AOW for vacations/resorts?

[NudeDiver]

I'm glad I got my AOW class for free. It was on a liveaboard and they were offering it for free - which was great for me because I was going to be on a second liveaboard a few days later and was going to be paying for the class!! Plus, given the content, I'm glad it didn't cost me anything.

I ended up doing Nav, Deep, PPB, Boat, and Underwater Naturalist. Was SUPPOSED to do night rather than boat, but I flubbed it up pretty badly (hey, first night dive, waddya want?) and I had to substitute something in. They just had me do the book work for Boat since we were already diving off a boat, and called it good.

When my wife did hers, we paid for it ($500 or so), and the optional dives were Search & Rescue, Drysuit and Underwater Naturalist. In her case, it was worth it because she really needed to do some dives with an instructor and she was in a drysuit for all of those dives (plus one more to get the DS cert).

 

[Sas]

Man, it will piss me off to no end if I get banned from a dive because I do not have the Deep specialty (I have AOW).

Locally, AOW gets you on boats for dives to 30m. Deep gets you on dives to 40m. So your AOW would limit you to 30m so you would be banned from some dives! Though sometimes the depth listed on the dive just refers to where the shot is. Some of the dives you could go down to 70m on an OW rated dive if you felt like it.

wait, wait, wait a minute here Sas. Your BUDDY forgot YOUR cards?????

I forgot mine and he forgot his. It was a mutual moment of forgetfulness.

I'm surprised that if you knew you were going somewhere a drysuit was useful, you wouldn't bring your own. I know they're heavy (mine certainly is), but fit is everything. Hard to get a good fit with a "whatever they have" rental situation. I certainly don't cherish the thought of traveling with my drysuit, but I definitely wouldn't rent one again. That's why I bought one

Depends what kind of travel I was doing. When I go backpacking again I doubt I will want to haul around a drysuit for months. You're right though, I was leaning towards taking my gear (including a drysuit and a wetsuit) and dumping it at a relative's place who happens to live centrally to where I will travel.

 

[TSandM]

Bob, I think it's in the DIR forum because the OP is following that path, and AOW isn't on that path anywhere. So the question becomes whether a) he would learn anything by taking it, or b) whether the card itself is necessary enough to make it worth the price. I think he'd probably learn something from your class, but not from the one I took.

Rescue, on the other hand, is a class I think even people going straight down the DIR pipeline ought to take. There was way more in my Rescue class than the rescue skills taught in Fundies.

 

[AndyNZ]

Still, I was wondering if anyone here had a similar experience as they were starting up, and if you think it's worth getting an AOW card, just from the perspective of avoiding hang-ups or hassles on dive trips or resort locations.

It's certainly not uncommon.... a lot of BSAC divers I know tend to get a PADI AOW card simply for overseas travel. It's very recognisable worldwide.

I heard a story last year of a GUE cave instructor who recently visited Australia, but only had his GUE instructor card with him (plus full cave kit!) and the operator out to the GBR didn't have a clue what to do with him, so got him in the pool to do an assessment..... apparently said instructor was forced to do a fin pivot and was horrified that they had to touch the bottom! So the story goes, anyway.... :cool2:

I'm sure Lynne will tell you she got something out of her AOW class. I would bet that with the right instructor anyone can get something out of an AOW class.

Totally. If someone came to me for an AOW course who has done Fundies then I'm probably not going to waste my time or their's doing a PPB dive, unless that's something they explicitly say that they want to do. However, I probably could teach someone who's done Fundies something about photography, for example. The biggest thing IMHO about an AOW course, is that it's YOUR course. You tell the instructor what it is you want to do and to get out of it - if they say "no, you must do this" then that's a pretty good indication that this isn't an instructor that's going to work for you.

 

[DIR-Atlanta]

I still have this experience; got asked if I had AOW even after showing a GUE T1 card. Forget how it got resolved (if I showed a PADI card, or just convinced them it would be "ok"), but I did get to dive.

