FREE Advanced Open Water Course Feb 4, 6 & 7

[Florida Scuba Divers]

Sometimes we forget that diving conditions around Jupiter/Palm Beach are not the easiest for Open Water Divers and the more we can help them to get comfortable with our conditions the better off they are and the more it benefits our diving community.

If you combine this with the fact that very few Open Water Divers take Advanced Open Water training even at the best of times, then you have a situation that we might be able to improve.

Our solution is to offer a FREE PADI Advanced Open Water Course. Stephen Metcalf will be donating his time for this course. The shop is not taking any fee for the course either. The cost of the course for each student will be to pay for the 5 open water dives which is $150, $30 for the AOW Book and $20 for the PADI certification fee. That is it, unless someone needs to rent equipment and/or tanks.

Anyone joining the course must have all the standard equipment. This has to include a safety sausage and a reel for the safety sausage so they can learn to deploy the sausage from 40ft. to the surface when approaching their safety stop.

Students must also be Nitrox certified. If they are not, I will hold a special Nitrox class for them at our standard course fee so that they can become certified and dive Nitrox for the AOW class.

We will have a 3 1/2 hour evening lecture to discuss the dives on Thursday, February 4th from 6pm to 9:30. We will do all 5 dives on Saturday and Sunday February 6 & 7.

Sign Up will be on a "first come" basis. If you or anyone you know would like to become PADI Advanced Open Water certified and gain more knowledge about how to safely dive the conditions here in Jupiter, I would recommend you call the shop and sign up soon.

 

[Tom Winters]

Hey, ah not to be a nitpicker or dubious and/or scurrilous naysayer, but all of these "free" things on the Board always seem to have caveats, so they are not really "free". In fact, sometimes these great "free" deals can actually wind up costing more than stuff you just pay fair market value for.
"Free" always kinda implied to me that something was gratis, without charge, without hidden fees.
If you're gonna post "free", then "free" it should be without all these fees and add-ons.

There was the guy who had the "free" diving classes in Fort Lauderdale that turned out to be mud dives in Tigertail Lake after you bought a bunch of stuff from him. Geez, what kind of deal was that???

People ought to stop these little crappy subterfuge ersatz deals and be more upfront and honest about all the extra charges.

This, of course, is my own opinion, and I'm sure that almost everyone reading this will think I'm being obtuse yet again. I freely accept criticism since defending free speech is one of the reasons I spent too much time in Godforsaken parts of this world.

As always, mahalo for your kokua.

 

[OceanEd]

Tom:

I am the instructor who will be teaching this free course so let me explain. We are not being obtuse and everything is laid out the way it will be.

I am donating my time for FREE to teach this class, I will get no money at all. ScubaWorks is donating their facility for FREE so I will not have any expenses as far as a classroom, audio visual equipment, etc.

I think it is fair to expect the students to pay the PADI fee for their certification card, to pay the dive boat the usual fee for going out on that boat (we have not added any additional fee for me or ScubaWorks). There is also some equipment they will need to have for the class because we will be training them in some advanced techniques as to how to use that equipment on every dive they will make after the class. I don't think it is too much to ask them to pay for their personal equipment that they will use.

So that's it, no hidden fees. I did this last year for 23 people and everyone se emed extremely happy with the course and the amount of effort we put into doing it for free.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me here on ScubaBoard or reply here in this thread.

 

[iztok]

This is good deal. I think the cost is fair as it is just pass-through for boat/equipment/PADI Cert.

Thanks for this wonderful offer. (Granted I am already certified so not interested, plus it is hell of a drive from Charlotte, NC.)

 

[soamelt]

I did this back in October and thought it was a pretty good deal. The cost was about $170 for the dives, c-card and book. The only other thing I had to pay for was the tanks. If you want to to nickle and dime, you can probably get a AOW for roughly the same price in south Palm and Broward, since some shops will include tanks (I only own one and rented 3 steel tanks over the weekend).

All in all, it was a good class with 5 awesome dives in Jupiter. There was a lot to squeeze in for all the people (broken up into two dive boat groups, that were broken up into smaller groups on the boat) in the short amount of time. If you need one-on-one instruction, this is obviously not the class for you. If you are already semi- self sufficient and looking to improve your skills, have some good dive and get an AOW out of it, it's a great class to take. If you need one-on-one instruction, this is obviously not the class for you. If you are already semi self sufficient and looking to improve your skills, have some good dives and get an AOW out of it, it's a great class to take.

Some things I really liked was that everyone was required to shoot a bag at the end of every dive. I don't think that's a skill that is normally covered in AOW. Another thing I liked was peak-performance buoyancy was something that was practiced on every dive. We were always removing weight after each dive, fine tuning. It was not something that was just covered over one dive.

It was a good experience and a I had a lot of fun doing it. Given the chance to do it over, I would take the class again. I also thought that Stephen was a very good instructor and would definitely take a class with him again.

 

[Tom Winters]

I am sure that there are circumstances where an instructor would donate his/her time. I know that I donated boat trips in Hawaii for various causes. And you may safely believe that there were no possible extra charges - well, maybe I could have charged for piggy-back rides down the dock or maybe a $55 surcharge to exit the water after the last dive.

Well, I'm back after a few minute hiatus kicking myself for letting these revenues slip away.

Listen up here - we're quibbling over the use of the word "free" here. "Free", after everything is said and done, kinda needs to mean "free". No extra charges for a card, a text book, nitrox fills. No extra charges. Free.

This starts getting like former President Clinton actually pondering what the meaning of the the word "is" is.

I like upfront stuff, every when I don't like it. I use my real name here. And by God or Allah or Whomever is running the Big Show, if I tell ya something is free, you are not spending a nickel on whatever that offering is.

 

[EricDiveGBR]

Hi Ocean Ed,

I am OW certified, but not nitrox certified. I also do not own any equipment. How much would it cost to get nitrox certified + rent equipment for the course + 150+20+30?

Thanks!

 

[OceanEd]

Eric:

We have a standard price for the Nitrox course if it taken by itself. If you are going to sign up for the AOW course I am sure we would give you the discounted price which is about 33% less when a student in an OW class takes Nitrox at the same time. If you need to rent equipment, it would be at our standard rental price. Call ScubaWorks and talk to the people and they will give you all the details.

 

[OceanEd]

Tom:

Nothing would please me more than offering a course where nothing is charged by any of the parties involved. However, I can not realistically think that PADI will waive their certification fee and the fee for the training materials or that the dive boat will let people go for free when they have a business to run. I don't begrudge them charging for their services. It is called business.

I have made a conscious decision to offer all elements of the course that I can control, ie the instruction, at no charge. ScubaWorks has been kind enough to do the same. I will take what I can get and think the divers are getting a great deal. This is not something I do every day, but I do occasionally want to give back to our local diving community because I feel it helps us all when I can improve the skills and safety of our local divers.

If you think this makes me somehow dishonest, fine. There is nothing I can do about that but continue to teach the best course I know how to do.

 

[GeorgeC]

......Students must also be Nitrox certified. If they are not, I will hold a special Nitrox class for them at our standard course fee so that they can become certified and dive Nitrox for the AOW class........

What is the reasoning behind the Nitrox requirement for AOW. Did PADI change the AOW requirements for 2010? I am not saying Nitrox is a bad thing to have just wondering.