. When his time finally came to an end, it was of course sad to see him go. However its always pleasing to see another happy and enthusiastic diver head on to pastures new, with hopefully some good memories to go with him. So good luck John and we will be diving together in Scotland in the near future, can’t wait!!!