referal dives vs open water dives

[bknobel]

I think i am a little confused.What is the difference between referal dives and your fist 4 open water dives .We just finished our written (by the way we got 100's) and our pool check outs.
We are going to do the rest of our dives out of the country.What are we going to need?
What about paperwork? can any one help

 

[Rick Murchison]

Depends on the agency. The Universal Referral Program is subscribed to by six agencies - YMCA, SSI, NAUI, IDEA, PDIC and NASDS. If you did your classroom and pool through one of these, then referral facilities of any of them can finish you up just as if you'd taken your pool and class with them. The only paperwork needed is in the "Universal Referral Packet" you take with you from your referring dive shop. If you want to do the referral dives at a PADI only facility, unless you did your classwork with a PADI facility you'll have to do a bunch of extra paperwork and take the PADI final in addition to the regular referral dives. There's nothing substantively different in the PADI referral, they're just throwing their weight around.
As for the dives themselves, they are the same as any regular open water dives - with a little additional time so the referral instructor can observe and evaluate things your pool instructor already knows.
Rick

 

[bknobel]

thaks rick really appreciate the help

 

[BrianV]

It's commonly used in vacations. For instance, a student or students would take the pool and classwork sessions in their home town, but want to do their 4 checkouts at the vacation place because the water is warmer, the viz is better, etc.

 

[Tom Smedley]

If at all possible I recommend that you finish your course on home turf before going on vacation. This leaves your vacation dives free to do what you want instead of following an instructor around the first few days.

 

[BrianV]

If at all possible I recommend that you finish your course on home turf before going on vacation. This leaves your vacation dives free to do what you want instead of following an instructor around the first few days.

That's my recommendation as well. Who wants to spend their first two days on an expensive trip doing mask clearing?

 

[pontosmina]

So if I do my confined water and classroom with SDI, can I get a referral and do the open water dives with a PADI instructor or does it have to be SDI?

 

[BrianV]

So if I do my confined water and classroom with SDI, can I get a referral and do the open water dives with a PADI instructor or does it have to be SDI?

I think it has to be one of those that are in that group. You can do it with PADI but I think you need to do some extra stuff with PADI beforehand.

Once you have an SDI cert then it's valid as pre-reqs to other PADI classes without hitch.

 

[pontosmina]

Actually I just found this on the SDI website:
http://www.tdisdi.com/sdi/global/gdrf2.html
It appears that any active instructor, regardless of their training agency, can do open water referrals and fill out SDI's "global referral form."
bknobel, that might be true for other agencies as well, you should check with yours.