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So you storm out of your politics-ridden dive club, swearing to start your own. Then you remember your bank balance. Jonathan Page describes how a group of determined but skint divers managed to start afresh and get a boat - all for under a grand! |
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AT THE END OF 2001 SEVEN OF US, all well qualified and experienced, were feeling fed up with local club politics and exorbitant diving costs. We finally walked out of a stormy committee meeting, had a pint and, once tempers had cooled, decided to form our own small club.
All we wanted was to get back to pleasurable no-politics diving. But what had eventually made our old club so unappealing were the costs. Surely club diving should be cheaper than charterboat diving?
We aimed to make our diving as affordable as possible within safe limits. So out went affiliation to the SAA or BSAC, and with it subscriptions and membership fees. We would still follow SAA guidelines and recommendations but we wouldn't be an official SAA club.
The downside was that we couldn't train or qualify divers, but we had been instructing for years, and a break would be refreshing. Neither would we have the third-party insurance offered by the organisations, but we could all provide our own diving insurance.
We put in place a basic club committee and constitution, more for the sake of future funding application forms than for anything else. To us, committees reeked of the petty politics we disliked. So Sublyme Divers was formed.
Our next step was to look at boats. Should we pay a lump sum for our own, with all its overheads, or pay as we dived on the charters but be governed by pre-booking and pre-guessing the weather?
Financial calculations were performed on the back of a beermat, and we quickly decided that we needed our own boat for the freedom it would afford us.
It was November, so we had time to search for a good secondhand RIB at an affordable price. Oh yeah? Of the few available in our vicinity, most were being sold only because they were ancient, knackered and financial disasters waiting to happen on the repair front.
November came and went, as did Christmas, Easter and both May bank holidays! Friends came to the rescue with a mixed selection of boats for local diving, and we found some reliable charters for going further afield. We enjoyed relaxed fun-diving but around £35 plus nitrox and sundries each for a day on a charter was quite a bit to find, particularly with skippers who insisted on going out in dodgy weather.
One boat we used was a friend's 18ft open dory. It was not a thing of beauty but had a newly refurbished Mariner 75 on the back, went well with us all aboard and made a superb dive platform.
When he told us late in the year that he wanted to sell it for a ridiculously low sum, we nearly bit his hand off.
Here was a boat we knew and trusted. The trailer was highly suspect, the console needed replacing to take electronics and the steering was not exactly responsive or light, but all that we could sort out.
I joined the local yacht club to use its hardstanding and slip. We bought a good echo-sounder for £85 and repaired my old handheld GPS, so navigation was sorted.
We assembled an O2 kit from an O2 service 3.5 litre pony with nitrox 80 and O2 service regulator until we could afford a real one, far better than nothing. First-aid and tool kits were knocked together from bits and pieces, and numerous repairs and modifications made the boat safer and diving from her easier.
Apart from a fixed VHF (a handheld and mobile phones suffice) we have most things we need for a superb day's diving in and around Lyme Bay.
We have set ourselves up for a smidgen under £1000, and can potter between dive sites for a whole day and still use less than £20 of fuel, because we don't need to race anywhere and drink the juice up. It's amazing the economy a 75hp two-stroke can achieve, and by keeping the revs down when up on the plane, we reduce stress on boat, engine and passengers.
We are splitting repair and service bills and other boat costs. But where, for example, a new console would cost £350, a sheet of marine ply, stainless-steel screws, varnish and a few hours with the power tools can do the job for under £30.
Maintaining a boat and its gear simply requires a few extra minutes of everyone's time to correct problems as they happen, rather than leaving them for another day or for someone else to do, which is where many clubs seem to fall down.
The cost of the boat equates to five trips each on a charter. We will probably take it out at least 40 times a season, which means £20 or less per trip divided between us, even including insurance and yacht-club fees. With fuel costs and sundries, a day's diving costs well under £8 each, and we still have a boat of our own at the end of the day - and the year.
We still want a RIB for its seaworthiness but can wait until the right one comes along. We have the engine, and bare secondhand RIBs are quite cheap. If we find a suitable one, it will make a good project next winter. We are very attached to our tatty old dory, however; parting will be quite hard when the time comes.
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