vicdiver656
Guest
How about going directly from Open Water to EANx? That's what I did, and it made perfect sense to me.......
Aow=bs
- Thread starter Garrobo
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
Guba
Contributor
I think the term "AOW" is misused in syntax. People seem to feel it means "this diver has advanced skills." I firmly believe the term means "this diver has advanced their level of skill above OW." That isn't to imply they are some sort of expert...it merely means he/she has taken steps--with the aid of an instructor--to move their diving education forward.
I feel like I gained significantly by taking it. It prepared me to learn even more and encouraged me to get out there and gain more experience. Did I come out of AOW thumping my chest and proclaiming myself some sort of expert? Of course not. I've progressed through Rescue, and I'm still just a multiple-certified newbie, but I'm working on it.
I feel like I gained significantly by taking it. It prepared me to learn even more and encouraged me to get out there and gain more experience. Did I come out of AOW thumping my chest and proclaiming myself some sort of expert? Of course not. I've progressed through Rescue, and I'm still just a multiple-certified newbie, but I'm working on it.
I had a huge insight yesterday. I was diving in a popular training site on a day when the tides almost required all the area's classes to go there. The water was littered (literally) with new divers and people doing AOW classes. I watched one group where a woman descended vertically until she fell on the bottom on her back. She was gamely trying to sit up and go diving. Another woman was lying on her belly in the silt, kicking her feet.
There are two ways to react to this sort of thing. One is to hold your nose and go "Eeeew" and go elsewhere, and then tell everybody later that day how AWFUL the divers at Cove 2 were. Another is to look at these people and think, "Oh, I wish there were a way to make this EASIER for them." Or, in other words, how can I help?
All it takes to be AOW is nine dives. I know, because I did it. When I finished AOW, I had never done a boat dive. I'd never had to put my gear together on a tossing boat, or done a giant stride from four or feet above the water. I'd never had to hang onto a bucking ladder while I took my fins off. I'm sure the first dive I did in Molokini, I was probably as awkward as this poor fellow.
If this man on the boat was a blowhard, spending all his time talking about how he was "Advanced" open water and knew a thing or two about diving, then being contemptuous of him might be about the only possible reaction. But if he was basically a good person, then I maintain that the fault here was not with the diver, but with the instructors who gave him a class but didn't make sure he left it with any skills.
There are two ways to react to this sort of thing. One is to hold your nose and go "Eeeew" and go elsewhere, and then tell everybody later that day how AWFUL the divers at Cove 2 were. Another is to look at these people and think, "Oh, I wish there were a way to make this EASIER for them." Or, in other words, how can I help?
All it takes to be AOW is nine dives. I know, because I did it. When I finished AOW, I had never done a boat dive. I'd never had to put my gear together on a tossing boat, or done a giant stride from four or feet above the water. I'd never had to hang onto a bucking ladder while I took my fins off. I'm sure the first dive I did in Molokini, I was probably as awkward as this poor fellow.
If this man on the boat was a blowhard, spending all his time talking about how he was "Advanced" open water and knew a thing or two about diving, then being contemptuous of him might be about the only possible reaction. But if he was basically a good person, then I maintain that the fault here was not with the diver, but with the instructors who gave him a class but didn't make sure he left it with any skills.
fisherdvm
Contributor
- Messages
- 3,577
- Reaction score
- 52
- # of dives
- 200 - 499
In my opinion, AOW should simply be done in a swimming pool! No goofing around with "naturalist", deep dive, etc. One should repeatedly be beaten on the head with proper ascent, proper descent, proper trim, proper weighting, proper gas management... And nothing more. I find it disturbing when new divers head out to the OW environment sinking feet first at a high rate of speed, and ascending with the spg hanging at the knee and having no idea how to control or read their rate of ascent. They simply should combine "peak performance buoyancy" with AOW.
I've assisted in 3 OW confined pool sessions, and I have not seen any instructor truly try to help their student get the "peak" weighting.
My belief is that at the end of each OW pool session, the student should simply purge their reg until they have 500 psi, try to maintain neutral buoyancy (either with fin pivot, lotus position, etc), then go up on the surface and keep shedding weight until they are near neutral with an TRULY empty BCD and no fin kicking.
Certainly it can be done at the beginning too, but then one have to add 6 lbs for an 80 CF tank, and less for smaller tanks.
Why do the student's have to wait for trial and experience before they learn this themselves? It is alot of BS that "losing the lbs" will take more experience.
I've assisted in 3 OW confined pool sessions, and I have not seen any instructor truly try to help their student get the "peak" weighting.
My belief is that at the end of each OW pool session, the student should simply purge their reg until they have 500 psi, try to maintain neutral buoyancy (either with fin pivot, lotus position, etc), then go up on the surface and keep shedding weight until they are near neutral with an TRULY empty BCD and no fin kicking.
Certainly it can be done at the beginning too, but then one have to add 6 lbs for an 80 CF tank, and less for smaller tanks.
Why do the student's have to wait for trial and experience before they learn this themselves? It is alot of BS that "losing the lbs" will take more experience.
don Francisco
Contributor
By now we all should know that there is only weak correlation between certification & actually being good at anything. This applies to every endeavor, not only diving & is something you might keep in mind the next time you visit that most certified of all professionals, the MD.
It varies with the individual but seems to take 25-50 dives before the epiphone where it all starts to come together. I took the AOW very early in my diving career, because it had been 1 year since my last dive & I felt I needed to refresh & reinforce my skills. I was very lucky early on, I was diving alone & was usually paired up with helpful, & patient experienced divers who didn't mind bringing a newbie up to speed. I was most impressed by the difference in attitude between divers & cyclists, where devil take the hindmost was, and is the prevailing attitude.
None of us was born a diver, all of us still don't know more than we know, and all of us have room to grow.
Reading your post, I had this question --- Were any of his boatmates helpful to this lost soul, & was he receptive to the offered help? df
It varies with the individual but seems to take 25-50 dives before the epiphone where it all starts to come together. I took the AOW very early in my diving career, because it had been 1 year since my last dive & I felt I needed to refresh & reinforce my skills. I was very lucky early on, I was diving alone & was usually paired up with helpful, & patient experienced divers who didn't mind bringing a newbie up to speed. I was most impressed by the difference in attitude between divers & cyclists, where devil take the hindmost was, and is the prevailing attitude.
None of us was born a diver, all of us still don't know more than we know, and all of us have room to grow.
Reading your post, I had this question --- Were any of his boatmates helpful to this lost soul, & was he receptive to the offered help? df
all4scuba05
Contributor
Advancing your education is not equal to advancing you abilties. You need dives to improve your diving. A diver takes AOW with minimal dives. He now has "permission" to jump off a boat and drop to 130'. Not the most intelligent move on his part or his instructor's or the boat Capt.
If a diver is looking for a way to get more time with an instructor, then what's wrong with paying an instructor to jump in the ocean with him a few times after OW. Why does he have to sign up for the 130' card?
If a diver is looking for a way to get more time with an instructor, then what's wrong with paying an instructor to jump in the ocean with him a few times after OW. Why does he have to sign up for the 130' card?
vicdiver656
Guest
I did my first boat dive in Molokini, and then Turtle Bay (the mapped one, I think) I was pretty awkward, but the second stride wasn't so bad because I was worried about my rapidly sinking gear. (decided to do IWD, and found out a 17lb. tropical wing couldn't support tank and the rest of rig. :scared: Nice swan dive down to 30 fsw, and an "easy" IWD....
all4scuba05
Contributor
IWD=in water decompression?
in water don(ning)?
Similar threads
