AOW immediately after OW?

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The shop where I did my certification insists that it is important that I do my AOW immediately now that I got my OW. I'm of the opinion that I want to get some dives under my belt first. Their argument is that the OW is a very limited skillset and getting an AOW will increase my comfort level. My opinion is that comfort level comes through actual experience and time in the water so I should concentrate on that first.

Who do you think is right?

I would agree with the consensus that doing AOW after OW is beneficial from the standpoint that the 5 dives are under supervision of the instructor and will give you just a little more supervised time in the water.
 
This is a great thread. Personally, I just finished up the class and pool sections of my OW cert. My intentions are to probably get a dozen or so dives in before moving on to AOW. Specifically, I'm probably going to do PPB sometime in Sept or Oct. I figure I'll get more out of the class when I have a bit more confidence with all of the basic skills. Additionally, I'm in no hurry to get deep so I definitely see no rush in jumping into AOW.

I see diving as being an ever learning kind of hobby. I can totally see reaching DM some day and possibly even Instructor. However, I'm in no rush to get there. I figure I'll probably have 20+ dives in before I ever even consider pushing beyond the 60' limit of basic OW, and then you can bet your butt that I'll be doing that only after AOW.

Anyway, great thread. I just can't wait until next weekend when I get to dive the open water portion of my OW class.
 
This is a great thread. Personally, I just finished up the class and pool sections of my OW cert. My intentions are to probably get a dozen or so dives in before moving on to AOW. Specifically, I'm probably going to do PPB sometime in Sept or Oct. I figure I'll get more out of the class when I have a bit more confidence with all of the basic skills. Additionally, I'm in no hurry to get deep so I definitely see no rush in jumping into AOW.

I see diving as being an ever learning kind of hobby. I can totally see reaching DM some day and possibly even Instructor. However, I'm in no rush to get there. I figure I'll probably have 20+ dives in before I ever even consider pushing beyond the 60' limit of basic OW, and then you can bet your butt that I'll be doing that only after AOW.

Anyway, great thread. I just can't wait until next weekend when I get to dive the open water portion of my OW class.

Just to be clear, the 60' limit isn't a hard limit, it's just a recommendation. There's no rule that you can't go deeper as a basic OW certified diver and in many cases, if you do "guided" dives, you will go deeper with or without further training. Your OW training should be sufficient for deeper dives until you get to about 100' or so, where getting narc'ed is far more likely and you need further training to know how to recognize it and deal with it.

My second dive after cert ended up being 75 fsw and it was no different than 40, from my perspective. Felt the same, looked roughly the same and I was well within my comfort zone.

That's not to say you won't benefit from waiting to do deeper dives, just that making it a hard and fast rule isn't an absolute necessity if there is a dive you want to do that is to 80 feet, for example. I personally don't have much interest in deep diving, yet, but it happens. Sometimes before you even realize it. (That's bad.) Just pay attention to your gauges and keep within your comfort level and you'll be fine.
 
The issue I have with AOW directly behind BOW is that for some, not all mind you, but some, it can create a false sense of capability and/or ability that can lead to very inexperienced divers leading even more inexperienced divers into unsafe situations.

the K
 
I did it and would recommend it. I didnt look at it as "Advanced" in a skill set. I looked at it as "advanced" in helping me personally by continuing my education in the sport and honing my skills in the supervision ofn an instructor.

I would like to add that I did this with the intention to add dives parallel to my AOW instruction to ask questions that came up while I built experience and went along with the course curriculum.

When it came down to diving Jamaica (which was my first vacation dive outside a rig dive in the gulf) it paid dividends with my personal confidence!

I can see both sides of the argument. In my opinion, I would do it this way again.
 
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Another contributing factor for me is the money... Right now I can afford to drop some coin on gear, but that will bleed the budget pretty dry of funds. For me the gear comes first since that makes diving much more affordable. It's one thing to head out to the local scuba park and pay $20 admission and for a couple air fills, but it's another animal when I have to add another $60-80 on top of that for gear rental.

The good news is that the wife last night agreed that if I can find a good deal on gear it makes the most sense to go ahead and get it. I'm definitely going to have to start shopping around to see what I can afford to get into. I hate buying cheap, but if I can buy some relatively entry level gear to last me for a while I can then upgrade piece by piece as the funds are available.

Anyway, I'm hoping to do altitude and deep sometime over the winter at a nearby missle silo. The other class I'll likely try to get in before spring will be Nitrox, and then probably do AOW sometime next spring. Hopefully I'll be able to get in at least a dozen or so dives along the way. If all goes as I would like I'll probably be in the 20 to 30 dive range when I begin AOW. Rescue would probably happen the next fall after hopefully another 30+ dives under my belt. This is all just conjecture at this point though.
 
Another contributing factor for me is the money... Right now I can afford to drop some coin on gear, but that will bleed the budget pretty dry of funds. For me the gear comes first since that makes diving much more affordable.

Get your gear. At the same time, take your time in choosing what you purchase to make sure it's what's best suited for you. NOT what's "new" most highly though of by your peers, per-se... but what best suits your needs and emerging diving style/preferences. Your argument makes a ton of sense to me, given that I was diving for over 12 years before I got AOW
 
Thanks. For me right now the trickiest part is knowledge. Everything right now is so new and outside of my realms of knowledge it's hard to even know what is going to best suit my needs and style. I listen to advice, and try to take everything in, but it seems that gear is something that the only way to make a good decision is going to be to rely upon your own experience and that is obviously and of course sorely lacking at this point. Hence my plan is to try and make the best decisions I can based upon research, recommendations and bearing in mind that I'll most likely be upgrading most if not all of this gear in the coming years as my dive experience begins to lead me to the proper gear for me.
 
Come over here and I'll deck you out for nix.
 

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