Good/Bad AOW Experience/Failure. Any advice? (LONG!)

[carvemeister]

The only point I can think about with your positive buoyancy on the navigation dive is that I often see students either ascend or descend on these skills because they are so focussed on the compass that they forget the other things like position in the water etc. Again, having the correct foundations will enable you to progress but without them you'll most likely end up in a situation like the one you experienced.

Take a step back in order to take two steps forward.

Stick at it and good luck

I agree! That is exactly what happened to me. Although I think I would have likely been fine in just a wetsuit and BCD, but could be wrong. Dry-suit buoyancy inexperience was a bit too much for me to handle while navigating.

 

[daz88]

4 dives 35 years ago? the only class you should have been taking was a refresher class.

 

[Agility]

Getting used to a drysuit took me about 10 dives in rather shallow water. I know shops that offer the deep speciality together with the drysuit course so it seems to work for some divers, certainly not for all.

 

[oly5050user]

Out of diving for 35 years, I would strongly suggest full ow course. Techniques and gear has changed and more importantly YOU have changed. You got OLDER!
I do not feel you got ripped off. You got what you asked off from facility that conducted adv course.
They correctly had you in pool before taking you ought in open water.People think taking a advance ow course instantly makes them a better skilled diver. It can for some few. Depends on what YOU put into it. Just going thru skills without putting any thought or effort into it does not benefit anyone. Understanding why any new skill is used and actually using new abilities during EVERY dive and getting better at it makes you an advance diver. I am located in Westchester NY. If you want to finish up your advance cert pm here and I can give you options. Can do the dive locally, or on a trip with us. Trips scheduled are Grenada in May and Bonaire in September.

 

[MrChen]

Yep, probably all true. Just looking for someone to give me an unbiased reality check. Thanks for the input!

---------- Post added February 23rd, 2014 at 09:30 PM ----------



Thanks, especially for the last bit of technique advice. I should have noted that I did do a quick in-pool refresher at a dive shop pool near me before I went on vacation and felt very comfortable. However, that was without the dry suit in the equation. And I sure wish I allocated more time during my trip, but didn't have the flexibility this time. Had I known the dry suit would be that challenging (for me), I'd have left an extra day or two for a re-do. Won't happen again!

You're evaluating yourself on being comfortable when you haven't been diving. I'm about to hit my 50th dive in 1.5 years time and every dive I'm learning to get more and more comfortable. I'm an excellent swimmer, but that has nothing to do with scuba. I would consider myself more experienced than yourself and I wouldn't have made those same adventure dive choices. I would have done peak buoyancy, navigation, deep water, and enriched air for sure. Then maybe boat diver since there's a good chance you'll be on a boat. These are more experience dives than learning new equipment and Nitrox would increase your bottom time on the deep dives.

I'm sure the instructors did the best they could with what you offered as a diver. You mentioned running low on air which means you aren't truly comfortable and are under a degree of stress.

When they say just dive, dive, and dive more, they really mean it. I wouldn't have done an AOW course after 35 years of little diving. With that said, I thought AOW course was a joke and felt like it didn't really prepare me for safer deep dives. Just because I did one, doesn't mean I'm any more prepared for an emergency. I also didn't know you could fail the AOW.

The next time I wouldn't involve so many variables and I'd be more prepared for the challenges of the class. Good luck!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'll give a go at answering your questions and offering my opinion, as an instructor with nothing in particular to sell you ...

