Sharing local knowledge...

Summer is a busy time for any dive centre, and it’s almost with a sigh of relief that we watch autumn unfold so that things will quieten down a bit.  However, sometimes summer has an unremittingly autumnal feel as misplaced jet streams bring repeated low pressure systems rolling across the British Isles causing havoc and mayhem.  Many of our summer dive plans changed at the last minute as gale force winds and torrential rain made sea conditions treacherous and reduced visibility even in the sheltered bays. 

When I lived in west London, all my diving trips necessitated organising towing vehicles, booking accommodation and stupidly early starts.  I just don’t want to see 5am on a Saturday morning unless I have partied through the night to get there – and I suspect those days are behind me now.  Back then my dive trips were organised with almost military precision and planned weeks in advance.  Things are a little different now. 

When I first arrived on the Isle of Man two things struck me; firstly, how everything I’d been taught about dive planning, tidal flows and tides was completely trumped by local knowledge and secondly, how dives could be organised at 5 o’clock in the afternoon with the minimum of fuss and we’d all be in the water for 6.30.  My gung-ho “It’s not too rough really. I’ve planned to go diving so we are” attitude didn’t cut it here.  If you live with such fantastic diving on the doorstep, why have a slightly rough dive?  Wait 24 hours, let the wind drop away and have a really good dive instead.

The Isle of Man is close enough to the North West coast of England to be visible on a good day.  In fact it’s a local story that you can go to the top of Snaefell (our one and only mountain) and see 7 kingdoms in one go.  I’ll leave you guessing to name them all, but the location of the Isle of Man at the geographic centre of the British Isles means that every summer we have clubs setting out in their RIBs to travel across to dive in our waters.  And we offer visitors copious amounts of help to locate sites, plan around tides, transport cylinders, locate parts for their broken boats etc.  One of the visitors this year declared himself both very grateful and surprised that we should help him out so comprehensively and mentioned that other dive centres in the UK had been less than helpful.  Although, it’s true that we are pretty nice folks who want the best for our visitors, there are darker reasons at work. 

The Isle of Man is a limited community of around 80,000 and pretty much any diving story will end up with some link to our centre, whether it’s commenting about closing areas to dredging, helping out a fishing boat towed into harbour with their own nets around their prop or getting involved with videoing the local swimming club in training.  All diving links lead in our direction…..so it’s in our own selfish interests that we help out our visitors.  A lifeboat shout for lost divers swept away on an unexpected current or the hyperbaric chamber being mobilised for a recompression all reflects on us.  Some timely advice and guidance keeps the visitors out of the incident pit for a bit longer and keeps diving out of the news until we have a good news story to impart.

Of course, managing the exposure of diving in the local press plays a role in how we manage our diving activities too.  It’s been suggested that there are only 6 degrees of separation between any two people in the world, but on the Isle of Man that’s around 2 degrees.  Word of mouth is incredibly important.  We have to be safe and be seen to be safe, or our reputation would disappear overnight.  Doing my Advanced Driving test a few years back introduced me to the idea that ‘accidents don’t just happen’.  The same applies to diving, accidents are a culmination of a series of steps.  The advice that we freely give to visitors is the first point we can intervene to stop that series of events unfolding.  If you’re planning a trip across please feel free to get in touch.  If you run a dive centre that begrudgingly hands out dive planning information please have a think about how this reflects on the industry as a whole.  I promise you that it won’t undermine your charter service….the clubs that brought their own boats this year are booked to come and dive off our boat next year…..and looking forward to a less stressful trip. 
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And in case you are wondering on a clear day you can see the kingdoms of Mann, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Mann, Heaven and Neptune.