PADI's new *solo* course

[waterpirate]

Bill, it's called GUE-Fundamentals.

I can not believe he missed that. That statement has ended more bad buddy debate/arguements than all others combined. +1
Eric

 

[AndyNZ]

I'd be interested in hearing what sort of in-water self-rescue exercises are applied to either the SDI solo course or this new PADI self-sufficiency course ...

It may be somewhat egotistical of me to assume that PADI have used my distinctive course as a basis for the one they are releasing, but mine was (I beleive) the first ever self-reliance course approved by PADI, so......

My (PADI) course is very scripted and really has no simulated failures or self-rescue exercises. There are four dives, three of which are skills dives and one is a dive planning/execution exercise.

The type of skills covered are trim, buoyancy, mask swaps (maintaining depth +/- a tolerance), use of a pony bottle, SMB deployment and an OOG ascent that combines various of these. It's really "Fundies Lite" and not a solo diver course at all - more about developing the foundations needed to start thinking about solo diving (or self reliance). I also did a lot of buddy skills in the pool - for example getting people to do OOG drills when they have to swim to their buddy. I'd repeat this many times, making the distance a bit greater each time. Then introduce the pony bottle and start asking people to make choices - so I swim to my buddy or do I switch?

Like I say, I have no idea whether PADI have ripped off my course or whether they've just been inspired by me or other people. I'm awaiting a response from Drew on that one.

I started introducing more dynamic failures in to the course, which is the point where I realised that I was going to start breaking the standards that I wrote..... which I think is seriously not cool! My SDI course is more like GUE Tech 1 (with no team skills, obviously) and consists of simulating progressively more challenging failure situations and again put students into situations where they have to make choices. The debrief is then about talking through those choices.

An example situation is having multiple failures - loss of back gas and then a free flowing reg on a pony bottle. Feathering the valve on the pony is a fairly complex ascent - the decision the students have to make is to they deploy an SMB or not? In the dive plan we agree that an SMB should be deployed - so does the student follow the plan (blindly?) or make a decision to simplify their ascent based on the priority of failures.

Unfortunately, I suspect that I am in the minority of SDI instructors who do much more than the bare minimums for the course - where are somewhat less challenging than my PADI course.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I think an effective solo class should have some self-rescue exercises ... at a minimum those that would involve lost mask, OOG (switching to redundant air), and entanglement (removal/replacement of the BCD). Those are the most probable types of failure that would require some form of self-rescue ... and without testing them, how can you ascertain that the student is competent to help themselves if any of those things should happen?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[AndyNZ]

I agree, Bob. I think we are also using "self-rescue exercise" in a slightly different way.

Certainly my original PADI course covered the first two of your exercises, swapping to a back up mask and use of an alternate air source. Entanglement drills were specifically left out - it was several years ago when I submitted the course to PADI (2007?) and this was fringe enough for them back then that I felt it would be a deal-breaker in terms of getting it approved or not. I tend to do BCD remove and replace (whilst hovering) in the confined water session of the course (I wrote a nice standard that said any skill from any PADI course could be included in CW) but there's no actual entanglement drill per se.

The main drawback with the course - again driven by a risk-adverse view of the world - is that the students know what is coming up on each dive. That is somewhat unrealistic, but also an indication of my expectations of the divers wanting to do the course. Even experienced divers (notably PADI instructors....!) were incabable of multi-tasking underwater and normally lost all situational awareness when asked to do two things at once.

I am now the first to admit that this is a problem and that if divers can't handle the task loading then they probably shouldn't be solo diving. But then, it wasn't intended as a solo diver course.

I will wait and see what PADI actually release....

 

[AndyNZ]

Well, I just got a preview copy of this from PADI Asia Pacific.

I'll still be offering the SDI Solo Diver course as my primary solo/self-reliant diver course.

If I were to teach a PADI course, I have the option of either teaching the new PADI course or my existing distinctive specialty. I'd have to think long and hard about which one to teach.

. . .

I'd teach mine.