I wanted to share my recent experience and get some feedback on where I went wrong and where (maybe) the dive shop and/or instructor might have gone wrong. So, here it is:
I attempted to get my PADI AOW Certification this week while on vacation from snowy NY, in the southwest (in a lake). I won’t name the shop for now, but I think they failed me somewhat and I’m disappointed, but I also may be completely wrong.
I started way back with a NAUI Open Water Cert about 35 years ago and hadn’t dove since my OW dives way back then. Always wanted to get back to it and something spurred me to finally go for it this year. I’ve always felt good in the water and have done some snorkeling over the years. Anyhow, I decided my 3 elective dives would be Dry Suit (I live in NY), Peak Buoyancy, and Computer/Multi. When I went to the shop for my pre-dive chat with my private instructor on the night before my dives, I expected to be fitted for a 7 mil wet-suit (lake was in low 50’s). I had brought my booties and hood along. But they just fitted me for a dry suit since that was one of my electives and said I would just use that for all of it. Sounded good to me (at least I’d be warm). We did some pool work in the dry suit for about 60-90 mins and I felt pretty good in my first ever dry suit by the end (or so I thought).

OK, let's start here. Your first mistake was in deciding, after a 35 year layoff, to advance your skills rather than review or refresh them. This wasn't really a logical decision on your part. In all activities, skills that are not used are not retained. There is no logical reason to expect scuba diving to be any different. After that long of a layoff, the appropriate decision would have been to start over. Choosing AOW rather than, at best, a refresher class or optimally a repeat of OW class set you up to fail.

The instructor was a very nice guy, but I wasn’t sure about his actual experience level.

There's your next mistake. It's great that he was a nice guy, but you aren't hiring him for his personality ... you're paying for his expertise, which you weren't sure about. Would you hire a plumber to work on your house without being sure of his actual experience level? Well think about it ... there's a lot more at stake with scuba instruction, since it has a direct impact on your ability to continue living.

After doing in-pool buoyancy, me, at 230 lbs. ended up with 36 lbs of weight! Seemed right at the time, but I did have some issues with feeling just slightly off. Instructor said we’d work on it the next morning at the lake and he brought some extra weights just in case.

If you're having issues in the pool you fix them in the pool ... they're not somehow going to just get better in OW, where conditions are going to introduce additional challenges and stressors. That's why we do the pool sessions in the first place.

Next morning the two of us did a “buoyancy dive” mostly just getting used to the suit in the lake and then getting down to ~35 feet. I practiced using just my suit for buoyancy (as it seemed to describe in the PADI manual). I seemed to stay pretty balanced through my 1^st dive with no real issues and 36 lbs of weight. Apparently well enough to clear the Dry Suit and Peak Buoyancy dives. But then came the Nav. Dive. I’m good with a compass and for most of the dive I was ok, but eventually started having run-away ascents when I ascended up 20-15 feet.

OK, first off ... you "cleared" two dives but actually only did one? And if you're having runaway ascents on the very next dive, then you didn't "clear" Peak Buoyancy at all ... you simply survived it without a significant failure. As to why you started having runaway ascents, I'd hazard is because you were given the extra task of looking at a compass, and therefore weren't paying as much attention to your buoyancy control as you were on the previous dive. The key to buoyancy control is responding to changes in buoyancy state quickly ... before air expansion/compression due to depth changes makes the required response too large. With your eyes and mind on the compass, you weren't noticing those changes until they were too far gone to deal with them effectively.

The whole point of Peak Buoyancy is to train you to recognize the stimuli (both visual and feel) that would prompt you to react ... and to train you how to react. It sounds to me like that particular phase of your training wasn't very effective.

My instructor (who I repeat was a heck of a nice guy) didn’t seem to have a good answer and by then I was out of air. Day over.

The most likely reason for why he didn't have a good answer would be that, despite his wonderful personality, he didn't have sufficient skill and knowledge to be teaching you how to solve the problem. And hopefully when you say "out of air" you mean you were at your targeted reserve (usually 500 psi). I'd be very alarmed to learn that an instructor would actually allow a student to run out of air during a class dive.

Maybe it was all my inexperience.

Based on your comments, I'm suspecting that it was a combination of your inexperience and your instructor's inexperience.

He said I’d meet the next day with another instructor from the shop for my 2 final dives and he gave me some extra weights in case I needed them to figure out my buoyancy.

