Did your OW course prepare you to dive?

[Belzelbub]

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?

No and Yes.

Did you feel like you needed a Dive master or similar person with advanced training in order to get in the water?

Yes and No.

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?).

See below

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?

Yes, with my current training. I’d also expand that to a less skilled buddy, assuming that the dive is reasonable for their experience.

To expand a bit on the first three questions. I answered 1 and 2 with two answers. The reason is that I took OW twice, and as a result have two OW certs from two different agencies. The below descriptions of my OW courses should explain number 3.

OW #1. Course was conducted in a way that all academics and written tests were done first, then checkout dives after. No issue with that way, or the academics. There were no pool sessions. OW dives were scheduled over two weekends (1 day each weekend). I had a schedule conflict so couldn’t make the second weekend. First weekend consisted of 2 dives off of one tank. Max depth was about 10 fsw. Vis was extremely poor. We just did drills and that was it. I was never asked to do the second weekend, but my card showed up anyway.

OW #2. This course was the polar opposite of my first. Course was divided into 4 parts, and taken over 6 weeks at a university. Academic lecture, academic exercises, pool work, and checkout dives. Written test was completed prior to checkout dives. Academic lecture was once a week, and around two hours each. Then, twice a week, we would meet in smaller groups for the labs 3 hours each day. The first 30 minutes or so was academic exercises (tables, etc). The remaining time was spent in the pool doing all sorts of skills practice. Checkout dives were done a bit later, and fairly typical.

 

[Belzelbub]

The reason I asked is because some people come on this board who clearly aren't comfortable diving without a DM or guide, in some cases even as they approach 100 dives. I'm curious how common this is and whether it is about poor instruction or students who are't as confident.

Could be a number of reasons. Everyone learns differently. For some the duration of a typical course might not be sufficient, but if the student demonstrates the skills, the instructor may not realize that the student is not comfortable unless they say something.

The DM guided dive concept isn’t really helping either, IMO. It might enable those who don’t dive regularly to spend some time underwater, but it’s not helping them to be self sufficient. You can see examples of this in some other threads discussing computers, where some just rely on the DM to keep them safe. There is also another where a diver was asking why divers bring a knife or tool when on a DM guided dive.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I freedived for abalone for a few years before I got scuba certified. That was great experience for managing the ocean, swells, conditions, knowing what was down there, etc.
My course was about as thorough as it gets for a PADI open water course related to the environment that I was going to be diving in, i.e. rough cold seas with limited visibility and lots of hazards such as kelp, rocks, surf, swells, currents.
We were trained to plan and conduct a dive with another open water trained diver in conditions that were similar to the conditions during the open water class. Immediately after my open water class I did such a dive from shore with a buddy of mine that was fresh out of his OW class up on the Sonoma Coast.
Right after that I found myself on a boat in Monterey on a 95’ wall dive in outer Point Lobos with the same buddy.
We were using PADI tables.
There really are no divemasters on boats here in California per se. There are on deck, but they are not in the water and they do not lead divers around and babysit. I guess they must figure that anybody diving in CA must be a local and therefore is properly trained for the environment and used to diving in local conditions. If you want a divemaster you have to hire one.
Most people who intended to continue diving in may area after OW are generally very adventurous and many hunt as an end goal in their diving.

I hold the belief that the key to successful diver retention is proper and thorough training. It makes for confident and motivated divers right out of the gate.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The reason I asked is because some people come on this board who clearly aren't comfortable diving without a DM or guide, in some cases even as they approach 100 dives. I'm curious how common this is and whether it is about poor instruction or students who are't as confident.

My guess is most of those folks you ask about are vacation only divers. They are happy just following around a DM and have them point stuff out. I doubt they really “get into diving” deep and hard as a sport like say a tech diver or serious rec diver does. For them it’s just one step beyond a submarine ride to looky loo. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that they’re fine with that level of achievement and see no reason to advance any further.

 

[rx7diver]

I hold the belief that the key to successful diver retention is proper and thorough training. It makes for confident and motivated divers right out of the gate.

+1

rx7diver

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

No and Yes.

Yes and No.

See below

Yes, with my current training. I’d also expand that to a less skilled buddy, assuming that the dive is reasonable for their experience.

To expand a bit on the first three questions. I answered 1 and 2 with two answers. The reason is that I took OW twice, and as a result have two OW certs from two different agencies. The below descriptions of my OW courses should explain number 3.

OW #1. Course was conducted in a way that all academics and written tests were done first, then checkout dives after. No issue with that way, or the academics. There were no pool sessions. OW dives were scheduled over two weekends (1 day each weekend). I had a schedule conflict so couldn’t make the second weekend. First weekend consisted of 2 dives off of one tank. Max depth was about 10 fsw. Vis was extremely poor. We just did drills and that was it. I was never asked to do the second weekend, but my card showed up anyway.

