OW Class at Beach Cities Scuba

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I have had two of my kids certified at 10 with BCS and while there have been things I did not like I also know that is life. As for the boat dive sales pitch....well here is an experience my son just did his jr advanced OW, it was a group class so he was 12 and the other students were old (lol). During the class one of the divers had some definte issues with shore entry and eventually lost their weight belt and got freaked out and thumbed their dive. As she exited the water she said "I should have listened and done the boat dive". So yes their warning may sound a bit pitchy but they know and they are really experienced, if you want to go out they will take you but they will warn you of the issues.

Glad your having a great time. And yes also wanted to say there are times I felt things were a bit rushed too but sometimes its teaching style and others its just to get the day over....
 
I can't imagine learning to dive in Southern California and not knowing how to do beach dives. I would suggest that if you do want to become a master diver, that you avail yourself of the 3R's (rocks, rips, reef) training offered in Los Angeles and other socal locations. That said, boat diving is less stressful. As an divemaster/assistant instructor I have seen people crater on beach dives who thrived on boat dives.

I look at the open water certification much like driver's education. It teaches you to pass the written test and to demonstrate basic skills behind the wheel. it does not really teach you how to "drive" anymore than an openwater class teaches you how to "dive". As far as pushing classes, ow classes are usually "loss leaders" for a dive shop to get you to buy gear and more advanced courses. Nothing wrong with that, owning a dive shop is the low margin business now-a-days. Courses are great if you can't dive with people who are willing to show you how to dive or have limited opportunities to learn through doing. There is also a social aspect to classes for people who don't have identified dive buddies. There is also a sense of accomplishment in completing classes, much like a Scout earning merit badges. I do find the proliferation of specialty classes to be indicative of the myriad of interests, if somewhat redundant in the information they present.

I have enjoyed your blog so far. keep them coming.
 
I took the CW portion this past Sunday and man am I out of shape. LOL It has been a long time since i have done any real swimming.

Anyway, our instructor for the day at the Cypress BCS was Kristina. I mentioned her earlier as she has been the one to help me pick out all of my gear that I currently own.

I admit I was excited to have her as our instructor. Our first time in the pool we had to do the 200 yard swim followed up right away by the 10 minute tread water. These wore me out a bit and as I said earlier, I am out of swim shape and need to spend more time in the water.

Anyway I passed both and at that point we went into setting up our kits. We had to set them up and take the apart 5 times. Making sure we did not miss a step in the process.

Once we had the kits together we put on our wet suits and began to gear up. I had my own BC (Scubapro Knighthawk with Air2) so I knew how to put mine on, where the dump valves where, etc where the others had the BCs they were using loaned to them by the LDS. It took them a bit to become familiar with their gear but that was ok by me as I was busy seeing how I should clip things off, what D rings I have to clip to and making notes of anything I didn't like about my BC.

As I had not had a tank and reg set up on my kit I noticed a few things I would not have noticed when I was wearing at home to get used to it.

I don't like the velcro strap that is supposed to hold the octo so I think I will be using an octo keeper or maybe a snorkel keeper to hold it in place.

Anyway, let's get back to the splash. So we get our gear set up and stage it on the side of the pool while we all get in. Once in we pull our kits in and put them on in the water. We go through the BWRAF check. Checking ourselves and then doing a dive buddy check. Then we are shown how to blow out of the reg to purge and also how to use the purge valve underwater.

She even told us we could sneeze, burp, hiccup and puke in our regs if we needed to. Just don't take it out!

Then came one of the best experiences of my life; my first breath underwater. We just put the reg in, donned our masks and dipped our head under to experience what it is like to breath underwater. It was an amazing experience.

We then moved onto the skills and discussion of how to use our gear, hand signals,etc.

We did a regulator recovery and a few other drills. I was having a very hard time being on my knees on the shallow end as my fins kept trying to float up behind me, essentially pushing me face down towards the deep end and my instructor. She had me take my fins off to help but even that wasn't great.

After a bit of working with me and getting my weight changed in my BC...she told me I have "floaty feet". This is where we tried out ankle weights.

Ok, having lurked here for a long time I know someone will ask so here are the specs:

male
185 pounds.
7 mm wetsuit
Atomic Splitfins

Total weight in BC: 24 lbs.
Trim pockets: 5 lbs each for a total of 10 pounds.
integrated pockets: 7 pounds each: total of 14

The add in the 1 1/2 lbs per ankle.

