New diver... questions for your instructor

[MikeFerrara]

Lawman once bubbled...
Aren't you supposed to be wearing a swimming suit when
we're in the pool?:wacko:

Are you?

 

[ScoobyDave]

I had a couple questions for my instructor (among others):

1. Can I see your certification card

2. Can I look at your dive logbook

One shop instructor couldn't/wouldn't oblige, so I moved on.

 

[Charlie99]

BartBe once bubbled...
What should a descent OW course dive be like...
Are the instructors supposed to go over the exercices with you on those dives?
How long should they +/- last ?
Do they just take you on a dive... jump in, swim around a bit, get out ?

In many ways YOU should be setting the pace.

In my case, I flew into Maui Thursday midday, dropped by the diveshop in the afternoon and picked up a snorkel, mask, and the PADI OW crewpack. Read some of it that night. My prior scuba experience consisted solely of one 2 tank discover scuba dive.

Friday, starting around 10AM I watched a bunch of videos, took a couple of quizzes. The instructor spent lots of time answering my many questions. Read about 1/2 of the book that afternoon and evening.

Saturday morning started with a swimtest. No mask, fins or wetsuit. Went out past the shore break and swam parallel to the beach until he signalled. Then about 5 minutes of treading water. The we did 2 dives in the morning, 25', 30 minutes; 27', 35 minutes in the sandy, protected area of Ulua beach. It's common in Maui for the "confined water" dives to be done in the ocean. Both dives were a series of ups and downs to first discuss a bunch of exercises, the to drop down and do them. Since it was a private class, we had lots of time and I went through each exercise repeatedly. My brand new mask leaked through my moustache continually and I had to clear it every minute or two. After lunch I watched more videos, had some brief discussions, and a couple more quizzes. On the way home I picked up some vaseline and did some snorkeling to get my mask to seal. Worked much better for dives 3 and 4. Studied the rest of the OW book that afternoon and evening.

Sunday. Dives 3 and 4. 25', 41 minutes, and 27', 55 minutes. We moved a few exercises, such as underwater compass nav from dive 4 into dive 3. I wanted to try a buoyant emergency ascent at the beginning of dive 3, but the instructor wouldn't let me, and I settled for doing another ESA. Dive 4 started with a short drop to 15' for the now routine mask remove and replace exercise, and surfaced. After some comments the day before by the instructor about weighting, I wanted to see what being overweighted felt like, so I strapped on the instructors 12# belt over mine and descended. The original plan was for me to just drop down, get neutral, swim a bit, then for us to swim out to the reef on the surface. But he motioned for me to swim out, so while he snorkeled, I swam out to the reef, then surfaced. Much later I realized that since he had on a 3mm wetsuit, that he would have had a very hard time descending to 20' to assist me if I had problems. So did a semi-solo dive for Dive 4. Oh well.)
After he took his belt back, we just swam around the outer reef looking at the fish and coral. A couple more quizzes, photos and paperwork for cert card and back to the hotel by early afternoon.

If I were to do it over, the only change would be to get the OW manual and read before the class. If you are doing it in a large class with many students, I can see how it would take more time. But for a private class with just one student, 2-1/2 days was more than enough.

Edit to add: Although we finished on Sunday afternoon, the instructor had reserved all Monday and Tuesday morning for my certification if required. The pace was of my choosing.

 

[BartBe]

Charlie99... ????

Now with all the lack off experience i have (as i haven't dived yet ) that sounds like the last and most irrisponsible divecourse I have ever heard of ??? Talk about rushing trough it ???
Just reading your post makes me nervous already and is hard to keep up with.

Private class or not... this seems like bigtime rush to me.
I could be wrong but I don't think thats the way to start your diving career ?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Charlie99,

I may have misunderstood some of what you wrote about your class. However, if I didn't, I think that's at least runner up for the record for the most for standards violations in one class.

You can do the confined water work in confined open water (ocean). But...they can not be combined with ir credited as OW dives one and two. The esception is that it isn't required that you leave the water between CW 1 and OW 1 (I think, I don't do it that way so it's not a factor for me).

You need to do CW 1-5 and OW 1-4. Certainly a student shouldn't be overweighted and never alone.

I think the class was VERY fast, although, with one student that get's everything right away it might be possible (but very unlikely) to do it that fast.

