All about our club - trips, boats and more
As a club we aim to dive all year round, weather permitting, and we have a regular and varied diving programme.
Our Diving Officer is responsible for organising our diving programme, as well as maintaining diving safety and quality of training. The diving officer is not expected to organise all the diving, so relies on other experienced club members to organise diving too. That said, no matter what your diving qualification is, we are happy to aid you to organise a diving trip, so you can gain experience.
Trip organisers tend to advertise dives via group email, Facebook, WhatsApp, and at the pub on a Monday night. It is up to you to let the Dive Manager know you want to go diving and they will sort out the details, including sharing lifts to minimise costs where possible. Trip organisers are not mind readers so it is important that you respond in time via email or phone to confirm that you would like to go diving.
Dive management is undertaken by at least one diver on each trip. Either an experienced diver does the management (buddy pairs, log sheets, etc) or a less qualified diver will be mentored while undertaking the dive management tasks. This provides a friendly learning experience for trainee divers.
Guest Divers are always welcome, space permitting, and members of other BSAC clubs or BSAC Direct regularly join us. We also welcome divers who have qualified with other organisations (PADI, SAA, SSI, etc.) to come for a dive with us, especially if they are thinking of joining our club. There is a well established process for welcoming Divers and Instructors from other agencies into the BSAC family, whether they want to continue to train for BSAC qualifications, or just dive within their existing qualifications.
The club has a rigid hull inflatable boat (rhib) which is 5.6 metres long. We keep it up at Belford, so it is within easy tow of the Farne Islands. Any club member can organise a rhib trip, but they must arrange to have the boat towed to the launch site, and either be a diver cox, or ensure that one is on board to oversee the driving!
As a club we undertake a range of diving:
- Local day boat diving – Farne Islands, St Abbs, and the Tyne.
- West coast trips – Oban, Loch Fyne, Skye, Clyde and Sound of Mull.
- Expedition trips – as previous winners of the BSAC expedition trophy, we have enjoyed organising and running trips to a range of places including Shetland, Fair Isle, Mull and St Kilda.
- Warm water diving – Malta, Tenerife and the Red Sea are firm favourites and repeat destinations.
As a club we have a diverse range of members. That holds true when it comes to diving too. On every trip we will have the rust lovers, the fish and flower botherers, the photographers as well as those that just like to kit up, jump in and swim safely around. We also have rebreather divers, twin set divers and single cylinder divers. Some members have their Mod 3 qualifications too, so often dive below 60 metres, but those generally aren’t club trips, but personal trips that we all love to hear about and see the photographs from.
In summary if you want a true flavour of the diving that we do, please visit the PAST EVENTS section. There you can read about some of the dive trips that we have done as a club over the last 10 years or so.