Icarusflies:
Hello Guys;
I have not a choice at this point but to trust the instructor that is the person responsible for me under water and an individual with much more experience that I do. IMPORTANT
Well, you were OW certified, so if you are a *NEW* diver doing a dive that is potentially beyond your abilities, you need to TRUST yourself, and your buddy, and get more dive time in before making a questionable dive.
Based on what happened on this dive, putting trust in the instructor was a big mistake. Once he was off taking care of one newbie, had ANYTHING happened while he was gone, not ONE of you were trained or really prepared to deal with it.
Certainly we all have to do things we have never done before. The key is taking small steps, and making sure you are VERY comfortable UW. This does not mean comfortable as long as things are going well, this requires some experience and task loading.
You live in a VERY cool place for diviing, and there is really no reason you need to dive the Grove on XX date or XX dive because you can basically dive it anytime you feel ready.
Icarusflies:
I think it would be a good idea to open a thread about what to look in an instructor, for a new diver, in order to trust him (and this should be in a language that a new diver understands).
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of threads about what to look for in an instructor. One thing people warned about in this thread is the idea of the instructor taking new divers into a potentially dangerous situation.
He left his group, and did not do any of the standard drills that most AOW instructors do on the Deep dive (based on your reports).
So I remain curious, did the chick that bailed the dive pass AOW? Do you feel that your instructor did a good job?
Icarusflies:
As far as being discouraged, I am far from there. I love this sport and I plan to continue my scuba education and of course you ll see me in this board posting more treads and enjoying your informative feedback, all of them...
See you in the next tread and thank you again...
I would suggest finding some experienced dive buddies, and continue your education along that path prior to more training. I STRONGLY recommend Rescue, but get at least 30 dives under your belt before signing up for that class.