Did your OW course prepare you to dive?

[Belzelbub]

After OW I was completely competent to dive within my cert level in the conditions I was trained in without killing myself.

Well, putting it that way, I was a s well. I was completely capable of diving in the conditions I was trained in. Only one problem. I have no idea why anyone would want to dive with scuba gear in those conditions. I would have been completely confident doing a shore dive about 20 yards offshore in a protected cove to a maximum depth of about 8’.

My 2nd OW class was much better. Very thorough. Lots of practice on skills, and boat dives for the checkout dives.

 

[CLEAR BLUE]

I am curious about people's perception of their own skills and readiness to dive when they finished their open water course.

At the end of the class did you feel like you had the knowledge, skills and abilities to safely complete a dive with a equally skilled buddy? For this question, lets say you were going to basically repeat your last training dive, but with an equally skilled buddy instead of an instructor. Did you feel like you needed a Dive master or similar person with advanced training in order to get in the water? What would have made a difference in this perception for you (i.e. more or different skills, more training time in the water, just more dives, etc?).

Do you feel that with your current knowledge, skills and abilities you could conduct a dive equivalent to your training dives with an equally skilled buddy?

 

[CLEAR BLUE]

I am curious about people's perception of their own skills and readiness to dive when they finished their open water course.

At the end of the class did you feel like you had the knowledge, skills and abilities to safely complete a dive with a equally skilled buddy? For this question, lets say you were going to basically repeat your last training dive, but with an equally skilled buddy instead of an instructor. Did you feel like you needed a Dive master or similar person with advanced training in order to get in the water? What would have made a difference in this perception for you (i.e. more or different skills, more training time in the water, just more dives, etc?).

Do you feel that with your current knowledge, skills and abilities you could conduct a dive equivalent to your training dives with an equally skilled buddy?

I think I could have safely completed a simple dive. I was lucky that my buddy (husband) is a DM so I felt safer and comfortable in a variety of conditions. Experience and more courses have been key.

 

[CarstenS]

My OWD was in 1996, when things were somewhat different. My wife and I did it the course on a lark on Elba/Italy. The instructor was a local celeb, having written the go-to guide to dive spots there, and a very competent if somewhat reckless diver. Nobody owned computers, so we did a few days of charts. No pool, so we did all the exercises in a little bay just off the harbour, in the sea. The final dive of the course, the instructor took us down to 36 m to look at some amazing fan coral off Porto Azzurro (we had been to 25 m or so before, if I remember correctly, we did three actual dives besides the training routines). I like to think he did that because he had gained the impression we could handle this (but we all flatter ourselves regarding our actual abilities, especially when young and stupid). Not recommended, but it did work for us. We are still around, 1.000+ dives (and many pieces of plastic) later. Did the course prepare me to start diving? Yes, it gave me the (in retrospect arguably wrong) confidence that I could deal with unusual conditions and a healthy respect for how dark and cold it is down there and how attentive you want to be to your chart and gauges (or now, a computer you understand and carry a back-up for). Would I recommend this as standard training? Hell no! But I coasted along quite well over many dives on the strength of the OWD, improving all the time, before throwing more money at certs (mind, I‘m glad I did that, too). I guess I got my money‘s worth from my OWD, and it did prepare me in the sense that nothing so far has killed me in almost 30 years of diving between the North Atlantic and the Tropics.

Respectfully, C.

 

[MRadke]

Like any class I've ever taken, it prepared me with the fundamental knowledge to learn safely.