Wait to take advanced open water? Or not?

[scubadada]

I am always hesitant about people that talk big, usually a bad omen.

The Navy guy was appropriately concerned and nervous about his dive on the Duane. He was young and fit but had just finished OW, AOW and EAN with the same operator that took us out to the Duane. So this was his 12th dive. We had arranged for him to let me know when he was at a half tank and then at 1000 psi. As is pretty common on the Duane, there was both a brisk surface current and current at depth. He struggled somewhat on the descent but then seemed to be doing OK on the wreck as we largely stayed out of the direct current. I was surprised, when at 20 minutes, he let me knew he was at 800 psi. We swam back to the stern line with the current and made a normal ascent and SS. He was embarrassed at how the dive went, especially that he had "forgotten" to monitor and tell me about his gas. This was a pretty challenging dive for such an inexperienced diver, I would imagine he did fine after that, he seemed to have a great interest in diving

 

[DA Aquamaster]

So I'm a new diver and I am wanting to advance my skills more. I've mentioned to some people that I want to take the PADI AOW training to help do that.

Some people say "That's great, go for it!" Other people have said "No, don't do that. You really should wait until you have more experience to do that. Just dive more now and do that later" Essentially, they are saying "You're not really experienced enough to take more training classes"

But isn't the point of taking the classes to gain more experience to begin with? If I want to advance my skills then why should I not take more training classes? Why would I need to wait until later? It's not like I'm lacking in the skills I learned in open water. I can do them all just fine. Of course it's still appropriate to practice them to become better and better, but why wait to take more instruction?

I got certified to dive in college starting class in 1984. We took OW fall semester and AOW spring semester.

But things were different then. 1985 was right about the time that the dive industry switched from focusing on training independent divers who had solid water skills to training traveling divers who didn't need to have strong swimming skills or freediving experience and who were expected to dive under the guidance and supervision of a DM at dive destinations.

At the time a "basic" cert covered as much as an OW cert does now, while the OW cert covered as much ground as the AOW does now, in large part because you just didn't find weekend short courses, it was more common to move through the course over the course of a full week, or three weekends.

On top of that, in a college course with a full semester to fill, we went way beyond the course requirements and then spent time getting actual OW experience well in excess of the checkout dive requirements. It's probably the ideal way to learn to dive, if you have the opportunity.

Even with broader course content back in the day and greater skill and experience levels in OW, there was an advantage to having 25 or so dives under your weight belt before you took AOW.

Training is only part of the learning process. The diver needs some time to incorporate what's been learned and master the skills at any given level before they can devote the bandwidth to really benefit from the next level of training.

----

As for the actual AOW card, I never valued it and didn't pay the fee to get one after the second semester. I ended up having to get an AOW card eventually when I started doing technical dive training, but by that point in my diving career, all that really meant was taking the written and doing a weekend's worth of dives with the instructor I normally dove with on the weekends anyway. Given that I was already doing deep, cold water, drysuit, night dives, and low viz compass navigation dives, there wasn't anything to learn and it was just going through the motions to get the card.

 

[seeker242]

The diver needs some time to incorporate what's been learned and master the skills at any given level before they can devote the bandwidth to really benefit from the next level of training.

As for the actual AOW card, I never valued it and didn't pay the fee to get one after the second semester.

I'm not really interested in the card per say. I would still do more training even if I didn't get any kind of card. I just want to advance my skills more! The card is really incidental. I would not dive to 100' even if I had a card that said I could, if I did not feel comfortable or safe doing that. That would just be dumb!

 

[boulderjohn]

This report is very long and very complete, but it is worth the read to see the astounding number of errors made by people whose credentials would lead you to expect something better.

The star of this report on a dive in which 2 out of 3 divers died (including herself) was the diving officer on her Coast Guard ship, meaning she was in charge of dive operations on that ship. She wanted to conduct ice diving training for the other two. According to the report, "All three divers received their initial dive training at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC) in Panama City, FL." The report indicates that this training was a month long. The divers had done relatively little diving in the time since then. The diving officer had done 24 dives in 19 days of diving.

Here is a quick summary that should give you an idea of the quality of the diving that led to those deaths. They were using single HP 100s with dry suits. They did not put any connecting hoses from the tanks to the BCDs, so any BCD inflation would have had to be done orally. (The report said the BCDs could not be inflated.) That means all inflation would need to come from the dry suits. The dive officer was a 5-2, 130 pound female, and she insisted that she and her dive companion would need 60 pounds of lead each for the dive. There was no hard bottom at a reasonable depth beneath them, and both went to depths around 200 feet before the line tenders pulled in their bodies. Their planned depth was 20 feet.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm not really interested in the card per say. I would still do more training even if I didn't get any kind of card. I just want to advance my skills more! The card is really incidental. I would not dive to 100' even if I had a card that said I could, if I did not feel comfortable or safe doing that. That would just be dumb!

A pity you're not closer to the Puget Sound ... I offer a skills workshop specifically for people like you. It doesn't come with a card, but is tailored specifically to work on skills the individual diver wants to focus on ... and it costs half what an AOW class costs. It is, by a wide margin, my most popular class ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[seeker242]

A pity you're not closer to the Puget Sound ...

I would agree IF Puget Sound didn't have such cold water! To me, 70 is cold, ha!