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Agree with Heads and the other guys on this one.
Boat Skippers and dive venues are becoming more and more cautious about getting their ass sued if anything goes wrong with in the water - the 1st question the HSE will ask after an 'incident' is: "did you check his/her quals before allowing them to dive?" If they say "err...well...no", then they are in a whole new world of hurt, so they cover their ass. Your diving fee compared to the amount they'd get fined is what keeps them awake at night.
The above said, neither the BSAC, SSAC, SSI, SAA, TDI/SDI nor PADI 'Dry-suit Orientation Courses' is a bad thing - and where diving in the UK is concerned, they're not just 'another badge' to collect, they're a matter of safety and commonsense
Dry-bag diving is completely different to wet-suit diving: you're using your suit (down to 40 metres at least, after that the pressure on your suit is so great (not uncomfortably so!) that you'd use most of your gas keeping it inflated and have to revert to your BC/Wing) for buoyancy - this brings its own pleasures and issues to consider.
No one can tell you that learning how to correct/avert/prevent an 'inversion' (where the air in your suit rushes in to the boots/feet of your suit) is a bad skill to to have - you do not want to head surface-side, feet-1st, at a rate of knots on any dive - this would count as a 'rapid, uncontrolled ascent' and brings with it all the nasties of DCS or worse.
Also, any of the above club/agency courses will teach both you and your buddy how address an inversion, so you're not trying to fight it alone - never a bad thing!
Added to this, learning how to avoid/address 'suit-squeeze' (where, under deeper pressure, your suit literally squeezes around you so that you feel 'vacuum-packed') is gonna make for a more comfortable dive.
And lastly, if you don't already have this skill, the course will teach you how to weight yourself correctly in a dry-bag. It may seem obvious to us all, but I'm willing to bet that many accidents that do occour each year might be avoided (and lives saved) if the above skills had been both learnt and practised.
Never more so than in UK water conditions (sea or freshwater) are these skills more important - indeed, the fact that UK conditions 'force' us (in most cases) to wear a dry-bag speak for itself.
Hope this helps and dive safe all.  |