How good should one be at diving fresh out of OW?

[DAN.ger]

Reading people talk about poorly taught dive students in another thread have led me to wonder, how good at diving should one be immediately after OW?

Thanks!
--Dan(ger)

 

[Scuba_Noob]

I think being skilled/comfortable enough in the water to lead a safe dive with an adequate buddy at a familiar dive site is expected after OW certification, because that's what certification "qualifies" you to do. You should be able to check your gauges/depth and your buddy regularly while diving without feeling extremely task-loaded. As well, you should be able to deal with a few issues (e.g., mask flooding, lost reg, reg freeflow, etc.) and not do anything dangerous.

With me, I didn't have that much comfort/skill to do this at first, so I did a few dives with more experienced divers to build up my comfort and diving skills.

Buoyancy and further comfort will come with more experience. Obviously it's not expected that buoyancy and trim be perfect your first few dives after.

 

[Centrals]

I could not tell if I was properly taught or not during my OW course. I just dived well within my level of comfort and training ie. 18m was the absolute maximum.
AOW was 20 logged dive afterwards.
Spending the best part of my first 50 dives on buoyancy control, breathing technique etc etc.

 

[TSandM]

Ideally? You should be able to plan and execute a safe dive, with a buddy of similar experience, in conditions similar to or better than those in which you trained. That means a reasonable degree of buoyancy control, the ability to stay together, and enough navigation information to be able to go out and come back.

In my experience, divers just out of OW in Puget Sound are rarely able to do this. They struggle with buoyancy control and find navigating in low viz to be a real challenge. They are so overloaded with the mechanics of diving in cold water that they have trouble keeping track of buddies and keeping track of where they are. Only the most talented students can really execute a simple dive well at the end of OW.

 

[DAN.ger]

Reading people talk about poorly taught dive students in another thread have led me to wonder, how good at diving should one be immediately after OW?

Thanks!
--Dan(ger)

I should explain, I've been diving for a few years now, but lack of funding and transportation (I'm in college after all) has prevented me from diving more. However, despite my mere 21 dives, I feel like diving comes naturally to me and I'm very comfortable underwater.
When I did AOW I felt like two other divers in the class were not very skilled at all, and had I been an instructor I very well may not have passed her. So what I am getting at is, at what point does a lack of experience/skill make an instructor not pass a student, and how can you differentiate between a lack of skill and just the need to practice them a little more

 

[bracko]

skilled enough to execute a dive somewhat safely with hints from the OW manual along the way... especially for dive planning. Don't be afraid to write down the complete list of planning points and follow them step by step.

I think the biggest thing to note is that while you can legally hire a tank and go diving you are completely unskilled in managing a problem that presents itself (e.g. a tank slipping from your tank strap while in mid water, BCD low pressure inflator suddenly free flowing, BCD bladder breaking, weight belt slipping off... the list is endless...)

take baby steps, dive with social clubs, dive with experienced divers, do your first few dives at the training sites you did on your course (perhaps a different area of the same site if possible?) before attacking a dive in a new location with your equally newbie dive buddy.

 

[Doomnova]

Ideally? You should be able to plan and execute a safe dive, with a buddy of similar experience, in conditions similar to or better than those in which you trained. That means a reasonable degree of buoyancy control, the ability to stay together, and enough navigation information to be able to go out and come back.

In my experience, divers just out of OW in Puget Sound are rarely able to do this. They struggle with buoyancy control and find navigating in low viz to be a real challenge. They are so overloaded with the mechanics of diving in cold water that they have trouble keeping track of buddies and keeping track of where they are. Only the most talented students can really execute a simple dive well at the end of OW.

I'm at 24 dives here in victoria which is to much better in terms of vis and I would only plan and lead a dive here to sites I have been at least 3 times. Getting control of your buoyancy in a drysuit can be quite a bit of work and thus I fully agree with TSandM. Even then when i have though of a dive or two I plan very conservatively when its with a person I have not dove with before.

As far a buoyancy control and trim it comes down to time in the water and working on simple goal every dive. I picked 3 things to work on during a dive each time I went in. One for decent. One for the bottom. and you guessed it one On ascent. These goal do not have to be grant. Simply a very slow ascent from the safety stop which a few of my friends are emulating to improve their skills. Also Underwater navigation is not exactly easy at time if there are not alot of natural features to navigate around. I'll use the little unknown wreck dive up in Deep Cove. You can swim out a fair bit and be in the right general area but the bottom pretty much looks all the same. So you don't know whether you came down to the north east south or west of the wreck. So learning ot navigate a site can be difficult. Also learning to keep track of where you are takes alot of work. Which is a combination of keeping track of compass headings and natural navigation.

One of the classes on my big to do list is the Underwater Navigation specialty even thought I have my AOW as I felt alot more comfortable doing dives now that I know how to keep somewhat of an idea of where I am. I think that was one of the thing that my OW lacked more than anything was how to find your way around underwater.

 

[nolatom]

I was insta-buddied once to a new diver on his 7th or so dive, first ocean dive from a boat.

We went to 100 feet on the Chevron rig pieces off Pensacola (hard to go less on that dive, it tops out at around 80). He was a good communicator and knew the signals, stayed close, didn't wolf down air, good situational awareness, and fairly relaxed even tho that was over twice as deep as he'd done previously. Afterwards he was pretty stoked about the whole thing. Second dive was good, too.

I would like to thank his instructor, some SSI guy from Colorado as I recall.

 

[fjpatrum]

How good? That's kind of a relative thing, I think. From my perspective, as a newb, I am able to plan my dives and then dive them according to my plans. I need work on navigation in low viz. My buoyancy & trim are getting better with each dive but there's still obvious room for improvement and I need to practice helicopter turns and back kicks. I occasionally have issues clearing my mask so I do it A LOT. I am reasonable with air consumption-- not great, not horrible. I generally practice at least one skill (other than buoyancy/trim) on each dive I do so I can feel comfortable with them if I need them in an "emergency".

I'm far from being "good" but I think I'm a little better than average for a newb with less than 20 dives. Of course, I'm also confident to the edge of arrogant so maybe that's part of it...

 

[DAN.ger]

I'd just like to clarify, I'm not worried about myself, but rather future buddies I may have. Half of my diving experience has been essentially unsupervised at sites we had never been to before.

Two other divers I saw in my AOW class were, quite frankly, terrible divers, and I want to know if you think that may have come from their lack of experience and uncomfortableness in the water, or if they were taught poorly. Is it normal for a noob diver to have no buoyancy control at all and not know any signals aside from "ok" and "out of air", or were they very bad at diving?