To those considering an OW class...

[skywalk]

omg this thread has developed a life of it's own!!!!!! and I don't really feel that much closer to deciding whether or not MSD is for me. lol it's ok. totally appreciate the replies thus far. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and everyone's entitled to disagree too. Just pls dont take offence if people disagree with you.

 

[kneptoon]

If your considering an OW class, gratz and welcome to diving. Know this and read this thread carefully, until you have at least 20 dives you have no idea what you even need to learn in diving. You are a risk to yourself and everyone around you. You may have bouyancy control, you may know your gear, you may think you know what you need to be safe. YOU DONT and you wont after OW. Anybody who tells you otherwise is LYING to you. If you have the good fortune to be diving with somebody who has 50 or more dives I would say you are proably safe in the water. If your diving with your buddy who has the same number of dives as you, start praying.

Im sure there are many here that would disagree and point to my limited diving training as proof to just ignore me. I in turn would point you to my first thread post on this thread (aside from my hello) and then point you to my post http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=176093. You have poor training at best at OW you know nothing of underwater nav, deep diving, limited visibility diving (night diving). All of these items and probably more are essential to your training for you to dive safely. Keep that in mind before you and your buddy dive without an instructor or additional training.

If you need additional incentive to not just accept the quickest course that gets you your card. Picture this, you and your buddy have completed OW and you both have 4 ocean dives in monterey. You are now certified and safe. You and your buddy decide to celebrate and you take another dive you get out to about 50' depth. Your swimming aimlessly about and your visablility is getting progressively worse. In a period of less than 10 minutes you can no longer see your buddy and visibility is gone. Add additional problems your now lost you dont know up from down you have never been trained to deal with any of this. Welcome to red tide, no navigation training and no limited visibility training.

If you want to become a diver then plan on taking at least OW, AOW and a minimum of three specialty courses. Also plan on spending appx $250 dollars on basic gear that you must have for the course and an additional $1500+ to equip yourself with basic diving gear. My recommendation on specialty courses is deep diver, nav diver and night diver. Deep will increase your comfort at depth and allow you to dive to a depth of 130' with a more complete knowledge of the impact of diving at depth. Navigation will teach you how to move underwater, and protect you from becoming lost (you will probably still get lost, but it will offer you many ways to protect you from being lost). Night diving does much more than teach you to dive at night, it teaches you to dive in limited visibility and it increases your comfort level in no visibility situations where the danger to you the diver increases.

For your information, I have 24 dives and no instructor certifications. I most certainly have no idea what I am talking about. I have never taken any of the specialty courses I have mentioned. I have my AOW and 1 specialty (altitude).

It's probably best that newbies don't discover this thread. It is so pedantic. Scary. Very few of beginners will encounter these real life threatening predicaments. Love for diving I hope will be the motivation to proceed on the path to learning rather than fear.

 

[fishbucket]

As a new certified diver, I feel that in the weeks it took me to get certified, I still am NOT prepared for what lies ahead. If someone gets their OW in 2 days, they had better be prepared for a rude awakening.....You can't even read the books in 2 days.
fishbucket

 

[MikeFerrara]

It's probably best that newbies don't discover this thread. It is so pedantic. Scary. Very few of beginners will encounter these real life threatening predicaments. Love for diving I hope will be the motivation to proceed on the path to learning rather than fear.

I don't think fear is the correct response but I do think that a healthy dose of caution is in order. Spending some time doing your homework before just signing up at the closest, fastest or cheapest shop can pay off in big dividends.

 

[Thalassamania]

It's probably best that newbies don't discover this thread. It is so pedantic. Scary. Very few of beginners will encounter these real life threatening predicaments. Love for diving I hope will be the motivation to proceed on the path to learning rather than fear.

Yeah, let's keep in the dark, feed them crap and expect them to grow.

 

[fisherdvm]

I think it is good for those considering diving to look at all the alternatives. Many of the comments made are valid. I learn a whole lot about diving through Scubaboard, and although the discussion sometime bugs the heck out of me, I appreciate the insight into the dive industry.