All quizes need to be complete before dive 3. The final test may be done after dive 4 though. BTW, buoyant emergency ascents are not practiced at all since their kind of dangerous.

I'm glad it worked out ok for you though.

 

[Charlie99]

BartBe once bubbled...
that sounds like the last and most irrisponsible divecourse I have ever heard of ??? Talk about rushing trough it ???

Private class or not... this seems like bigtime rush to me.
I could be wrong but I don't think thats the way to start your diving career ?

LOL. I posted my experience with a 2-1/2 day quickie course as an alternative view to all of the moaning and groaning that is always seen on this board about the quality of education. And scubaboard hasn't had its usual quota of PADI-bashing lately .

I wasn't doing ANYTHING else those 3 days. Personally, I find an intensive course better than a long drawn out one. I STRONGLY recommend a private course. You can skip unecessary repetitions of academic stuff, and repeat or add practical drills as desired. I bet that most of the time in those "5hours/week for 6 week" classes is standing around watching other students. If you have read the book and truly understand it, you will be bored to death during 95% of the PADI videos. The PADI training method is targeted at the lowest common denominator: a not so bright, not very motivated student who isn't all that comfortable in the water. Everything of importance is covered in the book, reviewed in the book, shown in the video, spoken in the video, discussed by the instructor, covered in a quiz, demo'd by the instructor, and practiced by you, and in the final test. As you will see, this is NOT an exaggeration. The course is setup to work well for people of many different learning styles.

I posted the stuff about wearing 2 weight belts, and the not-allowed buoyant ascent to give an idea of how far the instructor was willing to stretch his limits.

What I didn't mention is a whole lot of other stuff that we did do beyond what seems to be normal:


Pin pivots led to hovering, to fixing trim, to motionless hover, to ascent control with lungs ---- I had massive problems with the last two, but the goal was clear.

We worked on trim some more between OW 3 and 4. Moved the the tank up. Went back to the truck and got an ankle weight to put on the tank.

I tried several different fins to pick the ones best suited for me. (We did NOT cover different fin strokes)

We did an exercise where I closed my eyes, rolled and pitched around, then found out how fast I could reorient myself when opening my eyes again. Then repeated it with the instructor spinning and flipping me. (I wanted to do this, because when playing around in chest-deep swimming pools doing somersaults or walking on my hands in chest high pools, I'd noticed a bit of vertigo / disorientation).

When doing the compass course and reciprocal return, he added in a mini-lecture about orientation by position of the sun, and natural navigation such as sand ripples, reef edge, depth contours, etc. He had me lead the dive back from the reef on OW4.

We practiced reg and octo recovery multiple times, both from vertical and horizontal body position.

To gain practice in setting up gear, for most dives I setup both mine and his.

Gas planning was covered in only the rudimentary terms --- a reminder that psi/min goes up with depth; info on how many psi he used for ascent + safety stop from a few different depths; and the advice to double that until I knew my air consumption rate.

After a dive, back at the shop, I breathed a tank down to zero to see what it feels like. He taught me to check a rental gauge SPG's zero point before turning on the air. He showed me the fluctuating SPG needle caused by a partially turned on tank valve.

The boyle's law discussion was cut short when my response was "PV=nRT, duh." We did discuss lung volumes and how much buoyancy change that is equivalent to, and calculated that a 80 cu ft tank was really a 0.4 cu ft. tank.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

BartBe -- don't make scuba any harder than it needs to be. It would be great if you could post a report on your experiences a month from now, afte you have finished your class and you have done a couple additional post-class dives.

 

[Charlie99]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
I may have misunderstood some of what you wrote about your class. However, if I didn't, I think that's at least runner up for the record for the most for standards violations in one class.

You can do the confined water work in confined open water (ocean). But...they can not be combined with or credited as OW dives one and two. The esception is that it isn't required that you leave the water between CW 1 and OW 1 (I think, I don't do it that way so it's not a factor for me).

You need to do CW 1-5 and OW 1-4. Certainly a student shouldn't be overweighted and never alone.

I think the class was VERY fast, although, with one student that get's everything right away it might be possible (but very unlikely) to do it that fast.

All quizes need to be complete before dive 3. The final test may be done after dive 4 though. BTW, buoyant emergency ascents are not practiced at all since their kind of dangerous.

