So, having finally got some of my tec courses done, here’s the story of how I got to where I am.
First, some background about me as a diver. I first learned to dive in 2005, getting certified (NASE) by the local dive shop where I was stationed in the Navy. I did my OW checkout dives down at Devils Den in Florida and got a few dives in with friends before moving away from the ocean for work. Not knowing of any diving locally, I took about a decade off from diving. I missed it however, and convinced a friend to get certified and dive on a vacation. The cost of the course was about the same as a refresher where we were doing it (Aruba), so I decided to just do the PADI OW course with him. Shortly afterward I discovered a local diving spot and started finding the local dive shops. I did my AOW and nitrox courses out of Pensacola, FL while I was down there for work, then did a number of other rec courses at the local quarry. During this time I also discovered liveaboards and try to do at least one every year.
A couple years ago I missed a number of dives because my buddy didn’t make it, I couldn’t find another buddy, etc. As a result, I decided to get my solo diver cert and did so (well, PADI self-reliant). I also enjoyed my diving that I did in the Cenotes, and so went and got my cavern certification. Around the time I was doing those two courses, I started really thinking about moving into tec diving. By the spring of 2019, after attending a tec seminar at the local dive shop in April (iirc), I was sure I wanted the ability to go to wrecks I couldn’t feasibly dive as a recreational diver, or couldn’t dive them to my satisfaction at least. So, I signed up with the local dive shop’s tec instructor for the first two courses they were offering (Tec 40 and 45). At this point I probably had around 150 dives under my belt. The frustration I’d find when trying to pursue technical training would start soon after…
Three of us that dive locally all were signed up for the tec 40 course, and we regularly saw the instructor at the local dive site. After a month or so, waiting to get the course scheduled, we started asking about getting it scheduled… just about every weekend. By September I was beyond frustrated, and about ready to cancel the course and get my money back… and said pretty much that in what was far from my first email with the instructor, but it did the job and we finally got the class scheduled. We did the classroom portion the first week of October and had dives scheduled for that month. Work got in the way for me, however, and I had to reschedule those dives… or rather, try to reschedule them…. We’ll get back to those dives in a little while.
While waiting for those dives, in December I decided to take a vacation in February and thought it would be a good time to take my cavern cert up a notch and see about doing intro-to-cave. The timing, with my vacation only a couple months away, and thus limited availability of instructors, wasn’t perfect and it was during that search for training I discovered that my PADI cavern cert, done in a single tank configuration, was effectively worthless as far as any of the respected cave instructors were concerned where I was looking to do it. At the time, that was very frustrating to me. I had a certification that I found to be very taxing training, that online resources said is “equivalent” to the training that all the “intro to cave/cave 1” pre-requisites said I needed (or their equivalents), and the instructors weren’t going to count it, or not count it much. In the end, I decided to accept their judgement and instead of packing my vacation full of training that wouldn’t “progress” my certification level any, I decided to do a skills “workshop” with one of the shops instead. Originally planning to spend 2 days doing that on my vacation, but some food decided to remind me that Mexico is known for more than just the Cenotes and salsa, and so I cancelled the second day of training. I got a lot of good feedback on propulsion techniques in that one day however, so I was happy I did that training. I also started looking into maybe doing training with some well respected people closer to home, but then work and Covid got in the way of doing any of that for a while.
About 15 months after signing up for tec 40 and 45, and still not having the dives done for tec 40, I went and cancelled my tec 45 at the LDS and got a refund on that course, but couldn’t do anything about 40 since we’d started it already. At that point I decided to pursue doing my tec training elsewhere, and I subsequently found a LOT of different advice/suggestions/information from the internet, dive shops, and tec instructors. Ranging from “don’t take Intro to tec because it’s a waste and you’ll get everything you need in AN/DP” to “ITT will teach you whatever configuration you want” to “ITT isn’t about teaching you to dive in doubles etc, so you should be competent in your doubles configuration before you start the course” (not to mention the standard Scubaboard response of doing GUE Fundies, let’s leave that out of this discussion though please). That made it quite difficult to try and figure out what IS actually being taught in ITT. In the end, I decided I was going to go with an instructor that a friend liked when he did other classes with them who was up-front and candid about discussing what we could expect to learn in the ITT course. My buddy and I signed up for the course and it was on the books for less than 2 months later. We also booked AN/DP with that instructor for the following month.
