SDI Road to Rescue Diver

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SDI Advanced Adventure is PADI Advanced Open Water, and you pick 5 specialties. They make you do Nav and Deep (I believe you finish those two completely), then you pick 3 you want to do to gloss over with the instructor. I was thinking wreck, night, and advanced buoyancy control.

So you would go beyond and finish buoyancy if you were me?

You pick five DIVES. The specialties are the full class - wreck, deep, whatever.

SDI Advanced Adventure & PADI AOW are best thought of as sampler platters.
 
Another advantage of doing a full specialty - deep gets you down to 130ft.
 
SDI Advanced is more like the PADI Master Diver. Requires 4 specialties and 25 dives minimum. Think the only non-diving specialty is nitrox. I’d have to check the standards.

SDI Advanced Adventure is equal to PADI AOW.

Do the SDI Advanced. I did wreck, nav, night, deep. The specialties are better than the sampler platter.
Oh I misread the message and confused Advanced and Adventure. My local dive shop only offers Adventure and Rescue that I see in the courses list. Is the Advanced course actually a course, or do you just get it when you finish 4 specialties? Is Adventure worth doing, does it actually count Nav and Deep towards the Advanced? Does Nitrox count towards the four for advanced?

Both Adventure and Advanced count as the pre-req for Rescue?
 
Oh I misread the message and confused Advanced and Adventure. My local dive shop only offers Adventure and Rescue that I see in the courses list. Is the Advanced course actually a course, or do you just get it when you finish 4 specialties? Is Adventure worth doing, does it actually count Nav and Deep towards the Advanced? Does Nitrox count towards the four for advanced?

The Advanced card is issued after you’ve done four specialties and have a minimum of 25 dives. You’d have to check if the dives count towards the full specialties. Yes, nitrox counts.

Frankly, myself, I count Advanced Adventure as worthless. Why get a taste when you could do the full thing?
 
Advanced looks like what used to called master diver when I did it in 2010.

I would skip adventure
Screenshot_20210920-165304_Chrome.jpg
 
Advanced looks like what used to called master diver when I did it in 2010.

I would skip adventure View attachment 683030
You would just go right for Advanced by finishing three Specialties? I'd probably go Night, Buoyancy, and Deep likely and try to use Nitrox as my 4th. Plus 25 dives, and I'm only at 9 currently :3

How do specialties work? Shops just try to schedule you with a group? I only had 3 others in my Open Water, I almost feel like specialties would nearly be 1 on 1...
 
You would just go right for Advanced by finishing three Specialties? I'd probably go Night, Buoyancy, and Deep likely and try to use Nitrox as my 4th. Plus 25 dives, and I'm only at 9 currently :3

How do specialties work? Shops just try to schedule you with a group? I only had 3 others in my Open Water, I almost feel like specialties would nearly be 1 on 1...

Depends on the shop.

Everything builds on bouyancy control start with that one.

What are conditions like where you dive? Deep is good because as @Marie13 stated it gets you to max recreational depth. Take your time with thus and get experience and practice.

How I would do it.

1. Take bouyancy
2. Dive and practice
3. Dive and practice
4. Dive and practice
5. Take the rest in whatever order you want.

Night and limited VIS might be good or might not. Up here almost every Dive is a night dive due to low VIS so we are just used to it and we get all the knowledge just by diving with more experienced divers but that might not be the case for you.

Do you plan on doing any cold water diving?
 
Depends on the shop.

Everything builds on bouyancy control start with that one.

What are conditions like where you dive? Deep is good because as @Marie13 stated it gets you to max recreational depth. Take your time with thus and get experience and practice.

How I would do it.

1. Take bouyancy
2. Dive and practice
3. Dive and practice
4. Dive and practice
5. Take the rest in whatever order you want.

Night and limited VIS might be good or might not. Up here almost every Dive is a night dive due to low VIS so we are just used to it and we get all the knowledge just by diving with more experienced divers but that might not be the case for you.

Do you plan on doing any cold water diving?
I'm 23 and just getting started in the workforce, plus I live with my parents for now due to the state of things rn haha. I'm Florida stuck for easily a year or two, but I never want to say no to a new experience. I don't expect to be doing cold water diving beyond Florida ocean waters in December.

I'm sure they would throw us offshore to reach 130 for Deep. The charters I have been on in Riviera are gorgeous, morning dives and visibility is like 100+ feet and there is tons to see.

The facebook groups for Florida are always doing night dives, and a few potential buddies have told me I have to try it. Figured it would be smart to "know what I am doing" before heading out at night with strangers haha.

Truthfully Adventure doesn't sound necessary from you and Marie's explanation, plus I already can work a compass. I took over the navigation for a dive I did this past weekend with like 10 feet of vis because the experienced buddy I was with didn't bring a compass. I kept us in the correct channel and out of the boat channel and swimming channel. The only buoyancy issues I had were getting too close to the sandy bottom and having to push off with my hands, but I was managing extra tasks then I usually do (trash bag, first time using gloves, checking gauges with gloves on, compass in right hand half the time, etc.)

Way I see it right now, seems more logical to do Deep and Buoyancy soonish and Night at a later date. I've got 16 dives to go anyway.

Thanks for being patient with me, I despise that one course is Advanced and the other is Advanced "Adventure." They were trying to make things complicated lmao
 
Do bouyancy first you need the skills for deep. Some shops here won't let you take deep till you have a certain number of dives not sure about there.

Your winter water is warmer than our summer water lol so you likely won't want drysuit.

Night diving is awesome but again you need your bouyancy mastered first before complicating your dives. Don't rush it take your time and just enjoy diving and improving.
 
Do bouyancy first you need the skills for deep. Some shops here won't let you take deep till you have a certain number of dives not sure about there.

Your winter water is warmer than our summer water lol so you likely won't want drysuit.

Night diving is awesome but again you need your bouyancy mastered first before complicating your dives. Don't rush it take your time and just enjoy diving and improving.
I am a wuss with the cold haha, I don't know if a 7mm could save me.

The only 3 other specialties I would consider would be Wreck (kinda just want to do this eventually for fun), FFM (just want this skill, mainly because some of the safety tradeoffs like comms seem incredibly useful... if I ever have buddies that follow the same route tho), and drysuit (if I dive in December and come out a popsicle). I'm in no rush, I was already thinking Buoyancy would be good from the dozens of online instructors that write blogs saying they wish it was mandatory to reach Open Water cert status.

My shop claims the only pre-req for Deep specialty is Open Water. Seems sus.
 

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