I had a bad experience with a Rescue course a couple weeks ago
I won't name names or dive shop or location, that's not the point of this post. What I'd like to know is, what should I expect from a rescue course, as I've signed up for one a month from now, with the instructor that taught a friend of mine and whom I really liked professionally. I'll explain what happened in my first attempt at rescue, I'd love to know what you think and what I should expect from my next one.
First, some background. I've been diving for 6 months, all around Asia, in the most diverse circumstances: good vis and low vis (2m was the lowest), no current and strong crazy whirlpool currents, deep dives, shallow dives, shore dives, boat dives, good buddies, terrible buddies, and even a triggerfish attack At the time of my rescue attempt, I had about 60 dives under my belt.
Another important info: I'd been in a "relationship" with my instructor for about a week before we started the course. I didn't expect him to be my instructor (there were other instructors in the shop), and when I learned he was going to teach me I should have asked for a different instructor, but didn't want to make a big deal out of it. So I blame myself for a lot of what happened. Won't happen again.
Here's what happened. First off, I wanted to get a PADI Rescue cert, but they didn't have the material. I was told that an SSI Rescue cert would be as valid as the PADI, and cheaper. Plus, my instructor was originally a PADI instructor who had switched over, and he said he'd follow the PADI guidelines for the OW part of the course. I'm not going into what's better, PADI or SSI (although that would be an interesting topic), but rather illustrating that my theory and my practice weren't the same.
Anyway, after going through all the theory, we started the OW part. When we headed out for our dive, he mentioned to the shop that we'd be back in 2 hours. I told him that was wishful thinking, and that I'm a slow physical learner (from my experience, although I'm really quick with theory) and would probably need longer. He said 2 hours was more than enough. We got in the water, and started the panicked diver on the surface (approach, kicking away, different tows, etc.), which went fine, although, as expected (at least by me), took longer than normal. We then proceeded to the panicked diver under water, which also went ok. My first problem was with panicked diver on an uncontrolled ascent (don't know if that's the right name, basically the diver panics and starts swimming up). First attempt went ok, although I couldn't get him to stop. Second attempt, he grabbed my reg from my mouth. At that point, I tried to get my octopus out and couldn't (my fault, again, for not checking if it was properly hooked and not using the octo clip that I normally use). I TOTALLY panicked and surfaced (we were at about 3m), even though he'd already let go of my first reg and I could have taken it back, or even used one of his regs (they were working fine and I knew it).
Now, I've had my reg kicked out multiple times during dives, and had it pulled out by currents once. It's disconcerting, but I've never panicked and have retrieved it just fine every time. Don't know why I panicked, and I spent the rest of the day beating myself up because of it. We called it a day after that, and decided to continue the next day.
Next day went kind of ok, but I felt off and wasn't really excited about the course at all. Responding from shore was fine, as was bringing an unresponsive diver to the surface. After that we did a search pattern in which I forgot to check my compass for my bearing and ended up doing a slightly curved zig zag pattern. When we finished that, we realized that a current had picked up and ripped the buoy out, so we had to swim against the current, find the reel and the buoy and swim back to where we started. By then I was at about 70 bar and, well, tired. We then did the unresponsive diver underwater, in which I didn't have to search (we didn't have people helping us and I was the only student, so I don't know if we could have done it differently). I found him, brought him up, and started doing rescue breathing and trying to tow him back to the buoy, but after about 15 minutes of this I really wasn't going anywhere (the current was pretty strong), so he told me to stop. I never brought him to the shore, or carried him out of the water to do CPR. He said it was fine, and he didn't feel like being dragged over gravel anyways. We finished on a sour note, I was very disappointed with myself and with the course in general. He handed me my SSI certification, and I never even did my written test. The whole thing just felt wrong. I ended up handing him my card back before I left. I just don't feel right saying I'm a rescue diver, considering I didn't do all of the scenarios and the ones I did weren't all successful.
So. I'm planning on doing this again, this time with someone I've seen teaching and consider a good instructor (and who I'm not dating!), and in a shop that has more structure and more people available to help out with the course. I'm also doing it PADI, which is what I'm used to (although I really had no problem with SSI). My question is, what should I expect? Is this what the course is usually like? Is it possible to get an extra OW session if I need to? I never expected this to be an easy course, but I do think it should be fun, and it didn't feel fun at all, quite the contrary. I felt that my instructor was very impatient with me, and didn't give me the time I needed to get things right. His comment at the end of the course was that I'd have to do all of these again in order to get my dive master, so it was ok that I didn't do them all during my Rescue. That just sounded wrong. I don't know.
