Kristina Pedder meets York Sub Aqua Club, revitalised after a fundraising push and now blooming with a renewed appetite for club life.
Need some funds for your club? York Sub Aqua Club did, so they dived enthusiastically into the Sport England Movement Fund and, with some help from famous Yorkshire brands and other friends, they got their online fundraising matched pound for pound.
The compressor is no longer struggling to breathe and the club has a new lease of life.
When was the club formed?
In 1957, four years after BSAC was founded, we became BSAC branch number 50, emerging from the York Underwater Research Group. Since then, our members have been diving for fun or more serious reasons, embarking on many search and recovery and marine conservation projects over the years, both locally and abroad. In the early days, health and safety rules were mere whispers, drowned out by the divers’ passion for the underwater world.
The club was awarded the very first BSAC Heinke Trophy in 1958. The trophy is still awarded every year to recognise the significant contribution of a club and its members to the growth and development of scuba diving.
Enjoying the Farne Islands
Tell us about your members today.
We have a membership of around 40 and have been growing this in the last few years. We are 13 trainees, six Ocean Divers, 11 Sports Divers, five Dive Leaders and five Advanced Divers. In years gone by, we had as few as 25 members; now we hope to keep on growing.
How does the club raise funds?
As well as club membership, we have raised funds by offering try dive sessions for local scouts, guides, and cadets. We have also been lucky enough to be awarded some grants, including most recently a Sport England crowd-funding matched grant from the Movement Fund aimed at community groups, local clubs and grassroots organisations that are at the heart of delivering physical activity opportunities that boost people’s health and wellbeing. Sport England matched the £3,149 we raised, doubling our success.
[L] Vintage club finds, reported to Receiver of Wreck; [R] An early photography competition
Did you receive any other help in fundraising?
Taylors of Harrogate supplied a boatload of Yorkshire Tea to help our cause. York City Football Club supported us with two general admission tickets. Harry’s barbers in York donated five men’s haircuts. John from Kent Tooling donated one of the new composite stainless steel reels. Thanks go to them all.
What do you think made your application to Sport England succeed?
The funding was for the upgrade of some of our compressor equipment. Our application focused on this equipment being essential to providing safe gas to breath; and gas being essential for us to run all of our activities, both for our members and the community. We talked about inclusivity and safety and about the lungs of the compressor.
The club at York's 1978 River Gala
What does membership of the club offer?
Membership includes pool sessions, membership at the sports club where we meet each week, free air fills, discounted nitrox, and use of club equipment.
Do you have a club house of your own?
In the early years we did. Our members constructed our own clubhouse, conveniently close to the river, which of course included a spacious clubroom with a bar. Adjacent to the clubhouse, they built a compressor house to ensure clean, breathable air for diving. The clubhouse became a hub of activity, adorned with hundreds of collected artefacts. The facilities were put to good use by various groups, including the International Club, Country and Western music enthusiasts, and the Karate Club. Sundays saw the Yorkshire Federation of Divers convening at our venue. Over the years, we hosted countless divers during our annual river races.
Working on the new club space
And now?
We haven’t had our own clubhouse for several years but have been part of larger sports clubs. We recently wanted to upgrade to a larger space as the club grew and to save some money, and so we undertook a huge move. We are lucky enough to have a new club meeting space at Huntington Sports Club, north of the city centre. As part of the move, we took the opportunity to upgrade our club compressor and nitrox offerings and expand the storage we have for club equipment. We have a regular pool session, which we share with the University of York Sub-Aqua Club. This allows us both to share the cost of the sessions and to share instructors. It also gives both clubs the opportunity to socialise and share diving plans.
That sounds great. When do you go diving?
There is a range of diving throughout the whole year; a mix of inland, shore, charter boat and liveaboard diving. We run club trips to dive in the Lake District, Scotland, and we have recently also visited Malta and the Red Sea. The club has always focused on the health of local seas and in the last couple of years we have undertaken beach cleans, joining the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Waves of Waste initiative.
[L] Training at Ellerton Park; [R] Reeling around the Farnes
What is your local diving like?
Luckily, we are not too far from east coast diving in South Shields, the Farne Islands and St Abbs so we have plenty of opportunity for really great local diving. The club’s favourite spots are the Farnes and St Abbs, as these have been where many of our members have had their first sea dives. On our most recent dive trip to the Farnes everyone was very excited with not only the seals but the dolphin sightings.
Sadly we don’t have a boat at present; we had a RIB only a few years ago but this was sold when we had fewer members and it was not being used as much. Now we think we could benefit from having a club boat again. With a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RIB), we could offer more local diving.
What type of training is most popular with members?
The club offers the Diver Training Programme at all levels and, as we speak, members are working on Ocean Diver, Sports Diver, Dive Leader and Advanced Diver training. In the past year, we have run lots of Skill Development Courses, including compressor operator, gas bending, buoyancy and trim workshops, and accelerated decompression procedures. Most of this happens at our local inland sites: Eight Acre Lake (1m), Ellerton (10m), and Capernwray (25m), all within a couple of hours drive from of our base.
[L] All smiles at the beach clean; [R] Training day
What does your instructor team look like?
We have an Advanced Instructor, an Assistant Advanced Instructor, four Open Water Instructors, two Assistant Diving Instructors, two Club Instructors [Club Instructor is a pre-2002 instructor who can teach open water lessons to their own diver qualification level, without the need for another qualified instructor to be present but who may not supervise assistant instructors in open water training] and a Theory Instructor. We also have a Diving for All instructor. Our team of instructors are all fantastic, supported by our brilliant Training Officer, Marie Armstrong, who somehow manages to organise instructors and trainees every week. Having such a large instructor group has been really helpful as we have grown and has been something we have been keen to show in our recent successful grant applications.
Buddy checks in progress
What are you proud of from the past year, and what are you looking forward to next year?
The move from our old premises to our new one was our focus last year. We would really like to grow our membership in the next few years and develop the type of diving we are doing. We hope to get that RIB, so that we can offer a more diverse range of diving locally and around the UK. We have had a really fantastic year and hope we can continue to go from strength to strength next year as well. Our doors are open to divers of all levels, from enthusiastic trainees to seasoned experts.
Article ‘Club Focus – York Sub-Aqua Club’ by Kristina Pedder first published in SCUBA magazine, Issue 152 Jan/Feb 2025.
How do I find scuba diving near me?
If you want to learn to dive in North Yorkshire with York Sub-Aqua Club, please contact Andrew Mott.