Sometimes buoyancy issues are a result of weighting ... sometimes there are other factors involved, like a poorly fitting drysuit that traps air or something as simple as not understanding how to respond to the dynamics of managing the air bubble with depth changes. Some of these can be resolved with practice, but a poorly fitting drysuit will always make managing the air in your suit more difficult. Without seeing what your suit looked like on your body, that problem would be difficult to diagnose. If you were using a rental suit, it's reasonable to suspect that this may have been at least one mitigating factor in your difficulties.

In any case, while it's nice to be prepared with more weight, an experienced drysuit instructor would have been looking at how your suit fit, at whether your trim was allowing air to get trapped in your lower extremities, at your breathing pattern (exertion and heavy breathing has dramatic effects on your buoyancy) ... and giving you some idea what changes to make to resolve the problem.

Later that night I called a divemaster friend of mine who said he thought I had way too much weight. Then I searched the net and read a bit, coming to the same conclusion (I mostly had a problem with air ballooning into my legs on ascent).

Likely, but without knowing what undergarment you were using, your body composition, the type of drysuit you were diving, and a few other factors, it's diffficult to say.

I decided to go from 36 lbs. to 28 and next morning met my 2 instructors. Very experienced guys, much more so, it seemed than the 1^st guy. They seemed to agree with my weight reduction and we started our deep dive along with 2 other guys doing a specialty dive. Got down fine to 85 feet and I felt pretty good with my weight and after a short time at that depth we started heading back up a deep slope. Suddenly at ~ 65-55 feet I started to feel a rapid ascent beginning. I dumped all the air I thought I could while the 2 instructors held my legs down. I was running much lower on air than I should have been as well and they guided me back to the ascent rope with their buddy air. We got up slowly to 15 and did a safety stop. I ended up fine, but apparently this was (rightfully so) a FAIL on my deep dive.

I would never ... EVER ... take a student deep who just told me they had corked on the previous dive. These guys set you up for failure. Rapid ascent from 85 feet is serious business ... potentially life-threatening. Maybe you didn't know better, but THEY certainly should have. Bringing you up on their air is a significant failure on their part ... even based on what you've posted in this thread my conclusion is that you were certainly not ready to be taken deep ... based on your overall experience level, the fact that you had failed to maintain buoyancy on your last dive, and because you had made significant weight changes without doing a shallower dive first to see if they were the right changes to make.

This dive was certainly a major fail ... but it wasn't you who failed, it was your instructors. They never should have allowed this dive to happen.

Following that and a rest period, one instructor took out some more weight, so I was at 24 lbs and we worked hard on my buoyancy again, and breathing regulation. I did very well controlling myself in a bunch of drills in 15-30 ft. and by the time I was done I felt as if I really had the dry-suit + weight buoyancy nailed. Great Instructor, very patient and knew exactly how to get me where I needed to be.

Well fine ... but this dive should have happened prior to the deep dive. If it had happened that way, your chances for success would have been greatly increased and you wouldn't have been put in a very dangerous situation that required them to both hold you down and donate air. Such actions in a class at your level are inexcusable.

So, unfortunately I had no time for another deep dive because I had to fly home after a full day of no-diving. Not having one instructor throughout confused the program a bit, and it wasn’t clear to me, but I assumed if I had one more day, they would have gotten me another deep dive and therefore the AOW Certification I thought I would get. Yes, 4 dives are signed off in my book, but now what? I won’t be back in this area for a long time. Too cold back in NY.

Team teaching can offer significant benefits to the student if it's done properly. What it sounds like to me is that there was a lack of communication between your first instructor and the subsequent two. Because you indicated your first instructor couldn't figure out why you were having problems that's not surprising. It doesn't however, excuse the very poor judgement on the part of the subsequent two instructors to take you deep without further remedial work first.

So, VERY sorry for the LONG story, but I’m frustrated a bit. I know my inexperience is the main factor, and planning in too small a window, but all I heard was how you can always get this all done in a weekend! My biggest beef is that I think the first instructor was too inexperienced and should have known I was over-weighted. I figured that was what we did the Peak Buoyancy dive FIRST – to get that sorted out. But it took the 2^nd instructor to get me fixed when it was a bit too late.

