Am I being a wimp about these dive plans, or is this how you become a better diver?

[Seaweed Doc]

Put me in the camp of "if your not comfortable with the idea, don't do it." That's a red flag to me. Your a grown woman who can make your own decisions and don't need to be coaxed into trying something new. Let your husband do the dive and you can enjoy the pool or other land-based amenities that day. Or dive somewhere else while he does that dive.

Where has most of your diving been? If it's been cold, murky water you'll find clear, tropical water easier to dive in. As pointed out above, 100' at the Blue Hole in Belize isn't the same as 100' in Puget Sound during the spring plankton bloom. This is a double-edged sword though: When I drop 10' in Puget Sound, the change in light is perceptible even if I'm not paying attention to my gauge. I've found myself much deeper than I thought in tropical waters because the water is so clear you don't notice any change in light.

If you were to go from 52' to 100' outside of a class session, at least this is (hopefully) with a qualified Divemaster who should be keeping an eye on you. I wouldn't categorically rule it out for the right person, but what your describing isn't you.

On overheads: Yeah, you've not been trained for them. There are overheads and there are overheads. I'd ask "can I make a run to the surface without having to swim horizontally for much distance." If you're in a swim through you can keep going and angle up as you exit. If you're just under the lip of a wreck's decking, and you can do a backflip underwater proficiently (not everybody can), you've got an easy path to the surface. If you're 30' (10m) into a wreck, even one with multiple openings and light visible in all directions, well, that's sketchy to me.

But see the point above: If YOU aren't comfortable with the idea, don't try it.

 

[drrich2]

Dive 2 is a wreck dive, but the kind you swim around and look at, not the kind you go into. Only issue - it's at 100'. I am (I believe) certified to 60' with my OW, and have not gone below 52' before.

When he showed me pictures of Dive 3, it looked like an overhead environment to me. I expressed that and he replied that it wasn't a "real" one, because there were openings in the ceiling that led to open water, and that you can see the entrance and exit to the space the whole time you're inside.

I agree with the others; don't do a dive that scares you just thinking about it. I suspect you and your husband might both benefit from taking AOW (some places might require it for these kind of dives, even if this one doesn't), and I agree with others the Rescue Diver course (not so much for rescue intervention as for learning to approach diving with a risk analysis and mitigation mindset).

I'm curious why he wants you to do this dive? There are a number of potential reasons. I suspect it'll be a group dive led by a guide, so you not going doesn't mean he can't...or does it? Are you cool with him going diving without you? Seems like very marriage has its own culture and degrees of freedom/enmeshment, and I don't want to presume what the 'house rules' of yours are. I do some solo dive trips without my wife; I know another diver who dives with a spouse and figures if one of them every has to quit diving, they both will.

It may be he envisions a future where you two generally dive together, and he thinks if you're much more conservative it'll deprive him of dive opportunities. If that's true, are you okay with him taking a more aggressive dive hobby path without you for part of it?

I, too, am quite conservative with swim throughs, as I'm bigger around than the average diver. If this is a named site, odds are you can do some research about it online, maybe see some photos taken by people who did that dive.

A big jump in depth is worth approaching carefully. Some people are more susceptible to nitrogen narcosis than others, some are affected without realizing it (can be dangerous), faster gas usage, greater need to pay attention to gauges and NDLs, etc...

 

[anchochile]

Yep you’re being a wimp, have a bit of faith. Surely your husband isn’t going to put you in any danger? He definitely knows you better than a bunch of strangers. Unless of course he’s trying to get rid of you.

This is highly dangerous and irresponsible advice, in my opinion. Being a husband does not automatically make someone qualified to know what dives will be safe and within skill & comfort levels for someone else. This "trust me" approach is how people die.

 

[anchochile]

For me this decision is dead simple: regardless of your skill and experience level, if a particular dive makes you anxious and worried, don't do it. Panic is the most dangerous thing you can encounter underwater, and there's absolutely zero reason to go into a dive feeling anything but relaxed and confident, especially as a newer diver. My wife is a bit of a nervous diver and my #1 rule of diving with her is zero pressure, ever. I never even gently encourage her to do any given dive - I just tell her what I'm planning to do, and it's 100% up to her whether to join. When we plan dive trips together, I make sure it's somewhere we can do tons of diving within her comfort levels (which basically means no deeper than 40 feet, no overhead, and warm water). Then I'll usually add on a few dives without her so that I can hit some deeper sites. Easy peasy.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

Ah, one more thing on dives to choose for Advanced. I'm going to assume PADI, though I think several other agencies are similar.

Deep and Navigation are required. The other 3 are "elective."

Electives I like are as follows:

1. Peak Performance Buoyancy. With students I've never met, I insist on this. If it's somebody who has their buoyancy dialed in, I'm less concerned.

