Master Diver Certification

[TSandM]

The essence of technical diving is simply being prepared for everything, and being able to solve problems to the extent they can be solved while underwater. My technical and cave training consisted of having all kinds of problems thrown at me, and being expected to handle them while in midwater and while respecting my proximity to the line, to the rest of my team, and maintaining the deco schedule without deviation. It's pretty intense. You quickly find out that you are not quite as good as you think you are (and I don't mean specifically you -- I mean anyone who is taking such training). Anybody can read about deco theory, and learn to make a plan for a staged decompression dive. You need some deco software and a knowledge of how to do a gas plan, and to decide how many of what kind of contingencies you are going to plan for.

And just about anybody with decent buoyancy control can execute a simple "light" technical dive of the sort you describe. Where it gets sticky is where things do go wrong -- buddy separation, deco reg failures, losing the ascent line, sudden heavy current . . . you need as many contingency plans as you can, and you need to be able to keep your cool, keep thinking, and keep executing in the face of increasing stress. I'm not saying that either you or your daughter can't do these things -- I'm just saying that, once you have taken the training, you KNOW you can, and you've been through the exercise enough times so that failures become more of a "Yawn, oh THIS again" experience, rather than an OMG reaction.

I'd change your order of go, too. Take Fundies before Advanced Nitrox/Deco. Skills learned in Fundies will be VERY helpful in your AN/DP class.

BTW, I understand what you're doing. Monterey is a place that just begs for tech training, with all the beautiful structure that lies in the deeper recreational/technical range.

 

[MarkHerm]

Congrats on the MSD! :cool2:

GUE Fundies requires a minimum age of 16 while the Primer only requires the student to be 14. Maybe you should go Primer first. BTW, I second the concerns about doing a tec dive with a 14 years old without having the training and with less than 100 dives.

 

[Cetus]

The essence of technical diving is simply being prepared for everything, and being able to solve problems to the extent they can be solved while underwater. My technical and cave training consisted of having all kinds of problems thrown at me, and being expected to handle them while in midwater and while respecting my proximity to the line, to the rest of my team, and maintaining the deco schedule without deviation. It's pretty intense. You quickly find out that you are not quite as good as you think you are (and I don't mean specifically you -- I mean anyone who is taking such training). Anybody can read about deco theory, and learn to make a plan for a staged decompression dive. You need some deco software and a knowledge of how to do a gas plan, and to decide how many of what kind of contingencies you are going to plan for.

The very best explanation coming from extensive experience and training. Not "you know, it can kill you" but "there's an app for that" kind of solution. Pity you're in WA TSandM; we need more mentors like you and less scuba police types saying that there's no scuba police.

And just about anybody with decent buoyancy control can execute a simple "light" technical dive of the sort you describe. Where it gets sticky is where things do go wrong -- buddy separation, deco reg failures, losing the ascent line, sudden heavy current . . . you need as many contingency plans as you can, and you need to be able to keep your cool, keep thinking, and keep executing in the face of increasing stress. I'm not saying that either you or your daughter can't do these things -- I'm just saying that, once you have taken the training, you KNOW you can, and you've been through the exercise enough times so that failures become more of a "Yawn, oh THIS again" experience, rather than an OMG reaction.

I was simply stating that the dive we executed is recognized as a technical dive by many agencies. I did not try to pretend to be the coolest dude in the block who knows it all. You know how we call OW certificate? "Learner's Permit." MSD is a learner's permit for technical diving.

I'd change your order of go, too. Take Fundies before Advanced Nitrox/Deco. Skills learned in Fundies will be VERY helpful in your AN/DP class.

I want to take Fundies together with my daughter. I hope GUE will let her do it after she turns 15. Meanwhile we can do drills on our own. And given that Fundies is the class one actually can fail I have much more respect for it.
AN class is available for us now, not sure about DP age requirements.

BTW, I understand what you're doing. Monterey is a place that just begs for tech training, with all the beautiful structure that lies in the deeper recreational/technical range.

Monterey's conditions leave little choice but drysuit for reasonable dive duration and going somewhat deeper to see clear waters. I was lucky to now own any gear and was introduced to DIR before I started building our gear kits.
As a result we never owned any recreational equipment and the most logical next steps were/are to adopt the DIR philosophy and acquire correspondent training and experience.

---------- Post added January 17th, 2013 at 07:42 PM ----------

Congrats on the MSD! :cool2:

Thank you!

GUE Fundies requires a minimum age of 16 while the Primer only requires the student to be 14. Maybe you should go Primer first.

We discussed Primer with our local GUE instructors and decided to skip it.

BTW, I second the concerns about doing a tec dive with a 14 years old without having the training and with less than 100 dives.

100 is just an arbitrary number. I'm not asking why not 25 but why not 200? Would 50 dives in our cold water result into significantly more experience than 100 dives in Phillippines, Indonesia, Hawaii, Malta?
I discussed my plans with many experienced divers, some of them being TDI/PADI/GUE instructors. I don't plan in the void.

 

[scubadada]

After 2+ years of training in cold Monterey waters, 6 instructors and many dives my 14 years old and I are PADI Master Scuba Divers. Many thanks to instructors and mentors for their patience and willingness to work with unusual team of the 52 and 14 years old.