Here's my advice ... get your priorities straight. Don't focus on getting the card ... focus on getting the skills. The card is a follow-on. These guys took some serious short-cuts, and put you in a very dangerous situation. You went along because at your level most people are inherently trusting of their instructors. You shouldn't be. These guys are running a business. Their objective is to get you through the class as quickly and cheaply as possible, and then move on to the next person who pushed money across the counter. Your safety is YOUR responsibility. If it doesn't feel right, don't go there. The fact that you couldn't maintain your buoyancy on the second dive of the first day should have been a clue that you weren't ready to go deep. You don't need experience to tell you that ... a healthy sense of survival is all that it should take. Depth compounds problems, and increases risks dramatically. You just don't go deep until you can handle the shallow dives without serious issues ... and an uncontrolled ascent to the surface is a serious issue. My best advice to you is in the future, don't worry about whether or not your instructor is a nice guy ... worry about whether or not they can help you resolve your problems, and whether or not they are making decisions you're comfortable with. It's not always easy, because I'm certain you really wanted to do that deep dive and get it done ... but the failure of the previous day and the failure of your instructor to help you resolve it on that day means you're not ready to go deep. And any time you make significant weighting changes, DO NOT GO DEEP ON THE VERY NEXT DIVE! Get your issues worked out in the shallows first.

Questions:
1) Should the shop and or instructor been clear that I might be biting off more than I could chew by using a dry suit throughout with no experience? Shouldn’t it have been a wetsuit AOW Cert. with a Dry-suit intro dive?

That's the advice I would have given you ... it normally takes a few dives to get comfortable in a drysuit, and those dives should NOT be done deep. They set you up for failure.

2) Did I get “screwed” on a Peak Perf Buoyancy Dive which wasn’t by having an instructor who overweighted me and should have known better?

I think so ...

3) Or was I just bound to fail anyhow in this time frame simply due to my inexperience?

Likely, but hard to say for sure without seeing you in the water.

I’m glad I got in some diving anyhow and I did learn a lot, especially on my last day, but can’t help feeling a bit ripped off.

True that you probably paid for more than what you got ... but in the long scheme of things consider that (a) you didn't get seriously injured, which could have happened easily given what you described about your deep dive, and (b) you got a good lesson in the "caveat emptor" of the scuba industry. There are a lot of inexperienced dive instructors out there ... most of whom are nice guys, but who can't really help you because they haven't been diving long enough to have learned how to do anything that isn't in the book yet.

I paid for an AOW course and feel like I didn’t really get what I paid for. I don’t really want to complain to the shop, or about my 1st

instructor, but should I say something, or just accept the fact that this one falls on my inexperience,etc?

You probably didn't get what you paid for. That's one of my major complaints with how AOW is sold. I'd be less concerned about it if it didn't involve a deep dive, but way too many people walk away with a card that tells them they are somehow "qualified" for deep diving when they're not ... even if in most cases it didn't result in the sort of experience you had. These people are relying on luck to keep them from inadvertently hurting themselves or someone else ... and all because an instructor took them deep, parked them on their knees, and gave them a puzzle to solve. Did they mention anything to you about how much air you'd need to make it back to the surface safely? Did they even do the minimal "watch your gauge and let us know when you reach xxx psi?" If not, they failed you miserably ... and the fact that they had to bring you up on their air makes me thing that not only weren't you watching your gauge, they weren't either ... which should scare the crap out of you.

4) Did anybody actually read this whole thing? God Bless You if you did!!

Yes ... because I care about new divers learning how to improve their skills safely, and want them to be able to do so in an environment that gives them an opportunity to succeed, not just survive..

Thanks, and looking forward to more dives as soon as I can get enough $$ to pay to fly where I can dive in a damn wetsuit for a change.