2. Search and Recovery. This requires having some nav. skills, and goes on from there. I think it's helpful for Rescue Diver, if you do that later.

3. Night Dive. Night dives where I live are a lot of fun. One site has a seal escort more often than not. And it can get you really comfortable with something you THINK is scary until you've actually done it.

4. Dry Suit Dive. You can sometimes efficiently add a dry suit certification to Advanced with this dive as an Advanced "elective" and one more dive. In my part of the world, this is something students do maybe 1/3 to half the time they take Advanced. A lot of the skills are similar to Peak Performance Buoyancy, so I wouldn't have a student do both.

5. Other dives depending on interest and environment. If you're already comfortable diving, adding Underwater Photography might be educational. I'd note I almost never get a student going this far, though. I think I've only done one AOW student with Photography as his choice. Scheduling precluded him doing the night dive, and he wanted to do the Photography.

 

[Marie13]

None, and please keep your female chauvinist comments to yourself.

Your comment was irresponsible as hell for the new divers area.

 

[Darnold9999]

Put me in if you are uncomfortable or anxious about a dive don’t do it camp. It should be fun otherwise why do it?

I have been diving for a while and in the first twenty years or so I did swim through’s and open wrecks dutiful following dive guides. Now, I have a look and more often than not I pass unless there is something really interesting to see. Far too often the only reason to do the swim through or cavern is that it is “dangerous” and adds a level of excitement to a dive. I am just not comfortable in an enclosed environment. So mostly I pass … and I solo dive from my boat in the PNW which many think is just crazy. Just my personal comfort level.

I would also be a bit cautious going to 100 feet on my second dive after a long hiatus. Everyone is different but it takes one or two dives for my air consumption to get back to what is normal for me after a break from diving. Adding deep to that would mean a very short dive which for me is not worth the work of getting to the dive site. Would rather spend 40 minutes looking at cool stuff at 40 feet than 10 minutes or less at 100 feet. Again everyone is different, you have to decide for you.

100 feet is not a magic number where the danger all of a sudden gets significant. As you go deeper the margin for error just gets narrower and narrower. If everything goes well 100 feet is no different than 20 feet. You go through air faster but otherwise everything is pretty much the same. It is only if something goes wrong where deep is a concern and frankly the difference is not all that much. You can get into trouble at any depth. I went to 130 feet my first dive after being certified. Was a very long time ago before the 60’ recommended limit and I was diving with the dive master from my certification course. That was just where the interesting stuff was. Not recommend today but nothing to be concerned about for me at the time.

Something that has not been mentioned is narcosis. I spent a long time diving thinking I was not affected by narcosis. Never any issues at any depth - until I started carrying a camera. I had not used a camera on land so this was completely new and revealed how truly impaired I was past about 90 feet. Depth really does matter to some in their ability to deal with something complex - like rescuing themselves if something goes wrong. It is worth approaching this gradually IMHO.

 

[wnissen]

The phrase I haven't seen here is "trust me" dive. That's the term for a dive that you, personally, don't feel comfortable with, but your buddy or buddies say, "trust me". It's self evident that this can be a bad idea. In your particular case, I would be extremely wary of going to 100 ft. / 30 m with someone who is not an instructor. If you don't know your response to depth (narcosis, darkness, etc.) and you're going with someone who hasn't recently been exposed to that depth, that seems like a lot of things that could go wrong. Plus you only have 17 minutes of bottom time unless you want to be right at the no-decompression limit. It would have to be a very nice site to make me trade off 15 minutes at 100 ft. for an hour at 30.

That said, I would absolutely take "Advanced" Open Water while you're there. Open water has a ton of coursework, the dives are mostly short and heavy on skills. AOW is the opposite. There's some coursework but the dives are as long as you can manage, and there's typically only a short period of skill work and the rest is a guided dive. You could even try to arrange it so the required "Adventure Dive" toward the Deep specialty is the one to 100 ft. Good luck!

 

[Celt]

This is highly dangerous and irresponsible advice, in my opinion. Being a husband does not automatically make someone qualified to know what dives will be safe and within skill & comfort levels for someone else. This "trust me" approach is how people die.

Read the opening post. They’re diving with a shop who’s happy with there qualifications. They’re first doing a refresher dive and then a dive that the OP is happy with. Her dive buddy ( husband) said she’ll most likely be okay to do the 2nd and 3rd dive which implies if she’s not that’s fine. “ highly dangerous and irresponsible advice “ get a life.

 

[Celt]

Your comment was irresponsible as hell for the new divers area.

Gimme a break, you jumped in, all guns blazing because you thought the big bad man is picking on the defenceless women, at least that’s what you tried to imply.