I have read all the posts with great interest on this topic.Much I agree with in total and some I do not. As for taking AOW go for it. If the instructor is a good one you will have a ball and gain some valuable insight. If you've only got a few dives under your belt you will get a taste of the different specialties ( in my lds curriculum deep, uw nav, search and recovery, night ,and altitude because our local training spot is at 3500 ft) and find out just what interests you and just how little you really know. What is your personal depth limit. do you get narced at 90, 100, or more if at all? if you get seperated from your buddy do you need to surface or can you find your way back to the mooring line? If your old uncle charlie drops the motor off his boat in the local lake can you find it and bring it up thereby assuring yourself of a place in his will and maybe 50 bucks on the spot? Will you freak out if all you can see is what's in the beam of your light? will you remember to adjust for the altitude in your depth and surface interval computations if you happen to do a mountain lake? These are the things I got a taste of in my AOW. NOT learned completely or mastered but got a taste of. enough that I am now certified in nitrox, drysuit, deep, underwater nav, and equipment specialist, as well as rescue so yes I'm considered to have met the requirements for PADI's Master Scuba Diver rating. But I am by no means a master of my sport. I probably never will be as there is always something new on the dive horizon. I have 63 logged dives 12 of them in excess of 100 ft with three of those to 125 which is about the max depth in the area of the main lake in which I dive. Around 1/2 of my dives are with nitrox including some with mixes of other than 32 or 36 % in order to do the deeper stuff. I had 11 dives in my dry suit before I got in the 3 required for the specialty. Underwater nav is more or less used on every dive at least for me as i make it a practice to practice it to some extent whenever i can and using the nav finder is a plus and really helped on my DM mapping exercise that i just turned in as part of my Dive Master course. I know this is long winded but hey it's 1:13 AM and I just got off work and need to unwind a little.Talking about diving relaxes me. As for experience I have helped out with the certification of approximately 15 students at this point either as a safety diver, escort, buddy, babysitter, gear fixer, etc. Some students i would not hesitate to dive with in good conditions at any time. others who have decided to go through and get their AOW give me the willies when they are getting their gear out of the truck! And one person who is supposed to be getting their DM rating I will not dive with as even though they had over 125 logged dives and was supposed to be escorting me on a dive between my ow and aow took me to 55 ft to find the instructor when I indicated I was down to 600 lbs to ask what to do. He immediately directed me to ascend to the safety stop at 13 ft and he escorted me himself. good thing to as my guage was off and 2min into the stop I was OOA. I grabbed his octo and we safely ascended. It was at this point that the so-called DM candidate got pissed and asked him what he expected her to do. I never even got an apology from her. I did get a valuable lesson though. Two weekends ago while helping with an AOW class I was put in charge of two students on the training platform whil the instructor was guiding a junior advanced on a nav exercise. Vis was about 8 ft and as soon as they got out of sight one student checked his guage and saw he was down to 700 pounds. we were at 35 ft and i had gotten an idea of his air consumption on three previous dives. What to do? Instructor gone, not sure how soon he'd be back, my call. We end the dive. Calmly indicate that we are going to ascend along the bottom do our safety stop and go up. We end up on the surface at the exit point with the student just under 500. Four minutes later instructor and others show up. Asked me what happened. I told him. BIG SMILE! and that's why I left them with you he said.An experience can be good or bad. It's what you do with it when it comes time to apply what you've learned that really shows whether it was good or bad. BTW how did he get down to where he was. it was a long dive ,the second on that tank and he got a little rattled a couple times when we got silted out by the people in front of us breathing increased and he used a little more air than usual. What did he learn? Silt happens! Just relax and it will pass. He'll remember that if it happens again and I'll bet his breathing doesn't even pick up a little. Again sorry so long winded but I hope no one thinks this is a highjacking. It's about experience. get as much as you can and it's better if it's with some one who knows what to do if things get hairy. And someone who's insured!
