i passed my PADI open water cert, now what?

[hellhole]

Just contact the dc that u did ow.. surely they have recreational dive... and they do know your standard.. and can help if need. ..
Doing aow with them is probably same as diving more.....

 

[TMHeimer]

All posts great advice. Good luck finding a buddy--I'm in the same situation, being far from the shop/city, but if I'm willing to drive 100 mls. round trip I could always find a buddy. AOW is a good idea. I did it with 2 post OW cert. dives, but you should be pretty good with buoyancy and skills. Practise those skills you learned in the pool. They will get rusty if you don't. I admit I did not for the first few dives I did. Try to find a buddy who is more advanced--ideally someone with Rescue certification. I have no problem diving with "newbies" and enjoy helping people out. Consider Rescue cert. as well after maybe 20-30 dives. With PADI you no longer need AOW to do Rescue--just 3 "Adverture" dives. If you do buddy with a fellow "newbie", do really safe "benign" dives and again, practise those skills. Good luck.

 

[drbill]

In the "old days" an OW cert often took you through what is currently in the OW-AOW-Rescue sequence (and the course lasted for three weeks with 3-4 meetings a week). I n view of that I don't feel most current OW certs give a diver enough to be even reasonably competent in the water. Given that, taking AOW soon after OW makes "sense" (and makes dollars for the agency). As has been suggested previously, many shops that conduct certification classes also offer group dives locally or on short trips.

 

[kimbalabala]

IMO you should just dive, dive, dive. If you want to get some supervision take a specialty class - Peak Performance Buoyancy is a good one. My beef with going directly to AOW is that you CAN get there right away, and then you have a card that gives you permission to do dives that you really may not be prepared for. I delayed, delayed, delayed getting AOW because I felt I needed to master the skills of OW before I went to that next step. I feel I did the right thing "for me". If you don't have a buddy I'd guess your local dive shop can pair you up with someone for local dives. Good luck, have fun, and stay safe.

 

[mangoconchile]

thank you guys for the help. there was some excellent advice here and i think i will be taking a peak performance buoyancy class before taking AOW.