Continued in the next post.
First, some background about me as a diver. I first learned to dive in 2005, getting certified (NASE) by the local dive shop where I was stationed in the Navy. I did my OW checkout dives down at Devils Den in Florida and got a few dives in with friends before moving away from the ocean for work. Not knowing of any diving locally, I took about a decade off from diving. I missed it however, and convinced a friend to get certified and dive on a vacation. The cost of the course was about the same as a refresher where we were doing it (Aruba), so I decided to just do the PADI OW course with him. Shortly afterward I discovered a local diving spot and started finding the local dive shops. I did my AOW and nitrox courses out of Pensacola, FL while I was down there for work, then did a number of other rec courses at the local quarry. During this time I also discovered liveaboards and try to do at least one every year.
A couple years ago I missed a number of dives because my buddy didn’t make it, I couldn’t find another buddy, etc. As a result, I decided to get my solo diver cert and did so (well, PADI self-reliant). I also enjoyed my diving that I did in the Cenotes, and so went and got my cavern certification. Around the time I was doing those two courses, I started really thinking about moving into tec diving. By the spring of 2019, after attending a tec seminar at the local dive shop in April (iirc), I was sure I wanted the ability to go to wrecks I couldn’t feasibly dive as a recreational diver, or couldn’t dive them to my satisfaction at least. So, I signed up with the local dive shop’s tec instructor for the first two courses they were offering (Tec 40 and 45). At this point I probably had around 150 dives under my belt. The frustration I’d find when trying to pursue technical training would start soon after…
Three of us that dive locally all were signed up for the tec 40 course, and we regularly saw the instructor at the local dive site. After a month or so, waiting to get the course scheduled, we started asking about getting it scheduled… just about every weekend. By September I was beyond frustrated, and about ready to cancel the course and get my money back… and said pretty much that in what was far from my first email with the instructor, but it did the job and we finally got the class scheduled. We did the classroom portion the first week of October and had dives scheduled for that month. Work got in the way for me, however, and I had to reschedule those dives… or rather, try to reschedule them…. We’ll get back to those dives in a little while.
While waiting for those dives, in December I decided to take a vacation in February and thought it would be a good time to take my cavern cert up a notch and see about doing intro-to-cave. The timing, with my vacation only a couple months away, and thus limited availability of instructors, wasn’t perfect and it was during that search for training I discovered that my PADI cavern cert, done in a single tank configuration, was effectively worthless as far as any of the respected cave instructors were concerned where I was looking to do it. At the time, that was very frustrating to me. I had a certification that I found to be very taxing training, that online resources said is “equivalent” to the training that all the “intro to cave/cave 1” pre-requisites said I needed (or their equivalents), and the instructors weren’t going to count it, or not count it much. In the end, I decided to accept their judgement and instead of packing my vacation full of training that wouldn’t “progress” my certification level any, I decided to do a skills “workshop” with one of the shops instead. Originally planning to spend 2 days doing that on my vacation, but some food decided to remind me that Mexico is known for more than just the Cenotes and salsa, and so I cancelled the second day of training. I got a lot of good feedback on propulsion techniques in that one day however, so I was happy I did that training. I also started looking into maybe doing training with some well respected people closer to home, but then work and Covid got in the way of doing any of that for a while.
About 15 months after signing up for tec 40 and 45, and still not having the dives done for tec 40, I went and cancelled my tec 45 at the LDS and got a refund on that course, but couldn’t do anything about 40 since we’d started it already. At that point I decided to pursue doing my tec training elsewhere, and I subsequently found a LOT of different advice/suggestions/information from the internet, dive shops, and tec instructors. Ranging from “don’t take Intro to tec because it’s a waste and you’ll get everything you need in AN/DP” to “ITT will teach you whatever configuration you want” to “ITT isn’t about teaching you to dive in doubles etc, so you should be competent in your doubles configuration before you start the course” (not to mention the standard Scubaboard response of doing GUE Fundies, let’s leave that out of this discussion though please). That made it quite difficult to try and figure out what IS actually being taught in ITT. In the end, I decided I was going to go with an instructor that a friend liked when he did other classes with them who was up-front and candid about discussing what we could expect to learn in the ITT course. My buddy and I signed up for the course and it was on the books for less than 2 months later. We also booked AN/DP with that instructor for the following month.
Continued in the next post.
