I'm hooked.... how to progress

[clownfishsydney]

I would say that first off you need to get many more open water dives under your belt before thinking about doing cave diving.

 

[EireDiver606]

No, a Tech Pass means the instructor is willing to have you take tech 1 or cave 1 tomorrow, and they are confident they won't get an angry phone call at 8 pm of day 1 from your first tech instructor.

With GUE you need at least 25 dives between courses regardless or not whether you got a tech pass I think

 

[PfcAJ]

With GUE you need at least 25 dives between courses regardless or not whether you got a tech pass I think

Regardless of what the standards say, 25 dives between fundamentals and a level 1 class is good for diver development. Let’s those new skills sink in and become second nature.

If they aren’t, cave 1 or tech 1 will reveal it.

 

[sigxbill]

May I suggest UTD Essentials of Tech. You can take it in the Bay Area from Don Chennavasin at dchennavasin@yahoo.com. UTD is the competition to GUE, and I prefer UTD. BUT - if you have any trouble scheduling a UTD class, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend GUE Fundamentals as a close second. Either of these classes will get you well on your way to becoming a cave diver, and will greatly improve your open water diving. Anything else local to you is a crapshoot ...

After UTD Essentials: Overhead Protocols, Cave 1, Cave 2.

There is the option of doing Overhead Protocols in San Diego. This could save you money, and might work out better for your schedule - by knocking out the overhead training that is done in open water separately. By doing this, you will be able to spend 100% of your time at the caves actually in the caves!

Cheers

Essentials of Tech, Cave, Wreck Back Mount · UTD Scuba Diving

Top shelf cave instructors:
Caveheaven. Tulum - UTD cave training & instructor development center
Cave Diving Tulum / Cenote Diving
Tek-Center Cave Diving Mexico – Harry Gust – Cave Diving Courses and Guided Cave Cave Diving in the aria of Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

 

[chrisch]

I would say that first off you need to get many more open water dives under your belt before thinking about doing cave diving.

I think this too, but if the caves are of interest a lot of that diving can be preparation for that ultimate goal.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you mess up in a cave you almost certainly will die. A lot of mistakes and issues that can be overcome in open water diving are much more serious in an overhead environment. Likewise the restrictions of cave passages mean your buddy is unable to give as much help in that environment. (This is one of the reasons I do not understand the recommendation for sidemount at this early stage. Sidemount doesn't really work all that well with the long hose system of donated gas.)

It is certainly a good idea to get some of the mistakes we all make out the way in a less demanding environment. That said if caves are the goal then let's not crush that enthusiasm too soon. A decent training program with practice dives should add a good few entries into the log book. The other issue is buoyancy. Caves need excellent buoyancy skills. Unfortunately the variation between new divers can be huge. If trained properly some can be good, but others are still over-weighted and finning to stay buoyant even after a couple of hundred dives.

Getting your buoyancy and trim sorted out is essential and for some people it is going to be a long process whilst others find it easy. We don't know where the OP sits on this spectrum - this is why I suggest a cavern course with a good instructor (agree 100% with the earlier comments about finding the right person for that task)

Also it is important (I think) that diving experience is varied, not just about adding another XXX dives in the same place again and again. 1,000 dives in a quarry will not prepare you for diving in the ocean in a current. 5,000 dives with a guide on a coral reef in a group will not prepare you for a low visibility, cold water dive just you and a buddy at depth.

I totally agree the OP needs to get some more experience but with a little thought that experience can be targetted at the goal of becoming a cave diver, not just notching up numbers in a log book.

 

[mdax]

You're in the northwest, first thing I'd do is get a good drysuit and get good in it.
Take a gue fundamentals class, regardless of where you get further cave training, this is a great step I encourage everyone to do.
Get really solid in your drysuit with doubles and light in open water. There are some amazing dives in the northwest, do all of them!

You can certainly learn and cave dive while living far away, hopefully you have good pto accrual because once you're bitten it get's pretty addictive!

Just be sure to be realistic about the fact you have large breaks and plan your dives accordingly. Enjoy the journey in the caves.

 

[victor808]

Too late.... Enthusiasm.... Crushed....

Guess if I'm gonna get the dive number up without blowing budget I'm gonna have to buy some equipment and do some shore dives. Up to now I've really only gone diving while traveling (woman likes beaches, I burn... Diving gets her to the beach and me away from the sun) so buying my own equipment is impractical.

This may take longer than I hoped....

 

[Germie]

Many many cave trained divers dont live near any divable caves I wouldn't let that dissuade you from getting trained.

Absolutely true. I don't live near caves, it is a 8 to 12 hour drive. But I try to get 8 weeks a year in caves.

I have done my cavern, intro and full cave in 7 days in Thailand. It was amazing. Some divers can do better first intro to cave only, but others can go directly to full cave. In France doing cavern is mostly not done as there aren't real caverns there. It will be a 5 minute dive, or a 0 minute dive as there is really no cavern or the entrance starts with a 'restriction'. Some caves have sometimes a cavernzone, but that can be done due to a brown river the next day. Doing caverndives in France is very limited. It is not Mexico. In Malta you have seacaves and then you can do a caverncourse or dive.

 

[halocline]

. Sidemount doesn't really work all that well with the long hose system of donated gas.)

What makes you say that? I've done dozens of single file air sharing drills with sidemount divers, it's pretty much exactly the same as BM.

 

[chrisch]

What makes you say that? I've done dozens of single file air sharing drills with sidemount divers, it's pretty much exactly the same as BM.

No not exactly the same - it cannot access the gas in the other tank. This is one of the issues with the current fad of open water sidemount and the industry's attempt to make sidemount comply with gas sharing protocols. In a sidemount team there should be no need to share gas, the OOG diver has two independent gas systems - this is one good advantage of sidemount. However, because this has become a fad rather than a need driven system there are mixed equipment buddy pairs and teams where a OOG diver needs to take gas from a sidemount equipped buddy.

In an open water situation this is OK and the addition of an AAS to one or other of the tanks works. In a restriction where a long hose is deployed only that tank can donate gas. This forces the issue and either the tank has to have two 2nds or the donating diver must breathe from the other tank. Such an arrangement is very limiting and so with rule of thirds and potentially sharing from only one tank such a combination is very very limited in it's gas capacity for penetration.

Open water and caves are not the same and equipment configuration is much more important in a cave system. Sidemount was originally a cave discipline and is really a solo technique. Team diving in caves really requires gear matching and so if one person is sidemount equipped really all the team should be. The OP is starting out and is (IMHO) being ill advised to look at an advanced technique for penetrating squeezes as a start point. Normally in cave training one is required to have full cave certification before beginning sidemount diving. The fad for open water sidemount is confusing the issue.

Sidemount has its advantages; weight comes off the back if this is an issue and certainly for carrying tanks it is easier one at a time (the reason I looked into sidemount and did the course). However for normal open water diving on recreational profiles and depths it is a nonsense most of the time. For sure there is a element of the diving community for whom equipment is more important than the actual dive I think. My view is simply that the OP is well advised to start down the overhead environment route in conventional equipment to match that used by 99% of the people he is likely to end up diving with. That doesn't exclude the option to move to sidemount at a later date if needs be. Starting down the sidemount route means a lot of training and effort to learn manifold shutdowns if that change is needed, so sidemount to doubles is the harder route.