Dive Clubs that have sold their boats

[Simon Brookes]

Do any forum members hail from clubs that had boats but have now sold them off for whatever reason. What has been the experience of club life after this process? Are there any advantages (other than money saved) or disadvantages that became painfully obvius post sale?

[TerryH]

Do any forum members hail from clubs that had boats but have now sold them off for whatever reason. What has been the experience of club life after this process? Are there any advantages (other than money saved) or disadvantages that became painfully obvius post sale?

Well we did use a RIB many years ago and then went through a
stage of living in quarries. After that each trip was a
nightmare of trying to fill the odd booked boat.

So we backed off and had a rethink. Trained up a bigger core
of divers, selected dates on decent boats with good skippers
on neaps and nurtured an email dive space group. We now have
reciprocal agreements with another BSAC and SAA club.

Over the past 5 years our annual diary of trips has expanded
from 5 to 25 and even that looks to be not enough.

Moral? If you dont do your own RIB and you need to hire, use
a hardboat. If you cant always fill them, use the internet
and get other clubs literally on board.

TerryH

[angiemac]

Do any forum members hail from clubs that had boats but have now sold them off for whatever reason. What has been the experience of club life after this process?

We had a boat for about 10 years before we sold it. I think it went out maybe 5 times a year for the first 5 years and only one of them was a club trip, most of the rest of the time it sat on a garage and "rotted". We eventually sold it about 3 years ago, put the money into buying extra banks for the club compressor. A few members miss it but not many, most of us prefer diving from Hardboats with professional skipper.

Are there any advantages (other than money saved) or disadvantages that became painfully obvius post sale?

We nolonger have to try to use it to justify its insurance. We can plan our diving season relying on professional skippers and not having to worry about whether or not we have someone on the trip who has a car big enough to tow the damn thing. It's loss certainly hasn't diminished our membership or our diving.

[derek perry]

O
Do any forum members hail from clubs that had boats but have now sold them off for whatever reason. What has been the experience of club life after this process? Are there any advantages (other than money saved) or disadvantages that became painfully obvius post sale?

ur branch had various boats up until the mid 90's. Hardly ever got used and cost a lot of money to run, about ?1000 a year with insurance, servicing, repairs and replacing lost gear. As a result we completely re-thought our dive strategy. We sold the boat, put the money in a savings account, booked hard boats in advance for the whole season and implemented a charging system whereby the members only pay 1/10th the cost of the boat hire. That way they know how much the trip costs. We have networked other branches/divers who we then sell on our unsold places to. Some boats we sell spaces at the beginning of the season and other boats we offer 2-3 weeks before the dive date.

By charging 1/10th the cost, if we have 12 divers, the branch actually makes a profit to offset the other dives where we lose money. Over the past 10 years the most it has cost the branch in any one year was ?500. Some years it has cost nothing. A lot less than running a boat.
So post selling the boat we have absolutely no regrets and can always hire a rib if we want one (never have). We see all the following as the advantages and don't see many disadvantages.

Huge financial saving.
Notable increase in the quality of the dive sites and overall enjoyment of the day.
Leave for the dive later and get home sooner.
No stress in collecting the boat, filling with fuel, towing, launching, running it, breaking down on a dive, missing the wreck, washing the boat afterwards, towing it again and storing and maintaining it.
Same people don't get lumbered doing all the above.
Don?t have the yearly debate at the AGM re the boat, mainly about the above.
Arrive at site relaxed and focused on the diving
Travel to the dive site in relaxed jolly atmosphere, not clinging on for dear life.
Discover expert, up to date, information about the dive site from the boat skipper.
Almost guaranteed to get on the wreck.
Kit up and de-kit on the boat in comfort.
And most important of all, walk straight off the boat and into the pub without having hours of work sorting out the boat. We leave that to the skipper.
Overall a much shorter, more relaxing and enjoyable dive day.

Disadvantages
I had to lobby BSAC to keep boat handling from being compulsory for the Advanced Diver Course. Luckily there are so many branches like ours that there was a lot of support

Drop off of boat handling skills. To be honest we haven?t seen this as a disadvantage because it?s just not needed. The experienced divers can impart any information that is important for our sort of diving anyway.

I can?t see that we will ever be going back to owning a club boat.

Derek