Here's a better one - Danny Riordan related a similar story to a group of us at the GUE conference this year, wherein he was on a liveaboard trip and the boat crew would not let him dive Nitrox, even after he showed them a GUE Cave 3 Instructor card. That was amusing enough, but then what they made him do to "qualify" for his Nitrox dives was even funnier (those of you who know him will need to get the full story straight from him, as I could not do it justice).

Apparently what the boat droids are instructed to do is to look specifically for the word "advanced" on the card somewhere, and if you show them something else, well then that does not compute. I guess nobody in the industry is paid to think any more.

 

[Rainer]

Here's a better one - Danny Riordan related a similar story to a group of us at the GUE conference this year, wherein he was on a liveaboard trip and the boat crew would not let him dive Nitrox, even after he showed them a GUE Cave 3 Instructor card. That was amusing enough, but then what they made him do to "qualify" for his Nitrox dives was even funnier (those of you who know him will need to get the full story straight from him, as I could not do it justice).

Apparently what the boat droids are instructed to do is to look specifically for the word "advanced" on the card somewhere, and if you show them something else, well then that does not compute. I guess nobody in the industry is paid to think any more.

Bob Sherwood told us a story about being out in SoCal with JJ and a few other GUE instructors, heading out on the Peace to dive the Channel Islands. Well, turns out JJ forgot his c-cards and the owner or captain (don't remember which) wasn't going to let him dive. The fact that the present senior GUE instructors all had JJ's signature on their own (instructor) c-cards didn't seem to matter. JJ was willing to have his c-card info faxed over, he just wanted to know what kind of c-card they wanted to see. They kept asking him, well, what do you have, to which he continued to respond: "What do you want to see?" Too funny.

 

[Adobo]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

As to drysuit rentals, I've definitely had the same experience as well. In fact, the same place that sold me a drysuit without a drysuit card will not rent me one without a card. To me, it's a similar "nice to have the card just in case" situation.

Out of curiousity, which lame a55 dive shop did you buy your drysuit from? Oh, never mind.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I heard a story last year of a GUE cave instructor who recently visited Australia, but only had his GUE instructor card with him (plus full cave kit!) and the operator out to the GBR didn't have a clue what to do with him, so got him in the pool to do an assessment..... apparently said instructor was forced to do a fin pivot and was horrified that they had to touch the bottom! So the story goes, anyway.... :cool2:

All too common, I'm afraid. When I visited CocoView in Roatan a few years back I was asked to do some checkout skills in the shallows. The divemaster wanted me to kneel down, do a basic partial flood-n-clear, then do a basic reg recovery (I was in a long hose setup, which confused the bejeebers outta him).

In three feet of water I hovered a few inches off the bottom, removed my mask, put it back on, cleared it, tossed my reg over my shoulder, put my backup in my mouth, recovered my primary, switched back to it, looked at him and gave the thumb.

As soon as we surfaced he said, "now let's go back down and kneel on the bottom so I can make sure you're properly weighted" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

In fact, the same place that sold me a drysuit without a drysuit card will not rent me one without a card.

Unfortunately, that is true for most shops. In order to rent dive gear you need a C-card. But you can go into the same shop and purchase any dive gear you want without ever having taken a scuba class.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I just wonder what it is that makes these people so obtuse. Is it that they just have never heard of these agencies or is it that they have been told to push the one their op is with. In any case do they not realize that they are losing business. I'm in the process of setting up my website. My web guy is looking at having it up around the first of the Jan. I've contacted a few places I've used in the past to ask them if they'd allow me to link to them. At the same time I've asked them if they recognize my students cards (SEI) so far they've all said yes. But one did inform me that they been seeing alot of "weird certs" from mainly European guests.

Now what kind of issue would these people have at the places you've all talked about? The cards have been accepted and it's been ok but it seems that they could have required skills assessments before allowing them to dive. I'm taking the tack that if I know where my students/customers will be going I'll call and ask and if necessary shoot an email. I'm even doing an email campaign for my agency to hopefully avoid just this type of thing. It's more ingnorance of the outside world in some cases I think. That can only be remedied by educating those places that seem to need it. After that it's up to them what they do with the knowledge.