Hi all, hopefully someone can help me out. I am looking into getting into cold water diving. All of my diving thus far (around 300 dives) has been in warmer water, about 90% of that happening in Southern California with a few trips into Mexico. I have decided that the occasional trip South isn't getting me wet enough, and I am ready to start diving up here.
My needs are two fold.
First, I am looking for a shop that other students have been happy with both the instruction and the service. I want a shop that will give me good information on technologies as they come out (instead of trying to move old stuff sitting on the shelves) a shop that can point me to some nice area dive spots, preferably a busy one where I can find buddies, and one that generally feels "fun" to be in (not looking for a stuffy, overego-ed shop). Immediately I need to get my dry suit training and purchasing taken care of, so if someone has specific feedback on a program for that it would be especially helpful
Secondly, I hope to start working my way through some of the less recreational courses, in the direction of some of the tech courses, so I want to find a shop where the instructors have knowledge of things like deeper diving, multi tanks, decompression diving, tri-mix, possibly eventually overhead training (though i can travel to find that if there isn't anything locally). I want to form a lasting relationship with a shop and a set of instructors that can fulfill my training needs for the next 10 years.
All my previous training has been through padi and naui, but I am not against jumping to sdi to access the tdi course work.
Diving since 1995, ow padi, aow naui, padi rescue and nitrox, dan o2 (probably dating myself) was a research diver for UC Santa Barbara for two years... wanting to move on to more at this point.
Thanks
Ryan
p.s. heads up on a Portland dive club would also be great... going to play in the search bar for a while, but a contact would be nice.
My needs are two fold.
First, I am looking for a shop that other students have been happy with both the instruction and the service. I want a shop that will give me good information on technologies as they come out (instead of trying to move old stuff sitting on the shelves) a shop that can point me to some nice area dive spots, preferably a busy one where I can find buddies, and one that generally feels "fun" to be in (not looking for a stuffy, overego-ed shop). Immediately I need to get my dry suit training and purchasing taken care of, so if someone has specific feedback on a program for that it would be especially helpful
Secondly, I hope to start working my way through some of the less recreational courses, in the direction of some of the tech courses, so I want to find a shop where the instructors have knowledge of things like deeper diving, multi tanks, decompression diving, tri-mix, possibly eventually overhead training (though i can travel to find that if there isn't anything locally). I want to form a lasting relationship with a shop and a set of instructors that can fulfill my training needs for the next 10 years.
All my previous training has been through padi and naui, but I am not against jumping to sdi to access the tdi course work.
Diving since 1995, ow padi, aow naui, padi rescue and nitrox, dan o2 (probably dating myself) was a research diver for UC Santa Barbara for two years... wanting to move on to more at this point.
Thanks
Ryan
p.s. heads up on a Portland dive club would also be great... going to play in the search bar for a while, but a contact would be nice.