Did your OW course prepare you to dive?

[boulderjohn]

I will repeat what I said earlier. Whenever we see someone who does not seem to dive like a dream, the immediate assumption is that there must have been poor instruction. It may well be poor experience after good instruction, including not doing a whole lot of diving over a period of time and/or doing a lot of diving with operators who do as much as possible for you, including setting up your gear for you, doing all the dive planning, and even taking your fins off at the ends of the dives. (Yes, I had that experience recently, and it certainly sped up the process of getting the group back on the boat.

You might be surprised at how easy it is to forget basic stuff with even a short time away. I once did a scuba refresher in a pool for a woman who had well over a hundred dives, all racked up on annual vacations. She was about to go on another one. She showed up with all her own gear, including a hose-mounted air-integrated computer. When she opened the tank valve and saw it read her tank pressure, she noted that it had also analyzed her gas at 32%. I told her that was not true, but she insisted her computer analyzed oxygen content, and she had 32% nitrox.

It took me a while to convince her. I told her the shop did not even have the ability to make nitrox unless I did it for them, and they certainly were not going to put it in the tanks supplied for a swimming pool refresher class, even if they could. This was a very intelligent, highly educated woman. She had in the past dived with 32% and set her computer for it, as she had been instructed, but in the time that followed, she had forgotten that part and assumed that every tank she had was being measured at 32%. It is possible that every tank she used did have 32%, but that would have been a matter of luck.

 

[parzdiver]

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.

For me, I don't think it was the quality of the instruction itself, it was the fact the training was during a cruise, so beyond the four checkout dives, there wasn't any other diving. After that, I was only doing DM led courses until I was at a location that a guide was not in the water. It pushed me into the realm of having to do the dive and get back to the boat safely without being led around. I think if I was certified locally, I might have gotten more dives completed and figured it out sooner.

 

[Damselfish]

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?

1) yes
2) yes
3) yes, in fact we did exactly this. We were basically booted into the water by our instructor for our first post-cert dive. (Who we later learned was hiding in the murk keeping an eye on us, not hard in New England. But we didn't know that until we got a post-dive critique.)
4) More dives is what helped then. Also, first tropical trip, where it was all so much easier than diving in New England, did much to boost confidence.
5) Seems redundant since I said yes to #2. Plus this was all 30 years ago.

 

[boulderjohn]

3) yes, in fact we did exactly this. We were basically booted into the water by our instructor for our first post-cert dive. (Who we later learned was hiding in the murk keeping an eye on us, not hard in New England. But we didn't know that until we got a post-dive critique.)

I know you were certified some time ago, with older standards. In today's PADI standards, what you describe as your first dive post-certification is supposed to be what happens on your last certification dive. Buddy teams are supposed to plan and execute that dive, with the instructor stepping in to intervene only if necessary.

 

[drrich2]

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.

Did a little more thinking on this. A big question is what they want the DM or guide along to do.

'Vacation divers' (which is a lot of people) sometimes dive so little and sporadically they may lose proficiency with setting up their own gear. Or have some trouble getting the tank cam band tight enough, etc...

A lot of people never get good at navigation. Many people aren't good at it on land, so it's no surprise with the added task loading and distractions of scuba diving that they're not good at it underwater, either.

Multi-tasking (required for diving, keeping in mind where you and the boat are, looking at the creatures, taking photos, etc...) is another thing people vary in aptitude for.

So a lot of people could shore dive independently but need a guide for boat diving, and many of them always will.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

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?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh wait, you are asking seriously. Sorry for the obnoxiousness but my open water course was so full of violations (skipped skills, everyone breathing normally during a CESA as we had no instruction in open water, it was skipped in a 4 hour pool session, etc.).

I did learn how to make bubbles underwater.

I fortunately knew a former instructor who needed a dive buddy. He got me going.

My experience is not the rule, but not uncommon either.

