Bill - as another "old timer" I'll take you up on your offer if I get down your way.
50+ year old divers
- Thread starter Dutchman
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Still lots of us around...I've been teaching since '76, NAUI 3875, semi retired and thought it would be great to start a new dive operation in Guanaja...so it's now up and running.. HOME : Coral Bay Beach and Ocean Club - Guanaja, Honduras ... come and dive with us older guys lots of experience, lots to see...
fly to Roatan and we;ll pick you up in our 37' dory and toke you the Guanaja...maybe even dive at Barbaretta on the way across....
Bill Blakey, NAUI 3875:14:
Coral Bay Dive Resort and DiveTime
Age may not have effected your diving, but your memory sort of sucks
Your number is from before june of 75...as my number is just a bit higher than yours (4186). Nice to hear you are still diving...my guess would be between Nov 74 and Mar of 75
I don't know how it works/worked with NAUI, but with PADI your number is fixed when you become a divemaster, and you will necessarily start teaching some time later. So if NAUI operated the same way then it may be your understanding of the system rather than the OP's memory which sucks!!
52 and just getting started.... never understood how breathing underwater would not freak me out... till I tried it. Only sorry I waited so long... stuck in Kansas... things that make me grumpy.
probably wind up doing vacation dives in warmer climates
Just finished classroom and pool, doing open water cert in Key Largo in October...
probably wind up doing vacation dives in warmer climates
Just finished classroom and pool, doing open water cert in Key Largo in October...
52 and did my PADI OW last weekend.
Like some of the previous posts I wish I'd done this years ago.
Can someone enlighten me as to the real differences between NAUI and PADI? The reason I ask is that the LDS where did my OW course is PADI but there's another shop in town that's NAUI and, at least on the surface (if you'll excuse the pun), it looks like the NAUI Advanced Scuba Diver course appears a bit more rigorous than the PADI (it may also just be the schools involved too) and the NAUI school here is specifying a minimum of 15 hrs classroom along with a minimum of 8 supervised OW dives (they say to expect between 12 and 16) as opposed to being able to do the PADI Advanced OW over a couple of weekends.
Am I missing something here?
Like some of the previous posts I wish I'd done this years ago.
Can someone enlighten me as to the real differences between NAUI and PADI? The reason I ask is that the LDS where did my OW course is PADI but there's another shop in town that's NAUI and, at least on the surface (if you'll excuse the pun), it looks like the NAUI Advanced Scuba Diver course appears a bit more rigorous than the PADI (it may also just be the schools involved too) and the NAUI school here is specifying a minimum of 15 hrs classroom along with a minimum of 8 supervised OW dives (they say to expect between 12 and 16) as opposed to being able to do the PADI Advanced OW over a couple of weekends.
Am I missing something here?
All the agencies are essential the same in the OW & AOW arena. The differences become apparent in the Pro section (DM, Instructor etc)
Not really... The PADI "Advanced" card requires 5 dives beyond the 4 required for Open Water, so you can have a PADI "Advanced Diver" who's never been on an unsupervised dive and has a total of 9 dives.
NAUI requires 6 dives beyond OW for its advanced course... but I think that's all as far as number of dives, so theoretically you could get NAUI advanced with 10 dives. My impression is that the NAUI course is far more robust than the PADI course, but as I've never taken the PADI course I can only say that as a casual observer.
SSI requires the completion of 4 specialties (typically 6 to 8 course dives, depending on which specialties are chosen and whether they're put together in an "advanced course" or not) and a total of 24 logged dives for Advanced, so although it's possible for all 24 of those to be supervised, the norm is to have some outside-the-class diving experience with SSI. However, as SSI doesn't specify which specialties, one could choose the more benign ones (leaving out deep and night/limited visibility, for example) and still be an "Advanced" diver with 24 shallow day dives...
So "Advanced Diver" has a pretty broad meaning, or, as some folks like to say, no meaning at all
Rick
It pays to remember that we're not talking about "Advanced Divers", but "Advanced Open Water Divers". Those extra words radically affect the meaning. Those agencies that do have a certification "Advanced Diver" impose high experience and proficiency levels, but AFAIK this is none of the US recreational agencies (I'm not sure about YMCA).
So when are we going to get senior citizen discounts on air fills, boat trips and dive gear? After all, the industry is trying to keep people diving... that would be an incentive (as if we needed one)!
Numbers are consecutive and given out on instructor cards... we only had a 15 -20% graduation rate back then. NAUI does not have numbers for OW, AOW, etc, etc...
They had a different number for assistant instructors, which you had to be before moving up, so it would be fair to say you were teaching the year before (in some capacity).
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