Henley Sub Aqua Club: About Us

Welcome to Henley Sub Aqua Club. This guide is intended to give you an overview of the guidelines and processes that we use. If you need any further detail or want to discuss aspects of the guide then please contact the relevant committee member or, for diving issues, the Diving Officer or one of the instructors.

British Sub-Aqua Club
Henley Sub Aqua Club is a branch (number 0948) of the British Sub Aqua Club (BS-AC), one of the largest international diving organisations in the World, and membership of Henley Sub Aqua Club includes membership of the BS-AC. This gives important benefits, such as worldwide third party liability diving insurance (note that this is not travel insurance) as well as a range of other services and advice, together with the monthly magazine “Dive”. Further details of the BS-AC can be found on its website at www.BS-AC.co.uk or by telephoning them on 0151 350 6200. Qualifications as a BS-AC member are internationally recognised.

Holidays
Henley Sub Aqua Club tries to run one or two “diving holidays” each year. These are organised by people in the club. If you would like to participate please discuss with the organisers or the Diving Officer. The holidays generally cater for a range of divers and also normally for non-divers where possible. Again, on such holidays, don’t leave everything to the marshal, but do what you can to help.

Guests
Guests are very welcome at Henley Sub Aqua Club. If guests wish to dive, if they’re not BS-AC members, they are insured for six days in any month in any year. If they are from another BS-AC branch then they are already insured. We make a £5 charge per dive for guests to dive (i.e. where they are not a member of Henley Sub Aqua Club) on top of our normal charges.

Club Equipment
Our boat is a 5.5m Tornado RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) with an 115hp outboard engine. It is a very fast, safe and stable boat for diving and we selected and configured it specially to suit our requirements. It can normally carry eight divers plus a Cox. The boat also has advanced electronics on board, including VHF Radio, depth sounder and differential GPS. This makes it very easy for us to be where we want to be and to quickly find the dive sites we want.

Henley Sub Aqua Club owns a range of diving equipment, comprising BC jackets, regulators, cylinders, weights, fins, snorkels and masks, that is allocated to students for use during their Ocean Diver training. Henley Sub Aqua Club members can use this equipment when it is not required for training. The equipment is allocated on a first come – first served basis.

Fees
Membership of Henley Sub Aqua Club is currently £35 per year. This is in addition to the BS-AC annual membership charges of £28 - £43 (depending on grade). Henley Sub Aqua Club and BS-AC membership fees are due each April for the year.
Trainees for Ocean Diver training pay a total of £200 in the first year that includes all training fees and equipment loan.

Henley Sub Aqua Club makes a charge for diving in order to recover costs. The fees are currently £10 for each boat dive. Note that these fees do not include hard-boat diving, where the fees are set to recover the costs.

Guests of Henley Sub Aqua Club (i.e. non-members of Henley Sub Aqua Club that are diving with us) are very welcome and pay a £5 supplement per dive.

Newsletter
We publish a newsletter (“The Upper Crustacean”) approximately quarterly. The editor always welcomes articles, stories, adverts etc. that may be of interest to other members.

Finances
Henley Sub Aqua Club is a club for the members and is non-profit making. Also, none of the instructors, committee members or other officials is paid. The club income we receive covers:

Hiring of the pool when required for training
Insurance of the equipment and the boat
Running and maintenance costs of the boat
Purchase and maintenance of club equipment
A boat “fund” to purchase a new boat when appropriate

Our sources of income are:

Membership fees (by far the largest source)
Diving fees
Try dive events
Social / fund raising events.

Obviously the more members and trainees we have then the more money we have. We believe that we have the balance right between the various sources of income, although this is something that we review regularly.

Welcome to Henley Sub Aqua Club. We value your membership and your friendship. We are proud of our club and its ethos. If you can suggest improvements to this guide then please discuss them with the committee.