Careless instructor or overthinking newbie

[NorCalDM]

I was quite disappointed that I didn't get all the dives that I was supposed to, but I felt partly responsible for that myself since I had thumbed the dives and was unable to go back in the water.

Good on you for thumbing the dives! My point was the instructor had no business passing you with only completing a portion of the class you paid him for doesn't matter who called the dives. He is clearly outside of standard and that's an issue. Don't worry about upsetting people in your dive community you may be saving someone's life who won't call the dive. I think you find that good dive professionals would want him reported and something done about it as his behavior reflects badly of them.

 

[BackAfter30]

I was quite disappointed that I didn't get all the dives that I was supposed to, but I felt partly responsible for that myself since I had thumbed the dives and was unable to go back in the water.

I will do this. I'm just a bit afraid that I'll make myself enormously unpopular in the diving community here, by trying to ruin the career of an instructor that most people probably only have good experiences with. But some major mistakes were made, and they need to be addressed.

As was said, you did the right thing in thumbing the dive. You can also go at this in steps since you fear alienating the local dive community - and that is a reasonable thing to consider. Two things you can do as first steps are: 1) go to the shop and dispassionately list the shortcomings of your experience and require a refund. Then you are not attacking your instructor. Let the shop figure that part out. 2) Go locate the dive clubs in the area and talk to them. Maybe they already have an opinion on that instructor, or maybe they will encourage you to complain. Those two steps might get you satisfaction.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I'm just a bit afraid that I'll make myself enormously unpopular in the diving community here, by trying to ruin the career of an instructor that most people probably only have good experiences with. But some major mistakes were made, and they need to be addressed.

Two thoughts on this:

1. You probably won't single-handedly ruin the career of the instructor. If this is their "first offense" I suspect the agency and the shop they work for will do some "education" with them to make sure they don't mess up in the future. However, if this has been a pattern of behavior I expect their career will be ruined. If the agency won't act, the shop likely will. I've seen this happen when a second complaint was logged against the instructor.

2. At some point you need to risk social disapprobation to keep other folks safe. I think you're realizing this.

 

[Raphus]

The deep dive can only be dive 4 or 5 from the aowd. Not the first one.

The refresher was a scam. You paid for it, but didn't recieve anything. Only aowd dives.

The weighting seems strange.. 8kg neutral in a drysuit with fully inflated bcd?
A bcd lifts about 16 kg at least.
drysuit with 8 kg is not much.

 

[Azraelien]

Yeah wow I would absolutely demand a full refund.

AOW is supposed to be a fun series of dives that introduce you to 5 different 'disciplines' of diving in a fun way - it should be easy enough for a new OW student to complete comfortably, and you absolutely should have had the refresher dive, as well as a kit setup dive before the course.

Drysuits take a bit of work. my own full drysuit course featured a bunch of reading about how drysuits function, a pool session where we practiced buoyancy, inflation, dumping, what to do with runaway inflation, how to recover from inversion, correct donning and doffing, how to ensure correct fit, and so on - then open water dives ONLY after getting comfortable.
Some time later My fiancee got a drysuit, and didn't take the course, but she did read through the materials I had from the course, and we then spent probably 10 quarry dives together working on her skills, starting off on platforms and fiddling with drills and weighting, then moving to deeper water - I can't believe that anyone would believe that handing a student a leaky drysuit and expecting them to kind of 'work it out themselves' as part of an advanced open water course is a good idea, and, in fact, as we have seen recently with the case of that poor girl who was in the news, this is how people die in drysuits.

Reporting instructors like this is certainly the most effective way to ensure it doesn't happen to anyone else.

 

[Aura]

The weighting seems strange.. 8kg neutral in a drysuit with fully inflated bcd?
A bcd lifts about 16 kg at least.
drysuit with 8 kg is not much.

Well the drysuit itself had no buoyancy since it filled with water. And I used a size small Aqualung bcd (can't remember which type exactly), and they seem to generally have 12-13kg lift.

 

[Raphus]

Well the drysuit itself had no buoyancy since it filled with water. And I used a size small Aqualung bcd (can't remember which type exactly), and they seem to generally have 12-13kg lift.

It was completely filled with water?
Usualy they still have air in it.

Then it's of course to much weigth.
It's difficult, because you need enough weigth to bring you down with a drysuit and 12 kg is not uncommon.
But if it floods the bcd/wing has to be able to lift the person.

 

[Aura]

It was completely filled with water

Pretty much, there was water to above the zipper.

 

[ginti]

Pretty much, there was water to above the zipper.

What do you mean by "there was water"? It's just that the undergarments were humid/wet, or you were really submerged inside the suit?

 

[Aura]

What do you mean by "there was water"? It's just that the undergarments were humid/wet, or you were really submerged inside the suit?

Actually full of water, I couldn't pull the neck seal over my head until I'd laid down on my stomach and let half an ocean out of the suit. I looked like the Michelin man when I walked out of the water.