Drysuit diving can greatly expand your opportunities for getting in the water. But you need to be realistic that (a) it's expensive, (b) you MUST be in a suit that fits you properly, and most rental drysuits won't unless you have an "off the rack" size body, and (c) it takes a few dives to get the hang of it ... and those dives should be done in shallow water.

I just yesterday certified an OW student who did the entire class in a drysuit. The water temp here is 43 degrees F right now, and you'd have to be very brave indeed to be diving a wetsuit. But in the five dives we did for her OW class we never went below 40 feet. We did all of her pool work in the drysuit. And we spent over an hour of class time going over drysuit fit, function, and maintenance before we ever got in the water. Learning to manage the air bubble in a drysuit isn't rocket surgery, but it helps to follow a progression that takes time and dives before you should ever attempt going deep in one.

Hope that helps. Before considering redoing your deep dive, please go read an article I posted on my website some years ago. You don't have to agree with all of it, but please give some consideration to what it says ... it's likely more information than you got from those two instructors who took you down there ... NWGratefulDiver.com

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[fnfalman]

My opinion right off is that the OP already put himself into a disadvantage by trying to take an AOW class after 35 years of not diving AND adding drysuit to that.

The instructor should have nipped it in the bud right then and there and told the OP to do a refresher course instead.

I think that faults all around on this one.

 

[FishLovingStudent]

The Diveshop I went through OW does Dry suit for EVERYBODY, with an optional Dry Suit Specialty tack on for individuals interested. I am 170lbs, and I weight myself 32lbs, down from 36lbs when I got new 200g fleece thermals. What I'm getting at is, a Dry suit should not be overwhelming and I do not think you were overweighted by any means. Maybe even underweighted.

You definitely should have taken a refresher course, 35 years is along time especially if you were just at an OW level.

 

[carvemeister]

Wow! I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses and advice. There's no way I can possibly reply to all of them, so I'll try and just reply to a few of the points made by NWGratefulDiver, since he spent some serious time in responding. I agree with much of what has been pointed out and disagree somewhat as well. Maybe I'm just thickheaded. But I was really only following the guidelines of PADI because right on their website it states the following regarding the AOW Certification:

"PADI Advanced Open Water Diver Course - Exploration, Excitement, Experiences. They’re what the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course is all about. And no, you don’t have to be “advanced” to take it – it’s designed so you can go straight into it after the PADI Open Water Diver course. The Advanced Open Water Diver course helps you increase your confidence and build your scuba skills so you can become more comfortable in the water."

So, based on the advice of those who I knew who've taken it, along with the instructor here in NY who did give me a brief refresher, I didn't see (and still don't see) any reason it should have been avoided in favor of repeating the initial OW course all over again, etc as some have suggested. I did review the entire OW manual anyhow and the information was not foreign to me. I don't think I really needed to go through all the mask clearing, buddy system, equipment familiarizations, etc. all over again. Call me stupid, but I'm putting most of my eggs in the basket which says I should never have attempted the deep dive being a novice in a dry suit. I don't think I would have had any trouble had I opted for a wetsuit.

Clearly I need more time in a dry suit before attempting another deep dive in one. And of course I need much more experience under my belt before I attempt a lot of things. However, I still believe it was not unreasonable to expect to come away with an AOW. Aside from the dry-suit issues, the 5 dive requirements, given some of the options, don't seem that daunting. I mean... "Fish Identification?" "Underwater Naturalist?" Not sure I really need to re-do the whole OW program before I do those. But, I guess it all depends on the instructor and what he puts into those dives as well.

...There's your next mistake. It's great that he was a nice guy, but you aren't hiring him for his personality ... you're paying for his expertise, which you weren't sure about. Would you hire a plumber to work on your house without being sure of his actual experience level? Well think about it ... there's a lot more at stake with scuba instruction, since it has a direct impact on your ability to continue living.

Yes, I get it. I merely mentioned he was a nice guy. I didn't say I hired him because of it. I guess I could have / should have been more diligent when I called the dive shop to set this all up. Not sure it would have been a different outcome, but point taken.