OW #2. This course was the polar opposite of my first. Course was divided into 4 parts, and taken over 6 weeks at a university. Academic lecture, academic exercises, pool work, and checkout dives. Written test was completed prior to checkout dives. Academic lecture was once a week, and around two hours each. Then, twice a week, we would meet in smaller groups for the labs 3 hours each day. The first 30 minutes or so was academic exercises (tables, etc). The remaining time was spent in the pool doing all sorts of skills practice. Checkout dives were done a bit later, and fairly typical.

Was your OW 2 a NAUI class?
Just curious because most University courses I’ve heard about were always NAUI.

 

[drrich2]

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?

Depends on the dive. A dive at a quarry, or perhaps a shore dive at one of Bonaire's more benign entry/exit sites? Yes. A boat dive requiring I get out of sight of the mooring line and navigate around a reef then return to the boat without 'turtling' to see where it was? No! I was incapable of effective compass navigation then and I'm not particularly good at it now.

People do learn differently. Analogy - take a bucket of water and go water a plant planted in sandy soil. Pour it on and it soaks right in. Information and skill acquisition work like that for some people. An intensive course can get them up to speed and turn out students you can be proud of.

Now go water a plant planted in heavy clay soil. You can't pour water quickly or a lot runs off uselessly. You must pour a little, give it time to soak in, pour a little more, etc... People like this may need to be certified at an adequate but more basic level, and allowed to gradually advance, to 'grow into' their diving. They need to start simple and slowly progress.

I was one of the latter people. I'm not stupid, but I'm slow to acquire and retain motor skill proficiency, and tended to lose something in between distant diving opportunities. I needed guide-led easy dives amongst people I could ask questions as I gradually grew into being what I consider to be an intermediate diver. Adequate, not impressive.

I wish I'd been better starting out, but some of us are like the clay...we need repeated applications of modest amounts of learning over an extended time before things soak in like they should.

P.S.: I suspect a whole lot of certified OW divers are lousy at independent navigation and rely on guides or a buddy to conduct boat dives. Which works out okay for many.

 

[VikingDives]

1. Did your OW course prepare you to dive?

No, I was taught to breathe underwater, and not much else.

2. 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?

Feel? I felt like I could dive, but I didn't know what I didn't know. In retrospect, I wonder how my instructor successfully navigated his career without killing anyone.

3. 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?

No. I thought I was ok, but again ignorance is bliss.

4. 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?).

Competent instruction, and not being grossly overweighted come to mind. One of the cool things about SDI is they let instructors control the pace of the class, so my students generally get all their skills done by the end of dive 2 or the very beginning of dive 3. That gives us a lot of time to just dive (we do 5 dives in OW) and work on getting students comfortable in the water.

 

[jonhall]

1. Did your OW course prepare you to dive?
2. 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?
3. 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?
4. 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?).
5. 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?

Thanks for this!! Easier to answer each item.

1. Yes
2. At the end of the class, yes. For checkout dives of which the first 2 were shore dives, yes.
3. Didn't need a divemaster to get in the water, but the last training dive being an OW dive off of the boat, I don't think I (or equally skilled buddy could have navigated the dive and wound up back below the boat - so in that regard I would have felt like a DM was needed. To change the situation though, had my last training dive been someplace like the Frederiksted Pier in St. Croix, my answer would be that a DM was not needed as navigation would have been pretty easy.
4. More training in navigation was the factor for me.
5. Don't really remember the training dive other than it was in Grand Cayman (14 Trees, maybe also called Lost Treasure.) Would feel confident today that I could replicate the dive if I paid attention to detail and my compass the first time around.

The reason I asked is because some people come on this board who clearly aren't comfortable diving without a DM or guide, in some cases even as they approach 100 dives. I'm curious how common this is and whether it is about poor instruction or students who are't as confident.

As mentioned earlier, the specifics of the diver has to be taken into account. I was a water person - recreational swimmer, swim instructor, swim coach, and water safety instructor. When I took OW, I was doing it to be able to dive for fun on our first trip out of the country. I never had any intent, nor do I today, of becoming anymore than what I am, although I have AOW and Nitrox certs. Have never done a dive in the continental U.S. - only on vacations elsewhere. I am confident I could progress with diving, but have no inclination to do so - I enjoy recreational diving and that's enough for me. The only thing I want to do as I get older is remember to exhale on the way up!

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I suspect a whole lot of certified OW divers are lousy at independent navigation and rely on guides or a buddy to conduct boat dives. Which works out okay for many.

That’s why they make dive trackers.
The Socal lobster divers love them. No compass needed, just drop the pinger off the side of the boat on it’s line and follow the blinking light on your carry unit. You will always be lead right back to the boat.
Doing a zig zagging dive covering a lot of ground there is no way to properly track your location that well using a compass, unless you are really really good. Most of us are not that good.

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