The dilemma I face is a practical way to get my son to enroll in a good dive program. It is nearly a 3 hour drive to get a more extensive program, or nearly next door for SSI or PADI.

It probably boils down to my working on my scuba skill, and be a better mentor for him.

As an aside, I find it funny watching the SSI intro to scuba DVD showing the two divers kicking corals .... I told my son that that is exactly what you are NOT suppose to do.

 

[Carribeandiver]

...PADI has a class called Peak Performance Buoyancy. Despite the word "peak" in the title, it is designed to teach you the all important skill of being able to maintain a depth in the water column using your breathing and your buoyancy compensator. Again, this is a skill that many would say should be expected of anyone entering the water and indeed is critical to that persons enjoyment of diving (can't have fun riding a bike if you keep fallling off).
Here, here, well said. I couldnt agree more. Buoyancy is such an important skill that it should and ought to be taught in OW. It is ludicrous that it is not. OW certified divers have a hard time with safety stops, staying down, going down, coming up, or staying up because they carry too much or not enough weight, have too little or too much air in their BCDs, constantly inflate and/or deflate trying to find the right amount and spend more time trying to 'hang' with their experienced buddies then they do enjoying the dive.
Here is what happens quite frequently to the diver who got a rush certification...he was nervous on the boat going out to the site. He was anxious getting in the water. He had a hard time descending. Once down his mask kept flooding and he was having a hard time clearing it... He couldn't keep from bumping against the reef. Finally he found that he was unable to maintain his safety stop depth and spent the entire 3 mins swimming straight down to compensate for the air he neglected to vent from his BC.
I swear to gawd, I thought you were talking about me.
The point is diving, like many sports, isn't much fun unless you've been given the skills to do properly and those skills can't be learned in two days.
I whole heartedly agree. My class was a three day weekend consisting of class and pool work and then a two day weekend with two open water dives and two dives in a spring. I was no more ready to be certified and be off on my own then a kindergardener is ready to write a thesis.
For the divers that do manage to stick with it, they will either need to struggle with a good number of dives or drop money on all the speciality classes that weren't even needed before OW became what it is today.
Man, this is so right on. I cant stand it that I am not a good diver. I am willing to take every class out there to get good. I practice skills and strive to be a safe diver but with so little formal training, the hit and miss technique takes a very long time and a lot of dives before basic skills can be mastered to the point where the new OW diver is safe to dive with.
To all the experienced divers on this board who see a serious problem with the continual relaxing of standards, please help me resurrect the market for eight week classes.

Why end here? Why not jump on the AOW class' afterall, it is the biggest joke of all. Five dives with an instructor and presto, you are now skilled to go deep, dive nights, navigate? Give me a break, this is a bigger rip off then OW class is. Forget about class length to get a good education in diving, a student has to get very lucky. He/She has to find a good instructor and a class with a small instructor to student ratio. Six weeks, Eight weeks, Six months. None of it matters if the student- instuctor ratio is big and/or the instructor is poor.

 

[Thalassamania]

It probably boils down to my working on my scuba skill, and be a better mentor for him.

You've got it. And get him a copy of the NOAA Manual.

 

[fisherdvm]

One thing you guys (the old geezers) never talked about is what to do if you are already OW certified... as most browser of scubaboard are...

Aside from reading books, practice what we hear, and more diving.... Our only options are to enroll in more PADI waddy classes.... or SSI, etc...

Now we see a merging of agency.... Only 1 place in eastern michigan offers Naui OW, but a PADI facility in mid michigan offer NAUI master diver..

It is interesting in that all of their courses (ow,aow,instructor, divemaster, etc... ) are padi, but their master diver program is naui...

Whether they cross certified, I don't really know... But probably the same teacher, but different program format....

I think I'll just enjoy diving, and annoying the folks on scubaboard with more polls...

 

[TSandM]

One thing you guys (the old geezers) never talked about is what to do if you are already OW certified... as most browser of scubaboard are...

Oh, we talk about it . . . Fundies!