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Agree with those saying bad shop.Hi there!
I have just started diving, got my OWD license and have done only 8 dives so far. I am currently living in Asia, I am diving in the ocean, only.
(Sorry for my bad English)
I did 4 of the dives (2 beach, 2 boat) with the same dive shop (the OWD course was somewhere else) and some things were a little confusing for me. I wonder if this is really a dive shop I should not go to anymore, or maybe it's just me being too fixated on what I have learned in the OWD course. I hope I can get some opinions on the following things:
1) My OWD intstructor told me that I should ask for about 4 kg of weights (5mm wetsuit and steel tank).
So did I, but the dive shop refused and gave me only 2 kg, telling me that 4kg was much too heavy. As a result, I could not descend, needed the help of the dive guide to do so. One guide even put some stones from the ocean floor into my BCD to keep me down.
2) I thought it is absolutely necessary to have a dive buddy assigned and to do buddy checks before entering the ocean, but neither of that happened. Nobody checked each other's gear and we just swam around as a group.
3) They knew that I am only OWD certified but on one boat dive we went down to more than 21m. Is that a no-no or does that happen sometimes? I rented a dive computer from the shop but noticed under water that it was just showing "battery" on the screen, so I did not really know how deep we went until later after the dive. I know I should have checked it properly on the surface.
3) For the two boat dives I got a rental BCD jacket that was not functioning properly, in my opinion, But as a newbie I am not sure about that. When we descended I totally deflated the BCD (in my opinion) and I surely did not put any air into it again. But during the dive I noticed that something was constantly pulling me upwards, so I deflated the BCD again and again. And each time quite an amount of air came out of it, although I never inflated it once. I also heard some bubbling sounds from the inflator hose. I was constantly fighting for not floating upwards, I managed to do so somehow (by crawling on the sea floor), but that was really miserable. And I was really low on air after 30 minutes ( I mean, like 10 bar), which is not normal for me. It was so disappointing for my fellow divers as well.
I told the dive guide during the break on the surface. They changed the hose. And it was a little bit better at the beginning of the second dive, I even had to put some air into the BCD to stay above the seafloor. But gradually I got the feeling again to be pulled upwards, so I had to release a lot of air again every few minutes from the BCD and I think there still was the strange bubbling sound.
As a newbie I am asking myself whether I didn't handle the BCD correctly. But I've never had any problems like that with other BCDs.
For the two beach dives I got a different rental BCD jacket and that was so very different, no strange bubbling sounds and once I deflated it the air did not come back. But the beach dives were only 12m max.
4) I finished every dive with less than 50 bar. When the needle entered the red area on the gauge I told the dive guide but they did not worry about it. I thought it was ok for the two shallow beach dives. But especially during the two boat dives with the strange BCD I anxiously checked the gauge all the time and I told the dive guide "now I am at 70bar - 50bar - 40bar. At the last boat dive we started ascending so late that I surfaced with 10 bar only, without safety stop. Of course they don't want to disappoint the other divers who had more air left, so they pushed me to the limits. But in the end I thought that was really, really close to being out of air, or am I being just overly anxious?
I guess nothing goes exactly the way it is written in the textbooks in any dive shop. And my fellow (but much more experienced) divers seemed to have been quite satisfied with their dives. Am I worrying too much about the things written above?
All in all, I feel like the two boat dives were quite miserable. I somehow came to think that this might not be the best hobby for me. But then, I enjoyed the two experience dives before getting the OWD so much, and I was also very happy during most of the two beach dives. I will probably give it another chance in a few weeks with a completely different dive shop and a private dive guide, I don't bother fellow divers, then. At least I know now that I can do double troubleshooting (my mask was also leaking a little bit, but I am used to that) at 21m without panicking
Thank you for reading this!
Kind regards,
waraebi
This is very common. As an OW diver, you are supposed to extend your limits gradually through training and experience. In this case, going a little deeper than you current recommended limit is a reasonable step in getting experience with deeper dives. If you had gone to, say, 100 feet, it would not have been so reasonable, but it is done.
