Wrong question. Whete is this numbers thinking coming from anyway?
What in the world has the number of dives to do with anything other with how much one enjoys diving or how much money and time one spent on it and how long one has been doing it.
It would make sense to define demonstratable skillsets under certain conditions as the gatekeeper of diving prowess. Didn't kill yourself in so many dives all by itself does not make a reliable indicator all on it's own.
If I gave it a stab, I would say to not be a beginner anymore you havevto be:
- a thinking diver.
- be able to hold a depth anywhere in the part of the watercolumn you choose to dive under any confitions you choose to dive in ... with your depth gage / computer as the only reference (and I don't care within how many feet exactly... reasonably well, say +/- 3 feet.
- be able to safely execute, under control at safe speed, free ascents. (yeah, decents too I guess)
- be able to deploy a dsmb and be able to recognize when you really should and actually do it...
- be able to recognize at least obvious danger, an obviously deteriorating situation, an obviously deteriorating buddy, ... and do something appropriate about it, like actually aborting the dive if so indicated by i.e having lost redundancy.
- you should be comfortable with simple navigation.
- you should really change your own valve to 1st stage o'rings if need be, what's that business about asking for help with that about in the first place... yeah, you need to pump your own gas too (for the car) too.
- You don't need to always plan and execute your own dives, but you should certainly be able to ... and if you never do it, how would you know?
...
Then you not a beginner anymore and start to really learn and that should never stop. And you are still a much, muchlonger road away from being an expert than the road behind you.
I've seen people with hundreds of dives nowhere near there. And I have no doubt some, predisposed and or wilstfully working on it eith a plan, can do all that in 50 or even less dives. It's not the number. It's the drive and purpose (learn and enjoy, but work on learning ... vs. enjoy and consume)
...
... Now, that thought put out there (nothing new at all I'd think), with
@northernone declaring himself a beginner... considering what all he seems to be doing and playing with and getting into and learning about the first hand way and experimenting with to learn more, to hone and refine, .... by that measure, I am barely scratching the embryonic stage. Maybe I haven't even been conceived yet... by that measure ... and can only hope to some day break through my egg hstch and become a beginner diver...I just hope I don't get my wife and kids into trouble on that journey .... and I will continue to try to get them to make the journey from a guided consumer diver I hot them there, maybe one of them is a small step further) to a truly informed and thinking diver... which, frankly, I notice, is quite an uphill battle with the whole recreational dive industry seemingly working hard to breed more consumers ... and less thinkers.....
...
Sorry, as flawed and misguided my own thinking is more often than I care to admit, I just like those that really try to think... and then try again... and again... with every new data point and experience point they gain in the process.
...
RO
(rant over)