Microdiving

Microdive puts boat owners in the swim

It's not often someone asks you if you want to be a guinea pig, says Peter Nash. And in this case, it meant donning fins, a wetsuit, breathing apparatus and mask and going underwater for the first time in his life (intentionally, that is).

As a non-swimmer, I've tended not to spend too much time in the water, preferring instead to cling on to the safety offered by the boat I was sailing at the time. I do remember having to 'swim' once. I add the quotes because all I did was to wave my arms and legs furiously as I attempted to catch up with my Firefly dinghy, which had rolled and capsized due to the weather, leaving the boom sticking high in the air and allowing the thing to sail away from me on its side. I was, of course, wearing a buoyancy jacket, which kept my head above water as I thrashed away. Onlookers said I left a bow wave.

So when I was asked to go on a trip to Egypt and – willingly – submerge myself, I was a little apprehensive. I had, however, found out that wearing fins made a huge difference to my progress through the water. My saviour – at first – was my GP who, when I told him I was off to go diving in the Red Sea looked me square in the eye and said: 'Oh no you're not.' Something about high blood pressure and a sinus problem at the time...

Horse trading

As I rather fancied this trip, I engaged in a little horse trading with him. 'How about,' I suggested, 'if I assured you I would stick to shallow diving only?' 'What depth?' 'How about 20ft,' I tried... 'No.' He hesitated. 'Ten feetmaximum,' he said. 'And I really mean that.'

The guys at Microdive were not deterred by this at all. 'Our hotel has some great swimming pools,' said Rob Hart, who owns and runs Microdive. 'We can use one of those.'

Fine by me, I thought...

Getting gradually to the point of this story, Mr Hart is a professional diver who had a great thought: why not make diving a lot easier to get into and a lot easier to take part in?

The usual way into diving means signing up for a course set up by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). A mixture of theory and pool work during a five day PADI Open Water Course will get you a lifetime diving certificate in exchange for £300.

You can then go for the two day PADI Advanced Open Water Course for another £200. After that, the ocean is your oyster and you can add lots of alternative courses for varying amounts of money.<

No need

The thing about all this is there is no need for all this training, says Mr Hart. PADI has, in effect, a stranglehold on the diving world, with its training courses and certificates.

When Mr Hart started diving, you turned up on the beach equipped only with your swimming consume. A tank was strapped to your back, you were given a mask and fins and a 10 minute talk. After that, you were on your own. Few people drowned. Most just got on with it and had a great time.

But the world now thinks you must undergo a PADI course and 'achieve' a diving certificate to go diving whereas, in reality, neither is necessary.

After 12 years as a professional diving instructor, mainly in the Red Sea, and faced with a diving market that was running out of new blood, Mr Hart began to think there must be a better way of getting people to go diving. And one episode in particular reinforced the thought.

Most diving is done on holiday courses,many of themin the Red Sea. Each day the divers go out to a diving area and plunge over the side to dive on a wreck or a reef, or drift dive along the face of an underwater cliff.

Request

Mr Hart was brought up short one day when a young ladymade the plaintive request: 'Could we stay ashore and do some sunbathing? Ormaybe go into town?'

Not quite a blinding light, although Damascus is, I suppose, vaguely in that neck of the woods, Mr Hart realised the diving for the uncommitted may not be the Holy Grail he – and other confirmed divers – had sought all those years.

Maybe drifting along a reef wasn't as exciting on the third, fourth and fifth days as they all thought it was. And maybe those 40lb+ tanks got to be a bit of a burden. And all the training and the certificates maybe weren't really what Joe Public wanted. Just as Sunsail discovered people just wanted to get in a boat, sail fromA to B, have a beer and sail back again, so the traditionalists in the diving world assumed everyone wanted to do the same things they did.

Mr Hart decided it was time to get back to the original easyaccess diving. So from his own traditionalist base of training and examinations and doing everything in stages, Mr Hart revolutionised the sport of diving. Realising that many people just wanted to go and look at colourful fish on a colourful reef, he set about designing a shallow water diving set that didn't need a 40lb tank on your back.

Mini-B

His original design was the Mini- B. Introduced in 2000, it was designed just for people who wanted to make short dives in shallow water. Maybe to look at the fish. Maybe to free a fouled prop, check out the anodes or the anchor. Or maybe just to go for a 30 minute dive in those colourful surface waters probably less than 10 metres deep.

The whole set was contained in a backpack that weighed under 15lbs. But it was felt the people new to diving still needed training and the original training course nodded towards the traditional, with online sessions that I found repetitive and a touch boring. Since I waded through the online course, I amassured it has been completely redesigned and will be launched very soon. 'It will be seen as one of the slickest, most professional and enjoyable training programmes on the market,' insisted Mr Hart.

The online course also included a medical questionnaire that was my downfall, prompting the trip to the GP that resulted in my getting a yellow card and a 10ft limit.

The others taking the course moved from the online training to a session in the Andark pool at Swanwick, where they flipped around and got used to the equipment.

Under threat

At this time, I was still under threat of a red card, so I didn't go on this part of the training session. So when we all arrived in Egypt, I was the only one who had no water-based experience of the kit at all.

That 'guinea pig' reference became ever clearer... Mr Hart reckoned his kit was so simple it could be used by anyone after being told what to do. He planned to use me to prove the point. Andmy having a limit that kept me to a swimming pool fell nicely in with his idea of using me as a guinea pig.

So while the others all went flipping around in the ocean, I went off to one of the pools with Mr Hart. And, as the water - sea and pools - was extremely cold, we all offer sincere thanks to Unipart Marine for the Wetline shorty wetsuits.

With just a third of the online course behind me and only an idea of what was to come, Mr Hart strapped me into the kit.

No problem

To me, it was quite a weight on my back, until it was pointed out to me how much a single 80cu ft 'traditional' dive tank weighs. Suddenly it was no problemat all moving around out of the water. In the water, of course, it weighs nothing.

So there I was, sitting in a cold Egyptian swimming pool... Having done a little snorkelling in the nice warm waters of the Aegean, I wasn't worried about using mask and fins.

Breathing underwater turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. Themask fitted so well I had no worries about drowning.

So the next thing was to use the buoyancy control that varies your depth in the water. It's a tube with two buttons. Press one and air is taken from the tank into a bladder in the backpack. That takes you up. Press the other and you reduce the amount of air in the bladder. And you go down.

The difference

This is essentially the difference between snorkelling and using a Microdive pack. Once I got the weight belt in the right place, mastering the buoyancy took a few goes. But when you get it right, it's a fantastic experience. Even in a swimming pool.

All you have to do then is keep an eye on the gauge that tells you how much air you have left. Mr Hart managed to get me using his kit after a talk lasting about 10 minutes. I can tell you it's very easy, once you have the hang of it. After targeting the (too traditional) commercial marine market - which wasn't hugely interested in his innovative diving kit - Mr Hart is now going for the leisure marine world. He reckons the ability to shrug on a backpack and drop over the side to take a look underneath the boat will be seen as Very Useful. And I agree with him. And what's to stop the crew going for a dive in a quiet anchorage? Surely the Superyacht brigade will want to stock the toy cupboard with a few Microdiving kits?

I reckon anyone who's been snorkelling could get used to Microdiving in short order. But while working the buoyancy control is the only bit that takes a few goes to get used to, I do think it's better to have an experienced diver around for the first dive to make sure you do it right.

After that, there's nothing to prevent anyone from keeping a set on board and plunging over the side when the fancy takes them. And Microdive could offer another profit opportunity for retailers (maybe when we get that barbecue summer).