Next step for a new diver I

[PACKRMAN]

I am a believer that no education is wasted, BUT, at some point your going to have to gain experience. With 21 dives your really not sure if you like your fins. Go diving, watch other divers, talk to the divers that you feel are better than you. Divers love to talk about diving. Ask about the gear they use, why they use it. Ask how they hang a three minute safety stop dead still. Tell someone you have tried to get trim but your feet must be heavy. How the hell did that guy just swim backwards? I feel liveaboards are the fastest way to gain experience. By the end of the week any new skills learned have been practiced and muscle memory formed. twenty dives in a week is way better than twenty over two years.

 

[T.C.]

I know we wont learn anything new but its my understanding the ssi is more indepth and after talking to my local dive shop will also entail leading dives. Its cheaper than hiring someone to go with us so we thought it couldn't hurt. Thoughts?

Well, if you intended to hire a guide anyways. But as a OW and AOW diver, you can, and I believe should, try leading your own dives. Don't plan a crazy one, but it's a better way to gain experience and more importantly, confidence in your skills as a diver/dive team.

 

[Oz Chris]

Like everyone else has said, just go out and dive. I don’t know anything about sites in your area (I’m from Sydney, Australia), but we have a lot of shore dive sites so we just hired gear and went out by ourselves from dive #5 straight after OW (we also went on boat dives and club dives etc).

My perspective is that until you go without a DM guiding you you don’t really learn. You can’t see what they see and hear what’s going on in their head re nav for example. We’ve totally screwed up a few dives and got plenty lost, but we keep getting better.

 

[joe10540]

If you have a local instructor that you can hire by the day it never hurts to pay for a day for critique and then work on what was pointed out to you. Rinse and repeat as needed. Who knows given enough time you might even end up with more certifications. Nitrox and drysuit if you don’t already have them can add enjoyment to your dives but also complexity.

Just like riding a bike the more you do it the easier it will seem and the more you will be able to enjoy it. Stay safe and have fun everything else will come.

 

[Magnus Lundstedt]

You'll probably not learn anything new taking a repeat course. Your best bet may be to gain some experience diving doing these type of dives with other local divers, then assess what you wish to do in terms of training. Drysuit may be a good class given your location.

SSI AOW is not equal to PADI AOW.

SSI AA is equal to PADI AOW and SSI AOW is a more advanced level.


But i agree that gaining experience by diving is the way to go.

 

[hroark2112]

For your first dive in unfamiliar conditions, either hire a guide or find a local experienced dive buddy. That way you can learn how to dive your local conditions without worrying about additional skills or drills.

Just go dive and have fun, cards will come in due time.

 

[jlcnuke]

We just got back from Thailand and finished our AOW. With 21 dives we are far from anything but a beginner and are ready to take the next step. We did the Padi OW and AOW in pretty ideal conditions and now are back in Washington State. My Wife gets cold in the tropics and our plan is to do the AOW SSI course as it seems to go more in-depth on the core topics (buoyancy, Deep, Night). Should we do this?, should we do dry suit first?, or any other options. We don't feel like we are going to die or not be able to control our buoyancy, but are far from feeling like we could lead a dive.

What precisely do you hope to gain by taking the class? There are classes for "learning to lead dives" but those are "divemaster" type classes that should be well beyond what you should need to go out and enjoy diving. You'll get better at buoyancy control, air consumption, etc by just diving. You'll get better at navigating underwater by just diving (with each other or with other divers/groups). If there's something specific you'd like to learn then taking a class seems like a great plan for learning that skill "quickly" imo, but taking classes for a vague goal like being able to "lead a dive" (of just the two of you?) or to just increase your overall comfort in the water seems a bit excessive to me. If you've got the money to throw away just to have an instructor with you making you more comfortable while you learn and speeding up the learning process slightly then feel free to. I fall in that category myself and plan to get some specialties just to have the "crash courses" in those subjects. I just also accept that I probably got 2/3rds of the buoyancy class figured out on my own doing a 1-week liveaboard without any formal classes (we'll see how accurate that is when I do the specialty though..).

 

[Midget Clown]

What precisely do you hope to gain by taking the class? There are classes for "learning to lead dives" but those are "divemaster" type classes that should be well beyond what you should need to go out and enjoy diving. You'll get better at buoyancy control, air consumption, etc by just diving. You'll get better at navigating underwater by just diving (with each other or with other divers/groups). If there's something specific you'd like to learn then taking a class seems like a great plan for learning that skill "quickly" imo, but taking classes for a vague goal like being able to "lead a dive" (of just the two of you?) or to just increase your overall comfort in the water seems a bit excessive to me. If you've got the money to throw away just to have an instructor with you making you more comfortable while you learn and speeding up the learning process slightly then feel free to. I fall in that category myself and plan to get some specialties just to have the "crash courses" in those subjects. I just also accept that I probably got 2/3rds of the buoyancy class figured out on my own doing a 1-week liveaboard without any formal classes (we'll see how accurate that is when I do the specialty though..).

We are looking for the safest/cheapest way to transition into diving in our area (cold water with bad visibility) while expanding our all around knowledge.

 

[T.C.]

We are looking for the safest/cheapest way to transition into diving in our area (cold water with bad visibility) while expanding our all around knowledge.

Buy the Planet Earth CD sets then.

 

[aquacat8]

Spend the money on getting your wife warm. Drysuit if necessary! Then go with local divers if they’ll have you. I dove wet in Northern California, south of you, in a 7mil with 5mil vest, 3mil Sox, 5mil booties, 7mil hood. Almost every one of our dives turned on cold, not nitrogen loading or gas consumption. If your buddy quits on you because she’s miserable that will screw up your plan to be a local diver.