Completed my Open Water Cert!

[Hertrich]

Just wanted to say that I managed to complete my Open Water certification, thus officially getting my "learner's permit" for diving! Had a great time doing the certification dives at Dutch Springs in Pennsylvania with Atlantis Aquatics, who run a great operation and are good people from my experience.

While I'm happy to have the certification, the process of certification reinforced my opinion that this really is just the start. I read a while back that the OW is like a learner's permit, and I totally see that. I'm not ready for the diving equivalent of I-95 yet (whatever that might be), but I'm ready and looking forward to tooling around the neighborhood so to speak.

Buoyancy control is the core skill I want to focus on next. Anyone have any suggestions for exercises to help with that? Fin pivots and hovering aside, any suggestions for practice exercises? I'm thinking setting a goal to do stay at a particular depth for a given period of time (while moving and/or stationary) would be a reasonable start.

 

[doctormike]

Congratulations! Good attitude, too...

There is a peak performance buoyancy class you can take, but nothing beats just getting out there and diving..

 

[WheatShark]

Congratulations on your certification. You may be right in classifying your OW cert as a "learners permit", but you have taken the first step towards a whole new world of adventure. Have fun and be safe.

good buoyancy comes first and foremost from practice, practice, and more practice. If you want work on buoyancy under the supervision of an instructor, the peak performance buoyancy course is a good way to go.

 

[seattlepaul1975]

Congrats!!!

 

[DivemasterDennis]

Great accomplishment and attitude. Nothing perfects skills like repetition, so for buoyancy mastery, dive a lot. Remeber to avoid over weighting, breathing too hard, and rapid depth variations, all which will make buoyancy control harder. Also, add and evacuate air from your bcd is small increments. I'm all for taking the peak performance buoyancy class, but there is no reason you can't become "peak" with practice on your own.
DivemasterDennis

 

[iamrushman]

congratulation on your accomplishment.....now just dive dive dive.

 

[beaverdivers]

Congrats! Go for your nitrox cert.

 

[nimoh]

best thing to do to practice neutral buoyancy is to try and stay perfectly still in shallow water. Get a few feet off the bottom, and stay there.

You might also want to work on horizontal trim at the same time, however for this, you need someone to watch you and give you feedback, or shooting video of yourself since it is easy to be out of trim, while feeling like you are in trim.

 

[mikeycanuk]

I found the peak performance course quite helpful. Practice, practice, practice.

 

[TMHeimer]

Congrats. PP Buoyancy was good. See if you can get to the point where you just stop and look at something without thinking about it.