Cavern Training at Ginnie...what gear am I going to need?

[H2Andy]

yeah, johnny richards is laid back, thourough. he's very non-intimidating, which
i like a lot. he doesn't operate on ego, which i REALLY like

it's about the class, the skills, making you better. gotta love it.

 

[CoyKoi]

I have my PM's ready to send off to various cave dive insturctors on the board. I am curious about the torn fingers. I wonder if it will be bad through all the huge calluses I have on my hands.

Short of a cannister light, I think I have just about everything else. I am curious on how much someone spends on the cavern+intro to cave education. There is a good instructor here but the cost of sending him to Florida might buy me better education from someone that is already in the the area. Anyone else choose someone local to Ginnie Springs instead of taking along an instructor that is local to you?

I just finished my cavern course at Ginnie last month. My instructor was Johnny Richards (http://www.cavediving.com/nfl_cave/start/about.htm). He was terrific. Johnny was thorough, patient, knowledgeable, safe and fun. I hadn't planned on going any further into cave training before this course. But now I'm looking at Intro to Cave -- perhaps taking my instruction from Johnny again.

 

[loosebits]

I just finished my full cave with Mike O'Leary (http://www.cavediving.org/), he was a great instructor, real salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. He's been around the block a few times, has his name on a couple of maps too. I felt the dives we did went above and beyond the minimum course requiements. He was very throrough, best class I've ever had.

Btw, I did IANTD adv nitrox through him at the same time. He didn't like the fact that IANTD only certifies to EAN50 so he threw in a TDI card also (unlike IANTD, TDI adv nitrox doesn't include staged decompression).