When should I take my Advanced Open Water Cert?

[FreqFlier]

she mentioned that I really don't need it since I can still dive the deeper sites (100ft) if I book a tour with them

I'd be careful with comments like this one.

OW cert limits your dive depth @ 60' and it is a reasonable requirement (IMHO). You don't know what you don't know. Technically speaking PADi does not require you to have some number of dives as a prerequisite to take AOW course, but SSI f ex does, it's 24 if I recall well.
I would try to get some 20-40 dives in before AOW course, but that's just me. Plenty of great shore dives in Hawaii...
But you'll find many comments here on SB and everywhere else saying different.

 

[SKuba Steve]

You specifically mention 100ft. Is there context you can share around that number? Diving deep isn't necessarily better and there are good reasons for getting advanced training before you do so such as handling narcosis, gas planning, and time at depth. I would second the advice earlier... dive as much as you can prior to your class and you'll get the most out of it.

 

[jengineer61]

Find a dive buddy someone with more experience and get in as many dives as possible. Work on slowing down your breathing swimming less and floating more aka buoyancy. My young adult offspring got certified and we doubles her dives during a short holiday to Florida where she is living. Although she knew the skills it took some time to put of them to use. After fist dive I was asked why I dump air from my bc and then it looks at other times I was adding. Of course I was also chasing her under water for the first dive. We spent the next 5 dives working on buoyancy and not swimming so much. Ah there is a lot to see when you stop and let the environment come to you.

A friend at work took me out every weekend for a couple of beach dives each sat and sun. I too had the same issue swim fast and far, Be a slug slow down and float. Had a good number of dives so I could actually work on the skills for Advanced Open Water.

my two cents

 

[TMHeimer]

I took it after doing 6 dives following OW cert. Mainly because it happened to be available during our 3 months as FL snowbirds. I was always comfortable in water before OW and my buoyancy at that time was reasonable. Some say wait a while and get some diving in first, others say do it right away as a way to improve basic skills. If you're comfortable in water and with the scuba basics I don't really think it matters. The course didn't seem to be rocket science. I did do all the Knowledge Reviews in the paper manual (2006....), including those sections on types of dives I wouldn't be doing in the course. It seemed to be the starting point for me as a "card collector".

 

[pkchu_]

You specifically mention 100ft. Is there context you can share around that number? Diving deep isn't necessarily better and there are good reasons for getting advanced training before you do so such as handling narcosis, gas planning, and time at depth. I would second the advice earlier... dive as much as you can prior to your class and you'll get the most out of it.

Well, she said that if I dive with an instructor I'll be fine to dive 100ft. Not sure if this is a PADI thing or a LDS thing but i'm not really comfortable diving that deep yet. I'd rather take AOW class before I do it.

 

[pkchu_]

Find a dive buddy someone with more experience and get in as many dives as possible. Work on slowing down your breathing swimming less and floating more aka buoyancy. My young adult offspring got certified and we doubles her dives during a short holiday to Florida where she is living. Although she knew the skills it took some time to put of them to use. After fist dive I was asked why I dump air from my bc and then it looks at other times I was adding. Of course I was also chasing her under water for the first dive. We spent the next 5 dives working on buoyancy and not swimming so much. Ah there is a lot to see when you stop and let the environment come to you.

A friend at work took me out every weekend for a couple of beach dives each sat and sun. I too had the same issue swim fast and far, Be a slug slow down and float. Had a good number of dives so I could actually work on the skills for Advanced Open Water.

my two cents

Thanks for the tips! I have a dive buddy who's willing to dive with me every weekend and so far we've dove 4x this week. I'm slowly getting more and more comfortable which results to better breathing and buoyancy!

 

[TMHeimer]

Well, she said that if I dive with an instructor I'll be fine to dive 100ft. Not sure if this is a PADI thing or a LDS thing but i'm not really comfortable diving that deep yet. I'd rather take AOW class before I do it.

