Debraw:
Proper hydration is covered in the PADI OW manual and the DVD. All aspects of scuba diving are serious and should be considered a critical factor in your safety. The risk and assesment release you signed prior to class should have given you a pretty good idea of the enormity of the situation. It is terrible you feel "shortchanged" in your training. If you think you have some how missed more than what was covered in your OW class ("3 or 4 major areas"), you should stop diving immediately and go take another course wth a different training agency. To put a lot of the incidents and reports you read here into perspective you should do some research and realize the percentages we are talking about are very small. If you think Scubaboard is bad don't read Alert Diver magazine from DAN you will never get in the water again! I am serious man, if you really feel like you are missing something from your training don't dive. I am totally shocked you are thinking about doing 4 or 5 dives a day this weekend and you are literally afraid of what you may not have learned. You are setting yourself up for a panic dive moment if something, or anything goes wrong. You should feel confident in your training and you can tweak that confidence level by reading Scubaboard and other people's experiences. Good luck from a concerned fellow diver.
Geez, guy, relax !!
Thanks for your concern, but I feel very confident because what I didn't learn in class I've spent much time on my own learning about, studying, and getting very confident with. For example, in spite of some folks' disbelief, we were not taught the likelihood of a BC inflator valve failure, nor were we led thru a simulation of how to recover. And I know that others have said the same thing. In my case it just didn't happen. And as anyone who has simulated it can probably attest, if you haven't actually simulated it and figured out how you're going to recover, you probably won't recover if it actually happens. As a result, once I learned on this board that it is relatively common and is something you need to master, I spent over an hour in my pool simulating and recovering from it, and now I feel very confident about my ability to do it. Something that I'd venture to say a majority of divers can't successfully do.
Another lesson I learned the hard way is that I MUST be VERY bold and assertive about my own safety. In my opinion, that was not stressed in the class nearly to the extent that it is needed for new divers. For many it is a complete change of attitude. To boldly speak up when something isn't right, to not assume others are watching out for you, etc., is something that is not natural for many folks. And unless someone sits down with you and gets you into a different mindset, it's too easy to just go with the flow and let things happen. I've read about a number of accidents that are direct results of this kind of failure of attitude. It wasn't until I started reading about as many dive accidents as possible, and the results of those accidents, that I really started to realize the importance of standing firm and being bold about it.
Maybe proper hydration is covered in the manual, as is failure of the inflator valve, but unless those things are given the proper emphasis and attention, it is very easy for students to leave a class thinking "yeah, drinking water...whatever...can we go diving now??" when in fact it can be very important. When you realize that it can be a factor in your susceptibility to DCI and your health, it suddenly becomes something to take serously.
What concerns me is those folks who finished their OW cert., and stop their studying and training right there and just go diving. My guess is that's pretty common.
Hey, that's one more thing we weren't taught. How to do continuing education on a daily basis, and learn from others' experiences. I found this board just out of my own curiosity and desire to find folks to dive with. Almost accidentally I found an incredibly valuable tool for continuing daily education. I learn a couple of things, or more, every day on this board. Certainly a whole lot more than taking an Advanced OW class.