We worked on getting my weight right but something just didn't see right. I would inflate my BC at the surface only to be rolled to my left each time.

Fast forward a bit and we were practicing removing our BC at the surface and putting it back on. This is when we noticed my BC was floating but listing to the left. One of the straps seemed to be very loose and it is one my instructor said she has never had to adjust. (note: she has the same BC I have so she is very familiar with it)

Once we adjust the strap it was much easier to float on the surface as well as to take off and don my kit at the surface. There was still a major buoyancy issue. One that was bothering me so much I considered quitting. Being a Navy veteran that thought came and went very fast but still feel very uncomfortable.

I could not keep myself parallel to the pool bottom and often found myself going fins over ass. My good friend is a tec diver and says I was very overweighted and should have been closer to 18 lbs.

All I know is I need a lot more time in the water to get my weight fixed and to learn to control my buoyancy. In the open ocean I feel I would be a danger to the sea life and other divers if I don't figure this out quickly.

Well, stupid work is getting in the way so I will have to continue this later today. There is a lot to discuss as we spent from 10-6 in the water.

To be continued.........
 
Back to the confined water discussion briefly before moving to my open water dives.

All the skills we did I nailed rather easily in the pool. From partial and total mask floods to removal, replace and clearing of a mask. Air sharing, tired diver tow,etc.

My biggest issue is feeling very unsteady in the water. Bad trim, bad horizontal position...all of these seemed to compound once we did the open water dives which I will discuss in my next post.

Now that I have done all but two ocean dives I can say this about the class based on my own feelings and nothing more:

The class should have been split so that we had two days of classroom work and tests (which we did have) followed by two full days for the confined water dives. We did one day which was OK but I feel the additional pool day would have really helped to give all involved a better handle on the basic scuba skills and could have helped to establish , even if only slightly, better buoyancy, trim, breath control and finning techniques. One day with 8 students just wasn't enough to make me feel like I was ready for the open ocean.

Up next...ocean dives aboard The Riviera......
 
I was scheduled for two boat dives a day for two consecutive days aboard The Riviera out of Dana Point Harbor in order to finish my OW class.

We left Dana Point Harbor around 9 am on Saturday 17 Dec. Once we got out to the site and were all geared up (except for donning of SCUBA kit) the DM came to the back of the boat and let us all know he was thumbing the dive due to conditions. Apparently the swell frequency was much too close and as students it would have been nearly impossible to stay steady and work our skills.

I was highly disappointed as you can imagine what with this being my first ever ocean dive, something that I had dreamt of since I was a young boy back in the 70s. However it also showed me that it is OK to thumb a dive at anytime, no matter the reason as safety comes first! As much as it sucked it was a great lesson to learn so early into my diving career.

I will say I was very excited to dive with my instructor that day, Randy, who was my instructor for sections 3,4 and 5 of the KR. Being a tec driven diver his knowledge was amazing as was his stories. He remembered me from the class and even remembered I wanted to become an instructor. His concern over how much weight I had was refreshing but sadly we were unable to dive together.

I will say this about Beach Cities Scuba Mania in HB, when I emailed Chob at the shop to tell him the dive was canceled and wanted to be sure I was set for the next day, he gave me the option of going to the Laguna store to practice buoyancy in their pool. I would have loved to take him up on the offer but I was unable to so I went home and planned to dive the next day.

Sunday morning comes and off we go back down to DP. I find out my instructor for the day would be Jed. Jed is a MSDT, dives dry and seemed to be more like my type of guy. There were supposed to be 5 of us diving with him that day. 3 of us on dives 1 and 2 and two on dives 3 and 4. The couple on dives 3 and 4 did not show up leaving Jed with 3 of us. We got our gear ready, check our gear together and waited for Jed to get in the water. Once he was in I could not wait so I got up and waited at the gate to do my first giant stride into the ocean.

Stay tuned for my next post which will describe my first ever ocean dive and the things that I found to be easy and those I found to be quite difficult, mainly because I just need to dive more.

And before anyone says anything, yes I know my mask strap was much lower than it should have been.

Dive Gate 1t.jpg
 
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Your enthusiasm is refreshing ( as well as you're providing some good real-world feedback on dive instruction). I look forward to hearing your thoughts on your dives.

- Ken
 
I can't imagine learning to dive in Southern California and not knowing how to do beach dives. I would suggest that if you do want to become a master diver, that you avail yourself of the 3R's (rocks, rips, reef) training offered in Los Angeles and other socal locations. That said, boat diving is less stressful. As an divemaster/assistant instructor I have seen people crater on beach dives who thrived on boat dives.