Some stuff I am recalling from memory of the class 5 years and 250 dives ago. It is quite possible that I did swim test and some quick confined water stuff on the first day. Since I was used to swimming around, eyes open underwater with no mask, we didn't really have to spend much time on mask clearing, snorkeling, or water comfort sort of stuff.

As to academics vs dives.. my log shows modules 1 and 2 done on day 1; 3 and 4 done on day 2. Module 5 is not filled in although I do remember doing that, as well as the instructor grabbing an AOW book and going over a couple of chapters. IIRC, we went over multi-level dives (since he knew I'd be diving from Maui boats where you quickly go beyond table limits because of multi-level profiles), nav stuff (concentrating on natural nav stuff since I have a few thousand hours as a shipdriver in the Navy), and boat stuff like backrolls.

The instructor was working hard NOT to violate standards. He even made me do mask removal and clearing drills on each dive, even though because of mask and moustache problems I did most of my initial confined water stuff with a flooded mask. The 2 weightbelt swim was a lapse of judgement that worked out ok, and as strange as it may seem, the experience of having to fight buoyancy control of being 12+ pounds overweight really helped me get a feel for it.

The videos were extremely repetitious of material already in the book,so I generally watched those while eating lunch or while working out the RDP problems.

I don't say that the method I used is good for everyone. A private class greatly speeds up everything, particularly with someone already comfortable in the water. Much of what you get out of a class is in direct proportion to what you as a student put into it.

 

[g8trdiver]

I did both my OW (PADI) and AOW (SSI) within about 4 months of each other in 1985. (No reason for the different associations except I was in different cities - so don't read anything into it!). So, I have a hard time remembering what was taught in which of the courses.

I recently went with my sister for her OW cert dives in the central Florida springs. We were in contact throughout her classroom and pool experience, including the weeks of anticipation leading up to her starting classes. She had all the same sleepless nights wondering what the course would be like, etc... We had endless IM question/answer sessions.

I told her she should ask the dive shop to let her have the books early since she was SO motivated to get started, she could be reading up so that she wasn't so anxious about it. (sometimes your imagination can be worse than reality) But they wouldn't give her the books. (does anyone know why this would be? I think I got my books a couple of weeks early.... just bought them at the dive shop when I signed up for the class....)

You're doing the right thing by asking the questions here. If you don't like your classroom/pool instructor, you CAN have a different instructor certify you on your open water dives. It might be a little more expensive - but not as much as taking the whole course over. Once you've taken the written test and done the pool skills, you can request a referral to another Instructor for your check-out dives.

Bottom line, though - use and practice your skills. If you can't go to a dive location to do this over a period of time, go to a pool, or take a refresher course. Practice Practice Practice

 

[Charlie99]

g8trdiver once bubbled...
I told her she should ask the dive shop to let her have the books early since she was SO motivated to get started, she could be reading up so that she wasn't so anxious about it. (sometimes your imagination can be worse than reality) But they wouldn't give her the books. (does anyone know why this would be? I think I got my books a couple of weeks early.... just bought them at the dive shop when I signed up for the class....)

I haven't a clue as to why the dive shop/instructor would be unwilling to allow access to the course manual in advance. From the student's point of view this impedes learning and is a big disadvantage ---- significant enough that this would cause me to find another instructor.

Charlie

p.s. My LDS has PADI books including instructor CD ROMs available for sale to anyone, whether or not signed up for a course.

 

[g8trdiver]

Charlie99 once bubbled...
---- significant enough that this would cause me to find another instructor.

I thought it was strange, too - but I didn't talk to them myself. They'd also given her a form for her Dr. to complete (because of a minor medical thing), and when she took it back to the shop, signed, they told her they'd 'forgotten' to tell her she needs 2 original copies. So she had to go BACK to the Dr. office for another signature. We did explore the idea of having someone else do her cert, but in the end, she stayed with the original plan - but never really got any warm fuzzies about conntinuing to dive with that outfit.

As it turns out, I did meet her instructor at her checkout dives, and he was the real deal. I wouldn't mind seeing the logbooks for some of the assistants, though!

I dived with the cert class along with a few other "fun" divers - so I was able to see that she'd learned the basic skills, and was comfortable despite the strange beginnings. She aced her written test.

When she went back to buy her gear, though, and the guy who'd mislead her about the Medical form approached her, she literally told him she'd prefer to be waited on by someone else. (You don't get a second chance to make a first impression!)