...

OK, first off ... you "cleared" two dives but actually only did one? And if you're having runaway ascents on the very next dive, then you didn't "clear" Peak Buoyancy at all ... you simply survived it without a significant failure. As to why you started having runaway ascents, I'd hazard is because you were given the extra task of looking at a compass, and therefore weren't paying as much attention to your buoyancy control as you were on the previous dive. The key to buoyancy control is responding to changes in buoyancy state quickly ... before air expansion/compression due to depth changes makes the required response too large. With your eyes and mind on the compass, you weren't noticing those changes until they were too far gone to deal with them effectively.

The whole point of Peak Buoyancy is to train you to recognize the stimuli (both visual and feel) that would prompt you to react ... and to train you how to react. It sounds to me like that particular phase of your training wasn't very effective.

I completely agree, hence my feeling that I didn't get the best "instruction" particularly when it came to dry suit.

...The most likely reason for why he didn't have a good answer would be that, despite his wonderful personality, he didn't have sufficient skill and knowledge to be teaching you how to solve the problem. And hopefully when you say "out of air" you mean you were at your targeted reserve (usually 500 psi).

Sorry I mentioned the personality thing, yes, ok. :depressed: And I did finish with ~600 psi.

...Sometimes buoyancy issues are a result of weighting ... sometimes there are other factors involved, like a poorly fitting drysuit that traps air or something as simple as not understanding how to respond to the dynamics of managing the air bubble with depth changes. Some of these can be resolved with practice, but a poorly fitting drysuit will always make managing the air in your suit more difficult. Without seeing what your suit looked like on your body, that problem would be difficult to diagnose. If you were using a rental suit, it's reasonable to suspect that this may have been at least one mitigating factor in your difficulties.

In any case, while it's nice to be prepared with more weight, an experienced drysuit instructor would have been looking at how your suit fit, at whether your trim was allowing air to get trapped in your lower extremities, at your breathing pattern (exertion and heavy breathing has dramatic effects on your buoyancy) ... and giving you some idea what changes to make to resolve the problem.

Yes.

...

This dive was certainly a major fail ... but it wasn't you who failed, it was your instructors. They never should have allowed this dive to happen.

I'm not going to disagree with that.

... Here's my advice ... get your priorities straight. Don't focus on getting the card ... focus on getting the skills. The card is a follow-on.

I agree with this as well now that all is said and done. At the time however, and according to what PADI seems to state themselves, the AOW "card" is just another little adventure step which can be taken right after your AOW class. Nothing said there about needing any significant experience. It "seemed" to me that the brief refresher I took (yes, it was brief) should have been enough to re-familiarize myself with the bouyancy skills I had "way back in the day" when I dove in a wetsuit. But of course, more diving in the interim would have been a great thing, no doubt.

....And any time you make significant weighting changes, DO NOT GO DEEP ON THE VERY NEXT DIVE! Get your issues worked out in the shallows first.

Thanks, and you bet I will!

...

Did they mention anything to you about how much air you'd need to make it back to the surface safely? Did they even do the minimal "watch your gauge and let us know when you reach xxx psi?" If not, they failed you miserably ... and the fact that they had to bring you up on their air makes me thing that not only weren't you watching your gauge, they weren't either ... which should scare the crap out of you.

They did. They made it very clear to give a "time out signal" when my air got to 1500 psi. I did, in fact alert them when that happened and we had just started our way back at that point (if I remember correctly).

...

Hope that helps. Before considering redoing your deep dive, please go read an article I posted on my website some years ago. You don't have to agree with all of it, but please give some consideration to what it says ... it's likely more information than you got from those two instructors who took you down there

Thanks again for all the advice. I'll mosey on mover to read you article as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully I don't come off as too much of an arrogant schmuck! I can be a bit stubborn, but I am ultimately determined to get very good at this, safely, and maybe, hopefully, most of this advice will sink in a little better before my next dive.