Anyway, I was left with a sour taste after the course, and am wondering if it's just me, or the instructor, or both.
Sorry for the long post Just needed to get it off my chest.
Cheers!
First, some background. I've been diving for 6 months, all around Asia, in the most diverse circumstances: good vis and low vis (2m was the lowest), no current and strong crazy whirlpool currents, deep dives, shallow dives, shore dives, boat dives, good buddies, terrible buddies, and even a triggerfish attack At the time of my rescue attempt, I had about 60 dives under my belt.
Another important info: I'd been in a "relationship" with my instructor for about a week before we started the course. I didn't expect him to be my instructor (there were other instructors in the shop), and when I learned he was going to teach me I should have asked for a different instructor, but didn't want to make a big deal out of it. So I blame myself for a lot of what happened. Won't happen again.
Here's what happened. First off, I wanted to get a PADI Rescue cert, but they didn't have the material. I was told that an SSI Rescue cert would be as valid as the PADI, and cheaper. Plus, my instructor was originally a PADI instructor who had switched over, and he said he'd follow the PADI guidelines for the OW part of the course. I'm not going into what's better, PADI or SSI (although that would be an interesting topic), but rather illustrating that my theory and my practice weren't the same.
Anyway, after going through all the theory, we started the OW part. When we headed out for our dive, he mentioned to the shop that we'd be back in 2 hours. I told him that was wishful thinking, and that I'm a slow physical learner (from my experience, although I'm really quick with theory) and would probably need longer. He said 2 hours was more than enough. We got in the water, and started the panicked diver on the surface (approach, kicking away, different tows, etc.), which went fine, although, as expected (at least by me), took longer than normal. We then proceeded to the panicked diver under water, which also went ok. My first problem was with panicked diver on an uncontrolled ascent (don't know if that's the right name, basically the diver panics and starts swimming up). First attempt went ok, although I couldn't get him to stop. Second attempt, he grabbed my reg from my mouth. At that point, I tried to get my octopus out and couldn't (my fault, again, for not checking if it was properly hooked and not using the octo clip that I normally use). I TOTALLY panicked and surfaced (we were at about 3m), even though he'd already let go of my first reg and I could have taken it back, or even used one of his regs (they were working fine and I knew it).
Now, I've had my reg kicked out multiple times during dives, and had it pulled out by currents once. It's disconcerting, but I've never panicked and have retrieved it just fine every time. Don't know why I panicked, and I spent the rest of the day beating myself up because of it. We called it a day after that, and decided to continue the next day.
Next day went kind of ok, but I felt off and wasn't really excited about the course at all. Responding from shore was fine, as was bringing an unresponsive diver to the surface. After that we did a search pattern in which I forgot to check my compass for my bearing and ended up doing a slightly curved zig zag pattern. When we finished that, we realized that a current had picked up and ripped the buoy out, so we had to swim against the current, find the reel and the buoy and swim back to where we started. By then I was at about 70 bar and, well, tired. We then did the unresponsive diver underwater, in which I didn't have to search (we didn't have people helping us and I was the only student, so I don't know if we could have done it differently). I found him, brought him up, and started doing rescue breathing and trying to tow him back to the buoy, but after about 15 minutes of this I really wasn't going anywhere (the current was pretty strong), so he told me to stop. I never brought him to the shore, or carried him out of the water to do CPR. He said it was fine, and he didn't feel like being dragged over gravel anyways. We finished on a sour note, I was very disappointed with myself and with the course in general. He handed me my SSI certification, and I never even did my written test. The whole thing just felt wrong. I ended up handing him my card back before I left. I just don't feel right saying I'm a rescue diver, considering I didn't do all of the scenarios and the ones I did weren't all successful.
So. I'm planning on doing this again, this time with someone I've seen teaching and consider a good instructor (and who I'm not dating!), and in a shop that has more structure and more people available to help out with the course. I'm also doing it PADI, which is what I'm used to (although I really had no problem with SSI). My question is, what should I expect? Is this what the course is usually like? Is it possible to get an extra OW session if I need to? I never expected this to be an easy course, but I do think it should be fun, and it didn't feel fun at all, quite the contrary. I felt that my instructor was very impatient with me, and didn't give me the time I needed to get things right. His comment at the end of the course was that I'd have to do all of these again in order to get my dive master, so it was ok that I didn't do them all during my Rescue. That just sounded wrong. I don't know.
Anyway, I was left with a sour taste after the course, and am wondering if it's just me, or the instructor, or both.
Sorry for the long post Just needed to get it off my chest.
Cheers!