Returning Diver- Interested In Padi Aow

[nh16]

Hi all!

I feel like I may have had an account at some point, but I couldn't find it so I'm starting fresh It's been about 5 years since I've been diving, but I'm planning a honeymoon to Australia and plan to hit up the GBR.

Previous diving experience has been Okinawa, Cozumel, Florida Keys, and Hawaii.

My fiancé and I plan to get back in the water this summer and go for our advanced open water before our trip later this fall. My one question about that would be recommendations on how best (and most economically) to get the AOW cert (PADI). I know you can do the coursework online, but I'm wondering how the adventure dives are actually counted if you don't do a class with a local dive shop??

Anyways, happy to be here (or be back here...)!

 

[mmerriman]

you have to do the dives with an instructor

 

[fmerkel]

If you have a fair amount of experience AOW is almost useless.....except you get a card. It ain't 'advanced', it is 'basic skills', and in my opinion should be part of the OW1 course.

OTOH, you've been out of the water a looooong time and need a LOT of brush up. May as well do it via AOW and get the card and some supervision.

 

[tursiops]

If you have a fair amount of experience AOW is almost useless.....except you get a card. It ain't 'advanced', it is 'basic skills', and in my opinion should be part of the OW1 course.

OTOH, you've been out of the water a looooong time and need a LOT of brush up. May as well do it via AOW and get the card and some supervision.

Advanced Open Water is an unfortunate name, because what it means is Advanced beyond Open Water; think of it as OW part II. You must do a deep (>60 ft) dive, and you must do a navigation dive (mostly compass skills), but three of the dives are "electives." Highly recommended is Peak Performance Buoyancy (with a good instructor) because you sort out your weighting, trim, and fin kicks. nice. Other popular electives are Night, Search and Recovery, Wreck, Underwater Naturalist, and Boat (good if you know nothing about boats). It is important to note that each dive is just the first dive of a full specialty course....so if you really like Deep, for example, do 3 more deep dives (to 130 ft) and get the full specialty certification.

I must differ with fmerkel about AOW being almost useless if you have a fair amount of experience. A lot of experience doesn't mean you have good buoyancy, or know the tricks of diving at night, or can safely use a lift bag to raise an object off the bottom after you've searched for it and found it, or know anything about underwater plants and animals. It is quite ;possible fmerkel is fantastic at all these things....but it does not automatically come from having lots of experience. As often as not, a lot of experience has taught bad habits and passed on bad information, which has to be corrected before going on.

 

[diversteve]

Economically PADI - Re-Activate is probably an option but it won't get you AOW - Shop PADI - Product View I don't know what the acceptable interval for the program is though.

 

[nh16]

Advanced Open Water is an unfortunate name, because what it means is Advanced beyond Open Water; think of it as OW part II. You must do a deep (>60 ft) dive, and you must do a navigation dive (mostly compass skills), but three of the dives are "electives." Highly recommended is Peak Performance Buoyancy (with a good instructor) because you sort out your weighting, trim, and fin kicks. nice. Other popular electives are Night, Search and Recovery, Wreck, Underwater Naturalist, and Boat (good if you know nothing about boats). It is important to note that each dive is just the first dive of a full specialty course....so if you really like Deep, for example, do 3 more deep dives (to 130 ft) and get the full specialty certification.

I must differ with fmerkel about AOW being almost useless if you have a fair amount of experience. A lot of experience doesn't mean you have good buoyancy, or know the tricks of diving at night, or can safely use a lift bag to raise an object off the bottom after you've searched for it and found it, or know anything about underwater plants and animals. It is quite ;possible fmerkel is fantastic at all these things....but it does not automatically come from having lots of experience. As often as not, a lot of experience has taught bad habits and passed on bad information, which has to be corrected before going on.

Thanks! I agree that experience doesn't necessarily equate to good skills. I've done a couple >60ft dives and a night dive but I wouldn't say I developed any skills on those dives. I certainly haven't done enough of them to consider myself experienced. As fmerkel pointed out, it's been a long time since I've been in the water so I'm also interested in doing AOW because it will put me in the water with an instructor. I don't think I want to do a refresher course, I'm pretty confident that I won't be a complete wreck my first time back in... but I WOULD like to ensure that I'm working on those skills and not flouncing around.

 

[tursiops]

Ideally, you'd do just a get-back-in-the-water dive with an instructor before beginning the formal AOW, so you can find your groove again (or at least see it from whre you are ), and so the instructor can preassess you before doing the more serious stuff. I often just do PPB as my first dive for AOW, and make it a long dive with the assessment built in along with the PPB stuff. Do NOT do Deep first! That is against standards, and has too much jeopardy associated with it as a first dive. My favorite sequence is PPB and Nav on Day 1, then Deep, something, and Night on Day 2. On trips I might just do 1 or at most 2 AOW dives a day, and stretch it out a bit.

 

[nh16]

Ideally, you'd do just a get-back-in-the-water dive with an instructor before beginning the formal AOW, so you can find your groove again (or at least see it from whre you are ), and so the instructor can preassess you before doing the more serious stuff. I often just do PPB as my first dive for AOW, and make it a long dive with the assessment built in along with the PPB stuff. Do NOT do Deep first! That is against standards, and has too much jeopardy associated with it as a first dive. My favorite sequence is PPB and Nav on Day 1, then Deep, something, and Night on Day 2. On trips I might just do 1 or at most 2 AOW dives a day, and stretch it out a bit.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing one of the trips our local dive shop offers just to get in the water WITH someone who knows what they are doing then if all is copacetic, do the AOW course. There's also a few springs here that you can arrange to have an instructor dive with you. I'm just saying that I wouldn't do the formal refresher course AND AOW... I think a "fun" dive with a DM/Instructor would be sufficient. I think our dive shop does the AOW course over 2 weekends- first is the class session and a PPB dive locally, then the following weekend is a trip down south to do nav, wreck, deep, & search and recovery.

 

[tursiops]

Yeah, I was thinking of doing one of the trips our local dive shop offers just to get in the water WITH someone who knows what they are doing then if all is copacetic, do the AOW course. There's also a few springs here that you can arrange to have an instructor dive with you. I'm just saying that I wouldn't do the formal refresher course AND AOW... I think a "fun" dive with a DM/Instructor would be sufficient. I think our dive shop does the AOW course over 2 weekends- first is the class session and a PPB dive locally, then the following weekend is a trip down south to do nav, wreck, deep, & search and recovery.

I've managed to do AOW in the High Springs area: Deep and Nav are difficult to find the right places! I ended up with Deep at Troy, barely making the 60 ft depth, and Nav at Orange Grove, which was tricky because the poor guy had to navigate around the tree stumps and rocks. I don't remember what the other two dives were.....probably S&R and U/W Naturalist.

 

[nh16]

I've managed to do AOW in the High Springs area: Deep and Nav are difficult to find the right places! I ended up with Deep at Troy, barely making the 60 ft depth, and Nav at Orange Grove, which was tricky because the poor guy had to navigate around the tree stumps and rocks. I don't remember what the other two dives were.....probably S&R and U/W Naturalist.

Yeah, Scuba Monkey (our local shop) goes down to Jupiter for the 2nd weekend. Not sure where they do the PPB dive, but it's local.