The 100 foot limit, I've found, is somewhat debatable. PADI OW diver is certified to a depth of 60 feet in conditions as good as or better that when trained (I think that's the wording). But, the OW maximum depth limit is 130 feet. So, I read into that years ago. It seems one can gradually increase depths if buddied with a pro or at least an experienced diver and then it's OK to dive to 100 without AOW. I mean, you just have to do it gradually, or take the AOW right away and not do it gradually.....I'm still confused.

 

[boulderjohn]

Here is a copy and paste of a post I just made in another thread on this topic.
...............................................
The ScubaBoard debate about if and when to take AOW has gone on as long as there has been a ScubaBoard. I think it is useful to look at the origin of the course.

The first real certification program was LA County's. They essentially copied a course created by the nearby Scripps Institution for Oceanography. This led to some of its leaders creating the first real nationwide agency, NAUI. At that point, there were two levels of certification--diver and instructor. LA County became concerned that a large number of divers were getting certified and then stopping diving altogether. They reasoned that a course that featured a few more helpful skills but mostly offered a variety of different dive experiences might pique some interest and keep people diving. That was the purpose of their new advanced course, and soon after that, NAUI adopted it, too. Other agencies came along later.

When they created the course, it was the most advanced course possible except for instructor, so it made sense to call it "advanced." Today, divers can choose from a wide variety of much more advanced classes, so the name no longer makes sense. But I believe that is that name that is causing the problems. People argue divers should wait until they are skilled enough to live up to the level implied by that name, when that was never, ever the purpose of the class.

I got certified in a not-so-great OW class in Puerta Vallarta, and I felt I needed more. I then went to Cozumel and took the AOW immediately. It was a good decision. I had a great instructor who raised my diving skills up significantly, so with a grand total of 9 dives, I was far, far ahead of where that dive total would suggest. I could have slowly learned those skills on my own over the years and then complained about the fact that I had to take an AOW class I no longer needed, but I instead chose to dive those years with a good skill base and improve from there.

 

[dmaziuk]

Well, she said that if I dive with an instructor I'll be fine to dive 100ft. Not sure if this is a PADI thing or a LDS thing but i'm not really comfortable diving that deep yet. I'd rather take AOW class before I do it.

You can dive to 100' when you're comfortable diving to 100'. Take the AOW right now because if you take it after you get comfortable, it may feel like a waste of money.

 

[boulderjohn]

You can dive to 100' when you're comfortable diving to 100'. Take the AOW right now because if you take it after you get comfortable, it may feel like a waste of money.

As you try to figure things out on your own, you may well get comfortable gaining bad habits.

I just got back from a week on a dive boat, diving with two old friends and other people who were on the trip. One of the people on the trip came to talk to me because my friends had suggested she see me about problems she was having as a pretty new diver. We started talking about her typical new diver issues related to weighting, buoyancy, and trim. As we talked, I was very much aware of the fact that another diver who happened to be sitting next to me was listening, so I adjusted what I was telling her so it would apply to him--he needed it much more than she did.

I had seen him on several dives by then. He was obviously overweighted (weight belt), and he was not using enough air in the BCD to compensate. Consequently, he was swimming at an angle and flutter kicking constantly to maintain his depth. He would periodically stop to rest, sinking to the bottom and staying on his knees for a while before kicking again to get up off the bottom. His trademark was a big cloud of dust. He was regularly bashing the sea life as he swam over it.

After listening to a few minutes of that instruction, on the next dive he cut his weight in half, put air in his BCD, and swam along in reasonable trim for the rest of week. He talked about what a difference it made in his diving, how much better he was doing.

Any respectable AOW instructor could have done the same thing for him. Alternatively, he could have eventually figured things out on his own, I suppose, but meanwhile he had gotten perfectly comfortable kneeling on the ocean floor, creating clouds of dust, and soundly thrashing the coral and sponges beneath him.