Heya Octohelm, I'm really happy to see such drive and passion and I can relate! While I'm now a bit of a dinosaur I started diving also at a very young age and couldn't wait to get certified, and go into the wild blue yonder.
I'm impressed that you've done your homework, and already have an idea of how to proceed within the GUE curriculum. You're living close to some amazing diving (I've been there once and I loved it) so there is real potential for loads of fun!
So my 2 cents of advice:
- Diving doubles: I'll go against your local GUE instructor here, but your end goal seems to be technical diving, that's done with double sets or rebreathers. Yes diving doubles adds a little bit of complexity (and weight!), it also adds a more stable diving platform (compared to diving a single). The big trick with fundies is being in tune with your gear, being used to it. If you step into a fundies with a new drysuit you've never dived and a doubleset your not used to... you are not going to have a GOOD TIME
So yes start diving with a (small) double set, but ask a mentor to give you some advice.
- Prepping for fundies: Don't over practice!! The origins of fundies is a workshop to improve your basic diving skills. If you are spending hours and hours already practicing these skills before you miss out on part what fundies is about. Plus you might be learning things you need to unlearn later, because you are missing details. (no critique to your instructor/tech1 buddy). I understand that you have no access to the sea at this moment (farther away and too cold at this moment), but maybe there are some other spots where you could already dive, without having to hit the pool? In my view the people who pass fundies with a tech rating, have been diving a lot (not practicing a lot... there is a difference), know their gear, and have good awareness (which comes from diving).
- Rec1, Rec2, Rec3, T1, etc: Rec1 and also 2 are amazing courses!! But you are already a diver, . Unless rec 2 gives you significant in water time that you otherwise wouldn't get, I would skip those and just dive, dive, dive... I mean you are getting a new drysuit, that's super cool just dive the **** out of it, get to use it and know it
Aim for Fundies. The same after fundies, you'll get a lot of input from your instructor and will know what parts you need to improve on and practice on (even if you get a tech pass straight away), so just keep diving (with a little bit of practice mixed in between). I don't believe in Rec 3, for T1 it's sufficient just to have your basic skills covered in fundies set in stone. If those are good and you've dived a bunch you are good to go (same goes for all other courses, if you do T2 just make sure your basic skills are good and you've done a bunch of T1 dives, C1, C2 all the same).
- Progression into tech and cave and whatnot! I understand the focus on progression (you are new to diving), but don't focus too much on the technicality of courses and progression. I know quite a bunch of "technical" divers with full cave / full trimix certs that are just laying around somewhere, because they are not doing the dives. They focused on getting the certs, but didn't know why they needed them!!
You need to find out what you LOVE about diving and live in general! Not an easy question and it constantly changes, but you should always keep that in the back of your mind, what do I love about doing this, and pursue that! It's very personal but you need to find that. Why do you want a T1? What do you want to do with it?
Everybody who responds here, has many many dives under his/her belt... they do it because they probably just love being underwater, the simple fact of diving! But most also because they are passionate about something and incorporate this into their diving. Whether that is teaching others, mentoring others, could be video or photo, could be 3D modelling, could be organising and working together on diving projects, could be the history behind a wreck, geology, writing articles and getting published, cleaning ghost nets from the seabed, ... the certificat or "diving level" is just a means to an end!
This makes GUE special, in my opinion it's not the high level of instruction... it's the fact that it brings people together who on the whole just love diving, but also love doing something within that diving hobby. A couple of years ago I was talking to an underwater archeologist who told us that it's very hard to 3D ships underwater in the north sea because vis is bad and there is a lot of particle matte rin the water. We got a bunch of divers together, got permission from the government to dive this protected wreck, and just started talking, planning and then diving. In the end after more than 120 hours on the wreck we managed to 3D it, get loads of pictures, we managed to discover some part of its history not yet known, we got published, we made a small documentary, we got on tv... this not with all superhero divers... no the majority were "just" divers with a fundies cert! (
Westhinder)
Keep us posted on how you do... really interested!
Cheers