There's no lack of opinions as to how useless the MSD certification is. Some people believe spending money on gear is better investment. I, on the other hand believe that training and experience are priceless. For a complete disclosure I have to admit that by the time we took Rescue we had all the gear we needed.


It was challenging for me as a parent to take 12 years old through strenuous training, studies of a mixed gas physics and human biology. Failed deep dives because of puberty-related ear issues. Cold ocean water. Sea sickness. I had to be persuasive sometimes bordering with manipulation to make her through challenges of scuba diving. I have been rewarded by her surfacing from both Monastery sides yelling "Best dive in my life!" and that's after a week of boat diving on Maui.

After official navigation class dives at the end of December, rough ocean and all we went to our first technical dive on January 1st. Two gases, 78 minutes and 125' deepest in Point Lobos. I navigated from GPW to HIW to SM to BR (see below) and back in a good swell and we both felt great, thanks to 28% back/40% deco EANx and my planning. Well this goes beyond MSD but you get the point.


Today I'm very proud of my teen who achieved such unusual goal.


----------
Sites per http://baue.org/lobos_maps/all-sites.html :

GPW - Granite Point Wall
HIW Hole in the Wall
SM - Sea Mount
BR - Beto's Reef

Fantasic, congratulations. My whole family dives but with different objectives. My son and I are both adventuresome whereas my wife and daughter are reasonably conservative. We all dived together last summer, a priceless experience.

Enjoy, good diving, Craig

 

[NAM001]

Primo

 

[freewillie]

Congratulations to you and your daughter. As a parent of a 14 certified diver I can feel your excitement and pride. I absolutely love diving with my girl.

Diving with kids takes a little extra patience as you are well aware of, but the rewards are tremendous. We have thumbed more than one dive due to cold or sea sickness/nausea. My thoughts are there will be other days to dive but she may quite altogether if I push into something when she is not having fun.

On her first night dive in Maui she had a wonderful time. Her log entry in her dive book was all caps, "BEST DIVE EVER WITH DADDY." I'm glad you had the same experience. It is a great feeling as a parent.

Keep up the good work and safe diving.

 

[tokidoki123]

Thank you for all the Congratulations everyone! It really means a lot to me to have achieved this goal of ours

 

[Cetus]

Congratulations to you and your daughter. As a parent of a 14 certified diver I can feel your excitement and pride. I absolutely love diving with my girl.

Diving with kids takes a little extra patience as you are well aware of, but the rewards are tremendous. We have thumbed more than one dive due to cold or sea sickness/nausea. My thoughts are there will be other days to dive but she may quite altogether if I push into something when she is not having fun.

On her first night dive in Maui she had a wonderful time. Her log entry in her dive book was all caps, "BEST DIVE EVER WITH DADDY." I'm glad you had the same experience. It is a great feeling as a parent.

Keep up the good work and safe diving.

Thank you freewillie, you do understand what my post is really about. Good dives 2u2!

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

we need more mentors like you and less scuba police types saying that there's no scuba police.

Sorry, but I am not going to join the applause for undertaking a dive beyond your training just because you got away with it. If you choose to keep doing it, then as I said that is your prerogative.

I was simply stating that the dive we executed is recognized as a technical dive by many agencies. ....... MSD is a learner's permit for technical diving.

Please, if there is one thing you take from this thread, the Master Diver Scuba certification does not in any way act as technical training. Similarly, GUE-F is also in no way a learner permit for technical diving.

I want to take Fundies together with my daughter. I hope GUE will let her do it after she turns 15. Meanwhile we can do drills on our own. And given that Fundies is the class one actually can fail I have much more respect for it.
AN class is available for us now, not sure about DP age requirements.

As a suggestion, even if GUE would prefer for your daughter to wait until she is older, dive, have fun, see some things and with experience your skills will improve and become more ingrained anyway.

It sounds like you are keen on GUE and I agree they produce great divers. If this is the case, then GUE-F and thereafter GUE Tech 1 is your likely route towards decompression diving. I would probably focus on that route and less on patching in AN/DP until you are old enough for GUE.

 

[TSandM]

You know how we call OW certificate? "Learner's Permit." MSD is a learner's permit for technical diving.

I don't know from whom you have taken your training so far, and I know you have access to some very good people, and it sounds as though you have gotten some mentoring. But in no way and to no degree does MSD serve as a learner's permit for technical diving. A technical certification serves as a learner's permit for technical diving. Now, perhaps you have done your open water classes with people who really required and modeled good buoyancy and trim, a battery of propulsion techniques, and stability under task-loading, and perhaps they even encouraged you to perform to those standards. But they are not permitted to task load you heavily, nor are they permitted to make technical-grade stability under task-loading a condition of certification. (We argue about this constantly, whether the instructor should be permitted to do it or not, but the fact is that with PADI, they are not.)

Do I think it's likely you and your daughter will come to serious grief, doing the kind of dive you describe having done? No, and especially not if you are doing these as shore-based divers out of Lobos. But you are seriously upping the ante on your diving by getting into what you are doing, and to be completely honest with you, I have yet to see ANY standard recreational instructor and class sequence that turns out people who are ready to do tech diving (especially without any training), not even ours, and we teach as tech-flavored a recreational curriculum as I think it is possible to do under the PADI system.

Be careful. Diving is easy when it goes well. What you need to know is that you have the skills and the knowledge to manage things when they don't.