how many dives/time from beginning techdiving till full trimix did you take?

[Taliena]

How fast in dives or time have between starting technical diving and finishing full trimix did you take?
I have done it quite fast in time, not in dives. I had over 500 dives when I finished my full trimix course.
Still love technical diving. A good friend did it in the same dives, but is working a lot abroad, so it took some years more.

 

[syntaxerrorsix]

It's not a race. I'm not a proponent of the zero to hero fast track. I noticed you went from Cavern to Cave in 6 days. I had ~70 dives in 10 different systems over the course of two years before I completed Cave. What was your curriculum?

 

[Taliena]

I did my cavecourse in 8 days and 18 dives. We started with cavern, that took 4 dives and 2 days. Then we did intro-to-cave and then the last 8 dives (4 days) where full cave. It was a heavy week, but we don't have caves in our country. So we combined this course with a holiday. This way is quite normal for divers in my country. In the morning we did the dryruns and theory, and then we did 2 or 3 dives. It was a whole day from 8 am till 6-7 pm, sometimes later.

 

[Ste Wart]

I had a lot of dives, over a thousand by the time I had finished Full Trimix. But that statistic hides a few facts, namely I was working as an instructor and a large proportion were training or guided dives; neither deep or challenging.

I went from Adv EANX to Full Mix in 3 years. I wasn't doing much tech diving in between the courses though. Still don't. I managed 6 gas dives last year. 4 of which were safely in the realm of Adv EANX, i.e. above 45m.

TBH Cave seems to be the way forward. More dive for your dollar. Hopefully doing cave this year and will pass on expensive gas diving.

 

[boulderjohn]

It is a good question for those who are considering going that route. I believe it depends upon three things: where you live, how much money you have, and what agency you select.

Location: I live in Colorado, where we don't have much at all in the way of technical diving locally. For most of my training, I had to travel with like-minded people 6-7 hours to New Mexico to dive in a deep sink hole. That meant spending three nights in a motel every time I wanted to dive. I had to find a time when there was enough like-minded people to do the trip. Alternatively, I could travel a few thousand miles to some other place. That made it very hard to do the needed dives. It is still that way. It is very hard to find other technical divers here to make such a trip.

Money: The equipment, training, gases, and dive logistics (including travel, boat fees, etc.) can all be very expensive. I know people whose pace of training is based solely on the number of thousands of dollars they can devote to this annually.

Agency: While most agencies have similar requirements, others have vastly different requirements for the number of dives you have to do and the overall experience you have. Most agencies have this philosophy: We will train you until you reach the point of being a safe and competent diver with all the skills needed to complete the dives for which you were trained. If you choose to go on from there and achieve expert status, it is up to you. Other agencies have this philosophy: We will train you and keep training you (while you continue to pay for that training) until you reach expert status for that level of diving, at which point we will certify you to do it on your own. I did the math with the agency I was training with for years and made the decision to switch to a mainstream agency. I completed my advanced trimix training with the new agency and did quite a few advanced trimix dives. I also got my cave certification with another mainstream agency. I am now an instructor with the agency to which I switched for trimix training. If I had stayed with the first agency, I wold probably still be working on the normoxic trimix certification, and I would probably need several more years to get to full trimix. (There was no exaggeration in that.)

 

[tkdgodess]

3 years, 100 dives a year, on a 15 year recreational base. Im sad my courses are over because i love to learn and challenge myself. Reality is most of my local dives are air, most of the things worth seeing deep are a trimix road trip .

 

[kensuf]

The learning never ends.

 

[Taliena]

I had a lot of dives, over a thousand by the time I had finished Full Trimix. But that statistic hides a few facts, namely I was working as an instructor and a large proportion were training or guided dives; neither deep or challenging.

I went from Adv EANX to Full Mix in 3 years. I wasn't doing much tech diving in between the courses though. Still don't. I managed 6 gas dives last year. 4 of which were safely in the realm of Adv EANX, i.e. above 45m.

TBH Cave seems to be the way forward. More dive for your dollar. Hopefully doing cave this year and will pass on expensive gas diving.

I did from adv. eanx to full trimix in 6.5 month (april I finished my adv. nitrox and half october I finished my full trimix). The adv. nitrox course took too much time (wrong choice of instructor), from october to april.

But still learning. Always try to improve my diving. But: diving is fun, so I want to have fun in what I am doing.

 

[KD8NPB]

I did Tec40, Tec45, and Tec50 over a period of a year. The dive portions went quick, we'd do either 2 sundays, or a saturday/sunday per month. Class sessions, we met on skype.

I helps I was diving doubles since OW though.

 

[ajduplessis]

Dave Shaw completed a grand total of 335 dives in 6 years!! 95% of these dive was in high viz and little or no current environments. Starting as recreational diver, moving onto very dead eCCR Full Trimix Cave Diver. 330 dives is not a lot of experience, nor is it a lot of dives per year. Remember he went down to 280m (900ft) in a cave to recover a body with 335 dives under his belt. Lack of practical experience was the contributing/sole factor that lead to his death. Dave IMO had the knowledge and skills to do these dives but his experience let him down. We should all learn from this.

What I want to achieve with this rather blunt statement is that a diver must not be in any hurry to "get" somewhere. You need to dive on a regular basis and build up many, many dives on your current certification level before even thinking of the next thing. I am not talking about the bare minimum to get you to the next level.

As diver (at least IMO) you should become a practitioner. If you don't dive at least twice a month within your current C-Level parameters, then I would seriously suggest slowing down your current training speed and align it to your in-water experience.

Become an "Old" diver, not a "Bold" diver.