I look at the open water certification much like driver's education. It teaches you to pass the written test and to demonstrate basic skills behind the wheel. it does not really teach..


I couldnt agree with the above more; esp. just having gone through LA county's ADP and their Rescue program this summer. They will be hosting the 3R again through out summer.

Its funny I said the same analogy about Drivers License to my GF when she got her OW cert this summer.

Having accompanied her OW class w another Socal shop that took inexperience students (some without much watermenship skills) straight into a shore entry without much orientation or practice in full scuba on more than one acount was nerve wrecking to me. & having seeing the same practice in SD where a whole class march into shore entry facing on-coming surfers at La Jolla shore, i'm speechless

Perhaps ur shop made a wiser decision to simplify the obsticles by skipping shore dive in the OW course. Getting into & out of the surf can be quite a chore while condition may change at any time making things more hazardous.

Definitely give 3Rs a visit! There is no cost and its hosted over multiple weekends.

Good luck & enjoy ur course!
 
I can't imagine learning to dive in Southern California and not knowing how to do beach dives.
I agree and disagree with this.

I've been teaching diving in SoCal since 1981. Obviously, the overall goal is to get you to a point where you're comfortable in the water and also where you'll want to keep diving once you're certified. Beach diving poses an interesting challenge from the standpoint of fulfilling those goals.

Also remember some reasons dive shops do beach dives as part of their basic class: Easy, cheap, and quick. It's easier to get people to a beach than it is to purchase boat spots. Beach diving might "cost" parking and not much else so it doesn't drive up the apparent cost of your class. And you can get it done in half a day so an instructor who's also a store employee can go back and work in the store for the afternoon. All good reasons perhaps, but reasons that serve the needs of the instructor & store rather than the student diver.

For those of you certified in SoCal, think back to your first beach dive in your OW class. Show of hands if it was a positive, empowering experience for you. Hmmmm, not many hands up.

Show of hands if you were at least a little nervous (if not downright scared), might have lost some gear, gotten separated from the instructor or class, gotten tossed around in the surf, saw someone get hurt or get sick, etc. Hmmm, a number of hands up.

Personally, I have never considered beach diving to be a basic entry-level-diver skill. I have also never considered beach diving to be the first thing you should be exposed to in the open water. Again, my philosophy was that I want you to have positive experiences and the more of those I can build in, the better-prepared you'll be once certified and the more eager you'll be to continue diving with or without me.

I have always felt it was counter-productive to make the first OW experience a beach entry due to the negatives mentioned above. I think we lose a lot of people that way in that they either drop out or don't continue diving after their card is issued. In fact, when we had Reef Seekers open as a brick-and-mortar, the instructors were prohibited from making the first dive a beach entry. First one was always to be Avalon in the UW Park. Once those were under your belt, they could do a beach if they wanted to along with a boat.

In fact when I was actively teaching basic classes back in the good old days, my standard pattern was that on the first Saturday we did three snorkel-only dives at Malaga Cove (granted a beach, but no scuba and the point was to let them get knocked around a bit and make it fun), following day was Sunday in the Avalon UW Park where we usually did a quick snorkel with rescue drills plus up to three scuba dives (two of which were "official"), next Saturday was a single-dive beach entry at Corral Canyon (and if they didn't do it well or they didn't enjoy it, it was no big deal since we had a successful and fun Avalon day under our belt, and then that Sunday was a boat dive where we'd do at least two and perhaps as many as four scuba dives. So by the end of the class, you might have done as many as 8 scuba dives along with 4 snorkel dives. Plus we offered a 2-day Beach Diving class after you were certified.

So I agree that beach diving is a skill that should be taught but with the caveat that it's not for everyone. My own personal estimate is that 70-80% of the divers who get certified in SoCal do breach dives in their basic class and then never do another beach dive their entire diving career. So why should something that they're never going to do again, and which also has many negative potentials that can actually turn them off the sport, be considered an essential basic skill? There's plenty of time to learn how to beach dive (and really the only additional skill is entry/exit - once you've done that, going down is going down) once you're certified and it should be something you approach with eager anticipation, not something you might dread with trepidation.

- Ken
 
@ScubaTurk , are you going to share the rest of the story?

Yes I will be posting the rest of the story. Sorry about the delay but between work and all the information I find here, I got sidetracked. I will work on finishing this over the weekend if all goes well since I won't be diving. :mad:
 

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