Diving beyond cert?

[LI-er]

My apologies for the thread jack. When I see popular misconceptions blindly regurgitated by the ignorant I feel compelled to respond.

That much being said, if the Op feels his skills and comfort levels are appropriate, and is not restricted from obtaining gear or diving the site, the only other factor to consider is whether his dive insurance (if any) would potentially deny a claim if the diver was not certified for the depth at which an accident occurred.

 

[Kendall Raine]

The most important thing is knowing you have sufficient gas for you and your buddy to ascend to the surface in the case that one of you suffers catastrophic gas loss and you have to share gas to the surface.

I wrote a dive planning doc for my area:
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but the concepts are universal. If you know the site, have a map, go through the process and see how comfortable you are once going through this excessive exercise. The point of the document isn't memorization, but to develop a plan for new places and being comofortable throughout the dive as you monitor your gas consumption and compare to expected cylinder pressures at different points of the dive and always abiding by min gas.

This is really good stuff. An excellent distillation of gas/dive planning philosophy/practice sadly diluted (e.g be back with 300-500 psi) in a lot of recreational diving courses/planning/practice. Do you take your open water students through it or just make it available? Present/test planning scenarios in your courses? If so you are teaching the AP version of recreational scuba courses.

 

[boulderjohn]

How do you distill all that into some very simple, easy-to remember-under-stress rules? The beauty of "be back on the boat with 500 psi" is how simple it is; but it does not tell you how to do that. "Leave the bottom at 700 psi" tells you how to do that, but does not allow for a buddy.

I know some people who argue that it does.

I have heard people argue that given the rarity of OOA ascents (I have only been in the vicinity of one once in over a quarter century of diving), it is silly to end each dive with the abundance of sir needed to bring up an OOA diver with an ascent that includes a safety stop and a reserve on top of that. Bringing an OOA buddy to the surface is a good reason for the "be back with 500 PSI" mantra. Divers within NDLs should be able so surface safely without a safety stop. If a diver successfully reaches the surface with an OOA diver, he or she will be forgiven for getting on the boat with less than 500 PSI.

Note that I am not making this argument--I am just saying I have heard it made.