What are things you wish you could tell your past self (SCUBA RELATED)?

[Wibble]

Moved to diving from sailing and found diving cheap in comparison (annual boat bills would pay for a rebreather every year!).

Have heard that flying's twice the costs of sailing!

 

[Hoag]

Buy once. Cry once.

Figure out what gear you really want to meet your needs and buy that. Don't buy something that you think will be "good enough for now" and then never truly be happy with it, only to sell it and do a series of incremental upgrades.

 

[CT-Rich]

Or 50, now 20 years into it.

I started at 16, but there was really not much of diving culture back then in my area. The Internet makes getting connected with others a lot easier. When I was certified, I had some misconceptions about how complicated it needed to be. I would worry about having the time and my figuring out my repetitive dive groups when I was doing dives to 40 fsw. Finding a regular dive buddy early on would have made learning so much simpler. Skin Diver Magazine was such marketing tool for gear companies. A lot of ear anxiety could have been avoided without them.
I still see a lot of divers stressing out needlessly over gear differences that have almost no practical distinction. The style of fin has a much bigger impact than the brand. Jacket vs back inflate is much bigger than which brand is better. Correct C-card is less important than correct experience.

 

[Addison Snyder]

Buy once. Cry once.

Not fully disagreeing with the principle of avoiding incremental upgrades, but the saying has a lot of snark to it. It's totally possible to get solid gear for non-name-brand prices. Even with branded stuff, there's a serious chance that it won't work out, and the saying tends to boil down to "don't buy the wrong thing, dummy".

 

[Hoag]

Not fully disagreeing with the principle of avoiding incremental upgrades, but the saying has a lot of snark to it. It's totally possible to get solid gear for non-name-brand prices. Even with branded stuff, there's a serious chance that it won't work out, and the saying tends to boil down to "don't buy the wrong thing, dummy".

Its not intended to be snarky at all. Buy what you need (or want) the first time (and yes, things don't always end up going where you thought they would) even if that purchase costs more than you would like.

Given the title of the post, this is something that I would, and have, said to MYSELF.

You say "saying tends to boil down to "don't buy the wrong thing dummy". There is no "dummy" stated nor implied. IMHO it would be fair to say that the gist of the saying could tend to boil down to "don't buy the wrong thing".

 

[Wibble]

Just thinking back to the utter crap I bought in the beginning. All that yellow tat: clips, useless yellow scubapro fins, retractors, air horns and quacker, shakey shakey anoyee thing, ankle weights, knives, crappy masks, useless reels for SMBs, useless SMBs, useless computers... So embarrassed with it that I haven't even sold it on and it's still buried in the garage.

Problem with technical kit is it's a lot more expensive and rather specialised. But at least it works and it gets used... whenever I do that kind of speciality diving!

Oddly its the ever-breeding cylinders which makes the initial cylinder purchase seem so cheap! Now have twenty-odd of them and more arriving shortly! Problem with 'mix is the cost of the gas you'd loose when testing. Have no doubt that a compressor and booster pump will probably arrive in the next year or so!

 

[Addison Snyder]

@Hoag Fair enough

 

[Bazzathemammoth]

Ignore what i had heard about the local dive club. They are great people and the club trips are fantastic.

There is an amazing world in scuba outside of padi rec, get into it! Unfortunately all of the dive shops I have been to here back in the day maintained that absolute max depth is 40m and no decompression. I moved to mainly spearfishing/freediving as such limited dive times don't appeal much to me. I can happily spend hours in the water.

Stop trying to support the lds, they are incompetent and greedy. Dont let them sell you a jacket bcd when you asked them for a bpw (still regretting this one).

Im still telling myself to get more training now that I know whats out there, but this covid thing isnt making it easy financially!

 

[Wibble]

Ignore what i had heard about the local dive club. They are great people and the club trips are fantastic.

There is an amazing world in scuba outside of padi rec, get into it! Unfortunately all of the dive shops I have been to here back in the day maintained that absolute max depth is 40m and no decompression. I moved to mainly spearfishing/freediving as such limited dive times don't appeal much to me. I can happily spend hours in the water.

Stop trying to support the lds, they are incompetent and greedy. Dont let them sell you a jacket bcd when you asked them for a bpw (still regretting this one).

Im still telling myself to get more training now that I know whats out there, but this covid thing isnt making it easy financially!

I do get what you're saying. Very few LDS' have a bias towards technical standards, most going for quantity. Lets face it, aside from a shop next to some amazing cave system, most would starve to death in short order if waiting to make their fortune from technical divers. For every 1 tech diver there's got to be 100+ 'recreational' divers.

Just have to live with the inner cringe when you hear DiveMASTERs and OWIs talking about tech kit and techniques! Aww, bless, they're trying to make a living

I do try to support the LDS though, if only because they're useful for getting one's cylinders tested or buying a bolt snap. Sometimes do need to wear blinkers/blinders when passing the display of fins and BCD horrors (especially the i3 "Exploitation edition").

 

[Wathdoc]

I wish that I had got into shore diving earlier