The initial costs of diving
- Thread starter Jeff Dykes
- Start date
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From what I see on CL in the Chicago area for scuba gear - crappy looking fins/masks, SP BCDs from the 80s or 90s, and ancient looking Dacor stickered AL80s - good quality and garage sale don’t belong in the same sentence here.My LDS has OW for $600
By the time you add:Classes
www.sealswatersports.com
fins $149-$259
Mask $75-$150
Snorkel $35-$60
Booties $75
You’re right about there, on average.
Show up with you own (good quality) garage sale gear and the gear cost changes.
mcohen1021
Contributor
My LDS has OW for $600
By the time you add:Classes
fins $75-$90
Mask $75-$100
Snorkel $20
Booties $45
You’re right about there, on average.
Show up with you own (good quality) garage sale gear and the gear cost changes.
^^^Fixed it for you
Those are crooks then. Any shop that only allows personal gear they sell you should fail. The most expensive item may be mask. But you can often find a scubamax style brand for under 50 bucks. Snorkel should be a simple 12 to 15 dollar j tube. If the shop doesn't carry one get one from Amazon.
Boots? Can be found for under 50 easy.
Fins? Open heel from ebay or again, scubamax or Sherwood for 75 bucks or so.
Belzelbub
Contributor
Yeah, understood. The courses my kids took were similar, though they were largely private courses, no other students signed up for their class. For the oldest, her pool sessions were done private, weather cancelled the OW portion, so she was added to the next class for OW as they had a spot available. She re-did all the pool work with the group.
The classes involved 2-3 days of pool work followed by the OW dives. I stayed out of the water for the pool work, but was allowed to join on the OW dives. For the oldest, myself and a couple other parents stayed out of the way. Instructor did admonish one parent for poor buoyancy control, so that may have been re-visited after. The 2nd day of OW dives was supposed to be off of a boat. The other parents weren't allowed to go due to space. The instructor (and boat owner) told me he would add me as crew so I'd be able to join, weather again got in the way and we did the 2nd day at another spring. I can't remember if the other parents joined this one or not.
For the youngest, all her water time was private. Same setup with pool work. We attempted the OW dives off my boat, but had to call the dives and rescheduled later at the springs. For those, I was my daughter's buddy during the dives. Instructor would sometimes use me to demonstrate the skills first, then my daughter would do them.
It worked out well, but I get your point that it can be highly dependent on the particular diving parent, and in most cases the instructor has no way of knowing what kind of diver the parent is. I'm not an instructor, so I made it a point to not allow my kids to even use gear in the pool until they were certified. I didn't want them to inadvertently pick up any bad habits.
I said earlier that when the dive shop I worked for changed agencies, the owner of the agency did a week-long workshop, and he strongly advocated for getting the OW students to buy gear before they were done with the class. Not only that, he suggested they identify the specific gear choices they wanted the students to buy so that they could get the best volume discounts from the suppliers. The shop had identified their target models before I left.
I went to a different shop, and about two years later I got a student looking for advanced training. He had done his initial training with my old shop. He said he had all his own gear already, but he didn't like it. He said he had trusted the shop to give him good advice, and he was not happy. He started to tell my what gear he had. I stopped him and named the rest of his gear. "How did you know that?" he asked in wonder.
Once again, a policy like this was recommended by the owner of the dive agency my old shop switched to before I left.
Hmmm. Let's see:
0. Swimming and drown-proofing lessons from a very early age
1. Skin-diving (snorkeling) skills
2. Al 50/63 (or LP 45/50) with plastic backpack with nylon harness; never leave a tank standing unattended
3. Regulator recovery (simple regulator) and buddy breathing
4. Scuba ditch and don
5. Never hold your breath (always continue breathing normally)
6. Always ascend very slowly, exhaling, and switch to snorkel upon reaching the surface
7. Absolutely never mess with scuba gear, whether in or out of the pool, without me (Dad) or Mom with you!
I, too, am not a scuba instructor. Yet, I was extremely comfortable introducing my then-young daughters to scuba in a backyard pool.
Allowed me to gauge whether they had a real interest. Years later (last Spring term), my eldest, a college junior now, decided she wanted to get certified. Her twin sisters, two years her junior, are expressing interest now.
FWIW.
rx7diver
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