Cave Course Comparison

[JimC]

But the way you describe it, it sounds like NACD's Apprentice 'expiration' is geared specifically towards moving students on to the the next cert level - Full Cave rather than towards keeping those skills 'current' by means of a minimum dive count.

Its like that to encourage you to get more training to do dives you're probably already doing. I don't know many apprentice divers who stick to the rules about multiple jumps and what not. Just as I don't know many NSS-CDS Basic Cave divers who stick to 1/6ths. Probably why they put a time expiration on that card too.

What the expiration means is you ether need to move up, or be re-evaluated by an instructor every year. Kinda like the "show proof of dives" taken to the next level, as in.. show you still have the skills we taught you. I am certain the cost of a reevaluation is peanuts for the day of diving you get out of it.

 

[GDI]

Get an Instructor you feel comfortable with

 

[daniel f aleman]

-- Since most of my technical dive partners have been Cave trained in one organization they have been taught to dive with a certain level of skills. When I get Cave certified I too want to be able to work cohesively within the team with a comparable level of skills.

-- BUT I also want not to be pigeon-holed into HAVING to be certified by one and only one agency. And, agreeing with Capt Jim's point of view, as long as I get the right instructor - teaching the right course, I should be trained as good (or better?) as my partners.

Thanks

Can't have both ways - go with the agency that certified your technical dive partners, you can find an exellent instructor in that agency who will fill your needs. Team needs rule, Dude...

 

[rjack321]

GUE requires 25 dives, at your highest cert level, in 3 years for renewal.

It doesn't sound like this has a shot of convincing you otherwise, but the week+ blast is a mistake IMO. Its not about the card/cert level vs. cost. Its about learning, backwards forwards and upside down the skills to keep you alive.

Take you time and get all the skills at one level wired, then take the next class. After my 5 days in Cave1, I was "full". Since I had zero cave experience outside of class, it was silly to start adding additional skils that I wasn't really ready for. The GUE approach to building skills AND experince requires a min. of 25 Cave1 dives before advancing to Cave2.

The last thing you want is to immediately get out of "full cave" with no experience on your own and go doing stages, jumps, and extended penetrations. Without the base of experience there's not much foundation to your learning. I can see that without even knowing all the ins and outs of full cave.

I'm only Cave1 and even though I did well at it, I'm not ready for more without somemore Cave1 dives to build on.

YMMV

 

[grazie42]

I went from Cavern to "full cave" in 8 days (NACD/NSS-CDS)...

I think which route you take depends on how you learn. I have to say that I felt there were synergies to doing the whole thing in one go. I also liked that skills were expected to be at "full level" from the start of the course.

After the course you´ll either feel comfortable in a cave or you won´t. Remember, just because you´re "allowed" to use stages, jumps etc doesen´t mean you have to, it just means that you´re free to do the dives you want to and to work yourself up to the complexity you want...

The only "downside" is that you spend a lot of time in the water, in a very short period of time. It does wear on your body and to finish you can´t afford to miss any dives. We had ~20hrs in the water over 8 days, with fills and classroom, you´ll be eating, sleaping and talking cave-diving all day every day. It wasn´t a "walk in the park" for anyone in my class, but then it´s not supposed to be is it?

 

[Jason B]

What the expiration means is you ether need to move up, or be re-evaluated by an instructor every year. Kinda like the "show proof of dives" taken to the next level, as in.. show you still have the skills we taught you. I am certain the cost of a reevaluation is peanuts for the day of diving you get out of it.

Apprentice expires after one year and you go back to being an "intro" cave diver. My instructor was very clear that I had to have my full cave completed in that year if I didn't want my cert to go backwards instead of forward.


I'm in the "gain experience at each level" camp.
I dove at the cavern level for 6 months, Intro level for 1 year, and Apprentice level for 10 months so far (doing full cave 2 weekends from now!).
Take your time, the caves aren't going anywhere and there is so much to see in the first several hundred ft of all these caves. Take time to hone the skills at each level, it will certainly pay off.

 

[jjoeldm]

When I was certified Full Cave in 1990 I looked for an instructor around the Atlanta area and sat in on some classes and found one with a unique perspective. He believed that if you're going to be diving in a cave that you should be Full Cave trained. He didn't believe in getting some training, then going cave diving on your own and then getting more training and cave dive on your own some more. He felt you should have all the tools at hand every time you went in a cave. But he also didn't think getting to Full Cave in a week was responsible.

