development of higher pressure cylinders made a big difference in how long you could stay , and how deep you could go .
You ended up writing rebreather training manuals for BSAC . How did you get into that ?
I was Assistant Coach with Dave Lock on the Eastern region . And one day he said : “ Does anybody want to try a rebreather ?” And two of us said “ yes please ”. I took part in BSAC ’ s first pilot course for rebreathers , out in Lanzarote , around 2003 . Our instructor was Nick Jewson , and he managed to get us through the course , despite various attempts to murder ourselves ! And I managed to get a rebreather as a club loaner ... it was a Buddy Inspiration .
I did my Advanced Mixed Gas with Mike Rowley and some others from the Technical Group . After that I began helping to write some of the BSAC manuals . And I started off by looking through and correcting passages , and asking questions from a different point of view . It went from there to actually writing a couple of manuals , with assistance .
How has diving affected your life ?
It ’ s given me a massive amount of confidence . When I when I left school , I wasn ’ t exactly the top of the class . Thanks to diving , my thought process with maths in particular improved exponentially . The teaching element of BSAC has given me the confidence to stand up in front of people . For example , when I was Marketing Director for Korg Synthesisers , I was able to present in front of a very large audience and speak quite normally about technical subjects .
What changes have you seen in club culture ?
When I first started , people wanted to belong to a club ; it was the thing you did . And I ’ m not sure that that ’ s the case anymore . I was Diving Officer for Chelmsford BSAC , which had 130 members – and when dive clubs get that big , you get these splinter groups for the ones who want to do photography , the ones that want to do wrecks , the ones who want to buy their own boat . Ultimately , though , divers need to get together to go diving .
After such a long diving career , what are your thoughts about today ’ s BSAC today
What I ’ ve admired about BSAC , certainly in the last few years , is the way they have continually updated the training materials .
John ’ s dive setup in 1967 - his first cylinder was an IWK 40 , with a working pressure of 120 atm
Reunion of the Royal Artillery Band dive club , John second from right
It reminds me how , at various points in our history , we ’ ve been the first to really get things right . When we brought out the technical manuals for the rebreather , they were the best on the market . Then they get
Seaways dive centre team photo , John on the left
Object of Desire
The thing you had to buy was a regulator , or as we called them , demand valves . And my first possession , the one that I really wanted , was one of the early single hose regulators , the Nimrud Silver II Snark . It came in a box , and when you opened it there was this little blue label inside saying ’ Do not use below 130ft ’. It was an upstream first stage , which meant the deeper you went , the less air it was likely to give you to breathe .
updated and they remain the best . It ’ s the same with the e-learning materials ... I think they ’ re doing a really good job of some of the latest manuals . Above all things , we are very good at teaching diving .
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