Alot of firsts for Cozumel NooB

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jlyle:
Take Advanced Open Water while you are there. Chances are you will be the only student - just like a private lesson at home and much cheaper. That way you will get your additional experiences under the watchful eyes of your dive instructor.
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Yep,that is a REALLY great piece of advice.When I was there in Feb I tryed selling a dive couple on the advanced course and as to why it was to thier advantage....I actually makes the boat diving cheaper.

As usual,I will recommend my friend Troy at Pelagic Ventures.Be sure to tell him I sent you!

You can find a link to Pelagic in my sig at the bottom of this post.

Have a great time !!!!

Ron
 
Welcome to the Board. I'll second all that advice for the AOW course. Its a pretty inexpensive way to insure one on one time with a DM. Especially important if you are doing a lot of "firsts".
 
I agree with "Dd's" advice on all 1-4, I can't belive they didn't make you buy your own snorkeling equipment to get certified! owning your own mask, fins and snorkel used to be a prerequisite to taking dive classes!

Don't be worried about being a slow desender, I've been diving for 20+ years and am usually the last one to the bottom. Just let the DM know you are a new diver and you are a slow clearer (is that a word?) and they should be patient with you. going to 60' plus is really no big deal, you've been to 35', the first 30' are the hardest. Most of the boat entries on Cozumel are frogman style, sitting on the side of the boat and rolling backwards into the water, if you can fall backwards you can do it, just pretend your Mike Nelson, (am I dating myself?) and go for it!

Stay close to the DM, relax and enjoy the ride, dift diving is really the easiest diving there is, it takes very little effort on your part unless you try and fight the current then your going to burn a lot of air and not enjoy it at all. Bouyancy is the key and you'll get better at that with experience and the only way to do that is to dive.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of getting one certification after another, experience, in my opion, is greater than another piece of paper and sitting in a classroom for a couple of days on your vacation. Get a few more dives under your belt before you spend any more money on certification classes. Don't they require you to have at least 15 dives before taking Advanced anyway? Spend the money on snorkeling eq. and wetsuit.

Hope you have a great trip, let us all know how it goes.
 
Wow, everybody has great advice! My suspicions about this board were right, this is the most helpful and useful forum I've ever posted on.

I'm leaning towards the AOW route while there with BXTS. After talking with Christi, they seem real friendly and flexible and of course everyone here raves about them! I'm also glad to read everyone's advice on equipment purchase or should I say rental (except mask and maybe fins, snorkel, and wetsuit). I was feeling the "you have to have your own gear" peer pressure or maybe it was just me trying to justify to myself to start buying stuff so I can go diving more but given my current situation (baby on the way) it would be better to hold off.

Hey Mark, yeah I don't have a choice, I'm forced to go to Cozumel ;) for my brother's wedding. It's also amazing how many Ags are on this board!

-Ryan '97
 
Yeah sharky, your arguments make sense, but I wouldn't be taking another class just to add another piece of paper to my list. It seems like it would be a reasonable and cost effective way to get 5 boat dives (1 of those at night) with a private DM and equipment rental while gaining valuable and supervised experience, that's all.
 
sharky60:
Personally I'm not a huge fan of getting one certification after another, experience, in my opion, is greater than another piece of paper and sitting in a classroom for a couple of days on your vacation. Get a few more dives under your belt before you spend any more money on certification classes. Don't they require you to have at least 15 dives before taking Advanced anyway? Spend the money on snorkeling eq. and wetsuit.
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It depends on the certification agency... SSI requires 25 dives before you get your AOW. Experience is the best option, but on the other hand I found that taking the classes forced me (or gave me an excuse) to get in the water, and provided some very valuable head knowledge as well. Getting personal attention from your own DiveMaster can be invaluable.

I would agree with most of the posters that you should probably at least own your own snorkeling equipment. All of your dive gear can be rented in Cozumel, but there are other factors like familiarity, reliability, and of course sanitation. On my very first Discover SCUBA dive in St. Thomas my rental reg mouthpiece was chewed in half :) But hey it worked and I came up grinning from ear to ear.

Have fun! It sounds like I might be in Cozumel the same time you are.

Jerry

p.s. Congratulations to you guys on being new parents!
 
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