The approach he took was to have classes here in Atlanta during the week in the evenings and then dive every weekend. It meant quite a commitment and really, you had to live within a day's drive of N Florida to do it, but it made sense and so I set aside the time. Since I didn't have to be in Florida all week I didn't have to take off work at all.

We had a group of six student and two assistants and the classes were intensive as well as the diving. Over that month we did 22 dives in as many different conditions as possible. He was an NACD and an NSS-CDS instructor, so you could choose either certification card. I chose NACD. There was no GUE and back then the fight was between the NACD and the CDS. But it was still over DIR etc.

Every time I get in the water I am thankful to have met that instructor. I was fortunate to meet and learn from two great guys, my cavern and cave instructors. The cavern instructor was a resident instructor at Ginnie and he was excellent, but when I was ready to take up cave, I listened to prospective instructors' philosophies and chose one based on his approach.

Taking your time to absorb the skills yet doing it all at once made sense to me. I don't know if there's an equivalent approach out there anymore (both are retired from teaching), but the advice to choose the instructor and not the agency is good.

Having said that, I'm very impressed by the reports I hear from divers who used GUE cave instructors for their cave instruction. And there are good and bad instructors everywhere, so meet him/her, talk to him and get input from people who have learned from him. If possible, sit in on a class.

I've seen some terrible instructors out there and since your life is literally in their hands both during the course and in the approach that he transmits to you during instruction, I'd take my time choosing and get as much input on the instructor as possible before signing up. The habits you learn during training will color your dive experience forever.

 

[rjack321]

That approach sounds great to me. At least there's some "downtime" in between dives to digest.

 

[DhugalMac]

GUE requires 25 dives, at your highest cert level, in 3 years for renewal.

It doesn't sound like this has a shot of convincing you otherwise, but the week+ blast is a mistake IMO. Its not about the card/cert level vs. cost. Its about learning, backwards forwards and upside down the skills to keep you alive.

Believe me, I do not object to GUE's requirement. In fact I agree with it. As I mentioned before - How good can my skills be if I haven't used them a number of times over the past n years?

What I was objecting to was NACD's requirement of having to move on to the next cert class level within 12 months. Assuming that you learn certain skills and get the opportunity to use them, I can't see why that level of cert should expire (assuming that you DO use the skills). Expiring due to non-use is one thing, expiring because of not taking another class is another.

Team needs rule

I also agree with that. Team needs are paramount.
However team needs require similar skill levels and similar approaches towards the dives so that the team can work cohesively. That does not necessarily REQUIRE that everyone uses the same certification organization. My holding NAUI Tech 1 & 2 certs does not limit me to ONLY tech diving with NAUI certified people.

Besides even if I DID use the same organization, we have already said how important the individual instructor is. Being an instructor in one organization does not GUARANTEE that the quality of instruction is the same as another instructor.

The primary purpose of my original posting was to compare various Cave courses from the skill-level perspective only so that I could evaluate my options.

Finally the issue that I asked about class duration.
I am most certainly not an advocate of rushing through classes just to get a cert card for the wallet and then be able to 'crow' about my accomplishments.

However I am also not looking at this from the perspective of beginning my training with merely an OW or AOW recreational cert. My tech diving team mates have made it very clear what they went through and what they were taught when they did their GUE Cave Level 1 classes - tough classes, high demands on skill levels, a lot of hard work, etc. I expect nothing less from whatever course I decide on.

If I have a choice of getting that training by living and breathing Cave diving in a single 5-day 'blast' or having to make multiple trips out-of-state to achieve the same level of training, my first choice would would be the former. That choice might likely leave me remaining days off of work within the year to go on additional trips and actually DO cave dives.

 

[DhugalMac]

I want to apologize to anyone who might have taken offense to anything posted here.

I had not wanted this discussion to 'devolve' into a "My cert organization and its courses are better than yours..." type of discussion.

Also I am aware that we all, as individuals, learn new things in different manners. For some the little-at-a-time is best and for others the inundation approach is better.

I thank you all for your input. It has been very valuable. I think that I have gotten the information that I was after.