 

[formernuke]

My experience is not the rule, but not uncommon either

Sad but very true

 

[boulderjohn]

My OW experience also violated many standards as well. I had one 2-hour pool session in a pool 5 feet deep. I had no idea how many standards were violated until many years later, when I started my DM training and had to perform the pool skills I had never seen before.

Oddly enough, I felt I was fully prepared for diving by the experience. In retrospect, I think I can see why.

Although the pool preparation was horrible, I had 4 full OW dives, the same length and place as the certified divers diving with that operator. We didn't do all the skills we should have there, either, but I had plenty of free swimming time in which to get used to my buoyancy. I even learned a valuable lesson that has stayed with me forever that way. On one dive I dropped near the bottom, just over the reef, and got my buoyancy nicely settled. Then one of the OW divers came crashing down on top of me, driving me into the coral below. I was wearing a shorty, and the cuts on my knees took months to heal. I have been fully covered on every dive since certification.

Years later, while teaching pool-only discover scuba classes, I saw that those students looked more like experienced divers at the end of a 1.5 hour pool session than the OW students did after the full, carefully, complete standards pool sessions. That was back when I was still teaching those OW students on their knees, and my realization that the free swimming the discover students were doing was what was making them better divers in so little time. It led to me changing how I taught the OW students.

So I think the fact that I did 4 real scuba dives for my OW class made up for the skill training that was skipped in the pool. I honestly did feel like I knew what I was doing. A few weeks later I arrived in Cozumel and took the AOW immediately. I felt perfectly comfortable on that first AOW dive. That experience also made me in the minority that believes in doing AOW early on, so that additional instruction goes with you as you gain further experience.

 

[jlcnuke]

I feel very fortunate to have had a really good first dive instructor. I felt fully confident in my abilities at the end of my OW course, and in fact did a "fun dive" after the course with my instructor (we were the two with enough air in our tanks for another dive after the cert dives). I led that dive and it went well.

Have I become a better diver since then? Absolutely. I am happy that I was taught neutrally buoyant even back in 2005 however. When I "got back into diving" in 2017, after not that many dives post OW cert, I took back to it pretty much immediately. During that "OW" course, the instructor knew I was previously certified before I mentioned it just from my performance and comfort, and I ended up being the buddy for their AOW student on his nav dives while she stayed with my friend who was getting his OW cert for the first time.

The second course, done in a tropical island vacation destination, was much less thorough than my first course. As a dive professional now, I can say there were clear standards that were violated on that course, though not nearly as bad as many stories I have heard.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I will repeat what I said earlier. Whenever we see someone who does not seem to dive like a dream, the immediate assumption is that there must have been poor instruction. It may well be poor experience after good instruction, including not doing a whole lot of diving over a period of time and/or doing a lot of diving with operators who do as much as possible for you, including setting up your gear for you, doing all the dive planning, and even taking your fins off at the ends of the dives. (Yes, I had that experience recently, and it certainly sped up the process of getting the group back on the boat.

You might be surprised at how easy it is to forget basic stuff with even a short time away. I once did a scuba refresher in a pool for a woman who had well over a hundred dives, all racked up on annual vacations. She was about to go on another one. She showed up with all her own gear, including a hose-mounted air-integrated computer. When she opened the tank valve and saw it read her tank pressure, she noted that it had also analyzed her gas at 32%. I told her that was not true, but she insisted her computer analyzed oxygen content, and she had 32% nitrox.

It took me a while to convince her. I told her the shop did not even have the ability to make nitrox unless I did it for them, and they certainly were not going to put it in the tanks supplied for a swimming pool refresher class, even if they could. This was a very intelligent, highly educated woman. She had in the past dived with 32% and set her computer for it, as she had been instructed, but in the time that followed, she had forgotten that part and assumed that every tank she had was being measured at 32%. It is possible that every tank she used did have 32%, but that would have been a matter of luck.

Not to derail the thread, but you just came up with a breakthrough idea for the next step in AI computers, or maybe the lady did?
A computer that reads the O2 content of the incoming gas and automatically adjusts the algorithm to assume the mix, and also warns of CO2 and CO.
Genius!