ginti
Contributor
So, one of my OW/AOW students went on to take fundies and T1. He earned his T1 certification after 2 years, and 230 dives. Not a long time, not a lot of dives, is that? The time/dive count doesn't matter. The ONLY thing that matters is skills in the water. People get waaaaaaay too hung up on dive count. My former student will dive circles around most divers with THOUSANDS of dives. Give me a break.
I have to disagree about that with you
I have 198 dives on my logbook, and I am T1 and C1. In terms of trim and buoyancy control, I overperform most people with many more dives than me under their belt.
However...
How many difficult situations did I have to deal with? Less than ten probably; and every time that a new problem raises underwater, I have to admit that it's a bit stressing for me. For instance, 2 weeks ago I was diving a wreck in an Alpin lake in France. 40m (130ft) deep, 25minutes of bottom time + deco. When I completed the descent, my inflator got icy and started filling my wing with lots of air. Sure, I disconnected it, tried to fix it and continued the dive; did not lose my buddy, did not lose much time. But it was a stressful situation, simply because I do not have much experience.
A person with many more dives than me, even if has a slightly worse control of trim (buoyancy is usually good after 1000 dives, although not always), would be way more relaxed than me in a similar situation most likely.
So, in a way or another, I believe that experience still has a lot of importance, probably more than "perfect" skills.
There are also extreme cases of people with 1000 dives who are unable to do a safe ascent, but in my experience - they are the exception, not the rule