I am reading posts written by experienced divers and I am very surprised to hear such statements "she might need to hire some assistant" to do tech dive, let's be softer on her and give another chance, etc.
Technical diving is different from recreational diving as it involves much higher risks. Person, who is a real technical diver should be a way better than recreational diver. Such diver should be physically fit to handle heavier and bigger equipment or find a way how to overcome his / her limitations (e.g. in this forum I read about handicapped cave diver who has only one leg.... however, such diver does not need any external assistance to execute dives). Another, even the more important quality is to be able to make rational and sound decisions, e.g. decide to terminate dive if conditions are bad, make other quality decisions underwater. Now let's look at this specific situation:
1) Diver is not able to handle heavy equipment, to get in or out of water. I agree with statement that such diver is a liability because crew, buddy always have to take care of such diver. Do you want to dive with a buddy who ALWAYS needs assistance. What about situations that something wrong happens with buddy? Such diver will not be able to provide assistance because she needs assistance.
2) Attitude. I understand that she already had near death experience and instructor imposed her various restrictions (single tank, restricted depth), which she completely IGNORED. This very clearly shows that you can not trust such person. I understand that she is obsessed with wreck diving and wants to do deep wreck diving at all costs. This clearly shows that such diver does not have technical diver mindset and is DANGEROUS for herself and her buddy. I could never trust such diver judgement.
3) There are other bits and pieces that normally can be overcome in tech training: calculations of gas consumption, MOD, etc, fining techniques, buoyancy, trim. However, if person is still not able to make this right after 4 years (please take into account that these are not my words) this shows that definitely something is wrong.
Based on all these facts think about yourself. Would you want to do a challenging deep wreck diving with diver whom you can not trust, who will need to be kept eye on and you will always need to be ready to rescue her. Can you call such diver as technical diver? No, No, No.
For me this is a very clear case when instructor should openly tell her that she can not be certified as technical diver.... even if she would overcome physical limitations because she does not have technical diver mindset. Purpose of this post is not to bash on
@Marie13 but to expose inconvenient truth that she and some other people still do not want to admit. Nobody wants to read articles that "technical diver" died in attempting deep wreck dive.
