I have SDI open water, can I get PADI Advanced?

[ameri180304]

I live in palm springs and was gonna use a local place to step up to advanced diver. I did my open water in riverside, california and got my open water through SDI. Since palm springs only has PADI, can I use my sdi to step up or would that cert require re-certification ?

 

[DevonDiver]

Your SDI certification is recognised as the equivalent of the PADI OW qualification, so you can enroll directly onto the PADI AOW course. There are no problems with this.

Enjoy!

 

[SDiverJim]

That's exactly what I did. Open water was SDI took my advanced and rescue from another shop that was PADI. They didn't question my SDI card.

 

[climbr1]

I dont want to hijack the thread but I have a PADI Rescue and I wanted to get differing opinions and broaden my horizons. Does SDI, Naui and such recognize certs back and forth "generally"? I would guess there are some differences or skills that would need to be shown or verified but I would like to look into Dive Master and wanted some good opinions.

(Nevermind, just saw a thread that details it out.)

 

[tmolm69]

L.A. has two sdi shops if that is not to far of a drive from your loc.

Tim

 

[DevonDiver]

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[mmerriman]

yes...

 

[KJackson60]

Short answer, yes, you can do a PADI Advanced class with an SDI OW Cert.
Longer answer. PADI Advanced Open Water Cert and SDI Advanced Open Water Cert. are not the same thing.
PADI Advanced Cert. requires completion of 5 dives hi-lighting 5 different specialties. Usually one deep dive, one wreck dive, one nav. dive, and two others of your choice. Mine were Search and Recovery and Under Water Naturalist. These are not complete courses in these specialties, more of a sample. This most closely compares to the SDI Advanced Adventure Diver Cert.
SDI Advanced Open Water consists of 5 complete specialty certifications as well as, if I recall correctly, a min. number of dives. The SDI Advanced Open Water Cert. most closely resembles the PADI Master Diver Cert.
I did the PADI AOW Cert. I really enjoyed it and came out of it with some really good skills and a better understanding of what is involved with each of the Specialties we sampled. However I am not trained to the same level as an SDI AOW Cert. diver would be. Either way you are bound to learn something useful. It just depends on what your goals are.

 

[Scott]

PADI Advanced Cert. requires completion of 5 dives hi-lighting 5 different specialties. Usually one deep dive, one wreck dive, one nav. dive, and two others of your choice.

Close.
PADI AOW requires a deep and navigation dive and three others of your choice.

 

[BoltSnap]

If you go for a NAUI leadership course such as DM, AI, etc., you would need NAUI Master Diver and NAUI's Rescue.