Bad Experience During Training

[TMHeimer]

I'm fairly new to scuba; I've got 83 dives, all done with the same instructor/buddy.

When we started, I ran into some really unexpected mental issues. I'm extremely comfortable in the water, been swimming in pools, lakes, rivers since I was a kid. Very relaxed swimming underwater with my eyes open.

So, it was a serious shock to find out that my subconcious didn't believe that I could sit underwater in shallow depth and breathe from my regulator. I was close to panic. I'd drop down, start gasping, and surface so that I could breathe.

My instructor was just as surprised as I was - but he was patient and worked me through it. One of the exercises that I did was sitting on dry land, with mask and snorkle on, just breathing. Then same exercise in the shower.

Got past it, and my subconcious mind seems to have accepted that I can breathe underwater if I have the gear on.

I could not have worked through this with an instructor like the one that the OP described. I probably would have walked away from scuba as a failed experience.

Because my instructor was top-notch I've got my AOW and Enriched Air certs and reservations made for July/August. Surgeon who did my rotator cuff surgery has cleared me to dive by that time, otherwise I'd be going sooner.

It's good you had that instructor. I would be shocked as well that someone with your in water experience would have a problem with scuba. From my time assisting on courses I recall it was those with little water experience that had problems basically with being underwater.

 

[SlugLife]

"you should know this already" and "use common sense"

For an open-water course, those are words I'd hope an instructor would never use. Students absorb a lot of material, and what bits of information stick with individuals students better or worse changes from one person to the next. That's just a sign of a bad teacher, of any subject.

Next, "common sense" in scuba-diving is not something I'd recommend to a brand new barely trained diver. There are far too many counter-intuitive things within scuba-diving. Our "common sense" or instincts & experience are trained as land animals 99% of our life, and then we do something crazy by going 60ft underwater where we don't naturally belong.

For example, if you run OOA at 60ft deep, the "common sense" thing to do is hold your breath and rocket to the surface, BOTH of which are absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Then when I was putting in my weights I asked him how many I needed because I didn't remember and he seemed kind of angry about that.

These are things you need to keep track of. However, from the perspective of a teacher, I might be wondering if I failed to clearly emphasize or clearly teach the thing the student forgot. I seem to remember in my OW course, they required us to keep a dive-log to complete the course and instructed us to include several things like added-weight, temperature, depth, time, location, who our dive buddy was and a few other things.

 

[gng4life]

Sorry about your experience but I agree with most comments on here that you are the customer, you should be happy with the service or go somewhere else. If you already paid in full, as long as you don't feel in any danger, just tough out the last two dives and be done with it. You can always get refresher courses with other instructors to help put you at ease before you go trotting off in the wild, blue sea. This will help clear up any gaps in your instruction.

One thing to get used to now is to write everything down! Either electronically (with backups) or in a notebook. There are so many variables with diving that until you get extremely experienced and are doing it constantly that you will not remember everything. Even then, I have noticed well-experienced divers and instructors keep a checklist on every dive and go through it methodically and double check everything.

 

[Germie]

I read here some things that are not completely valid for Cuba. Of course, an instructor must not be rude.
I don't know where the TS learned diving in the country as it is a big country.
But from some experiences, not everything is as easy as some write here.

To go to another divecenter is very difficult in Playa Larga or Playa giron, and this is the place where most shore dives are done in the country. If you live in Cuba, you probably don't have a car to go where you want. There is a big fuelshortage. Tourists are in an advantage to get transport and fuel.
The divecenter in Giron is small. I don't know how many instructors there are, but I don't think you can go to another. At least you cannot go to another divecenter. There is only 1. The divecenter in Larga was closed when we were there.
So in Bahia de Cochinos with a lot of very nice Bonaire like divesites (if you could rent a car and tanks, it was just go and jump in in the 35km of coast), but there are not a lot of divers. Also everywhere the stairs from entrances are broken as the country has no money for it.
The diving in the divecenter in Giron is not very well organised, dives of 45 minutes. 1 to the left and 1 to the right, done in the morning, both dives on the same spot. Everybody goes diving, even if you have never been in the water. Happely we found this out before our trip and found a private guide that had 4 really good days with us, as we were experienced, dove long and he did not have to help us. He also was absolutely not rude. Our dives were 75 minutes, 20 bars left in the tanks.

There is 3 tot 6 hours a day no electricity. You don't know at what time of the day this happens. Sometimes it is only 1 time for a couple of hours, sometimes it is the whole night, sometimes it is twice a day for a couple of hours. So this can also cause you cannot use the compressor to fill tanks. Most people don't have aggregates and there is no fuel for them.

The prices for diving are made by the government, so you pay everywhere the same. In Playa Giron it is 25 dollar per dive.

There is teached for UCUC, that is more or less SSI, but then for instructors that are not working in a divecenter, they can use UCUC. The certs are worldwide recognised, so that is not a problem. (but for most Cubans, travelling is difficult). I have seen SSI flags in Varadero, but I cannot recommend diving there, it is quite boring. The wreck is nice. But a long way by boat (1.5 hour, our boat had 1 of the 2 motors broken). Other divespots I did not like (Aquario, Tuberone reef, etc). But the people from divecenters I met there were very friendly.

We have had different tanks on each dive in Giron, from steel 12 liter short tanks (the ones we really don't like at home) till ali80's. So the amount of weight we needed was changing from dive to dive (but we are experienced divers, so we know how much it is changing between tanks).

Also we did not have to gear up ourselves. The man from the car did it every time. So it is a little bit like in Asia, you don't have to gear up yourself, so you don't get really routinated in this if you are a beginner. Normally in a beginner course you have to do all the time yourself. But I have seen in Asia that due to some time issues the instructors did it. So maybe here also in some cases?

So the instructor must not be rude, but some advices are difficult to do in Cuba. Find another divecenter can be very hard.