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That is pretty shocking! I wonder if things are the same with sky diving or bungee jumping. Oh dear, I thought I need to worry about my buoyancy or about deadly creatures, turns out it's the humans.
I agree with several respondents, that the shop should provide you with the weight you need. But, I actually commend the shop in a way. Resort shops often get customers who have trained elsewhere, in colder water, with steel cylinders, and thicker wetsuits than those used in warmer resort areas. The shops in those resort areas are quite used to having to pare weight OFF of those divers, who are now diving in warmer waters, with aluminum cylinders. Frankly, as you will see from quite a number of discussions on SB, too many divers are still over-weighted by their instructors during OW training. In this case, it may have been that your instructor did a good job of properly weighting you, which might have been the 'exception' rather than the rule for customers that the resort shop encounters. So, while they (apparently) under-weighted you, at least they did not over-weight you, which is (unfortunately) a bit more common. Their failure was being too (over) confident in their experience with other divers coming to the resort, and not paying attention to your individual needs.wareibi:
This is NOT a good practice. But, unfortunately, it is also not altogether uncommon in resort areas. I am not justifying it, rather saying that you might well encounter similar behavior in other shops in the same area. It is nonetheless sloppy operation. And, a newly certified OW diver may feel pressure to 'go with the flow'. On the other hand, it was apparently a guided dive, and a number of resort shops become a bit cavalier in assigning / assuring buddy pairs on guided dives.wareibi:
As an OW diver you are certified to dive within the limits of your training and experience. Presuming that your depth limit in OW training was ~60 feet, they took you a bit deeper than your training. The depth limit is not an absolute, however. If the dive is guided, if the water is warm, if there is little / no current, if the visibility is very good, this is - unfortunately - not an uncommon practice. How was the dive briefed BEFORE you got in the water? Did they indicate the depth to which you would be diving, to give YOU the opportunity to raise questions? If they failed to properly brief the dive, and anticipated maximum depth, that was a sloppy operation.wareibi:
Yes, YOU should have checked it before splashing. Yes, THE SHOP should have verified that the battery was adequate before renting it to you. Again, a bit sloppy on their part.wareibi:
It sounds like the power inflator on the BCD had a slow leak. That is not altogether uncommon in rental gear that is used continuously (or personal gear, for that matter - I have recently replaced two power inflators on different BCDs that I own, albeit after 5 and 7 years of use, respectively). The diver(s) who used it before you may have experienced the same thing, but failed to mention it to the shop. At least, the divemaster guiding the dive did not do something that some resort DMs do, which is VERY bad - disconnect the low pressure inflator hose for you.wareibi:
Yes, and no. As a new diver, you will be more anxious about your air supply than a more experienced diver. GOOD FOR YOU! You are paying attention to your air supply! Now, the bigger question is whether the dive operation briefed the divers on a 'be back on the boat with no less than X bar' statement. That should have happened. In the western hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean, diving with AL80 cylinders, it is not uncommon to have the boat captain or DM say in the briefing - 'Be back on the boat with no less than 500 psi', which would be ~35 BAR. Now, that is a 'back on the boat' value, NOT a 'start your ascent at' value. To get back on the boat with 10 bar would be equivalent to getting back on the boat with ~150psi. For me, that is unacceptable, and the dive guide should have heeded your concerns! As others have said, you will learn that you need to take care of yourself, and begin your ascent when you reach a value that will still allow you to ascend safely and be back on the boat with a reasonable reserve - the reserve should only be used if something goes wrong on the ascent.wareibi:
I'm not the world's most experienced diver, but to me it depends on conditions. If it's easy to get to the surfacing point, that is, there's a line to follow or the visibility is clear enough to see where I'm going, then I would just go. Failures are really rare, and probably not much is going to happen in the minute or two it will take to get to the safety stop, and from there you're in easy CESA territory. But if conditions are bad (current, poor visibility), I would rely on more forcefully signaling "low air" and "ascent".
