What do we think about taking rescue course with rental gear?

[jsarche]

Self evaluation of skill can be misleading. If you're only diving about twice per year, it's certainly possible you're safe during those dives, but skills, knowledge, and experience atrophy when there are such long gaps between diving. When I take a break of about 6-months over the winter, I almost always do an easy warmup dive. Sure, I'm plenty confident to go straight to 130ft on my first dive of the season, but that confidence is perhaps slightly misleading.

IMO, you might want to look into dry-suit diving, that way you can dive locally in Colorado, and continue to gain experience outside of vacation diving.

Valuable observation - thanks. I always ask about making my first dive after a hiatus a "warm-up" dive for exactly that reason. And if it's been more than a year, I will take a refresher course beforehand. There's supposed to be some good lake diving in Colorado, and looking into dry-suit diving sounds like an idea worth exploring.

 

[kmarks]

I did my DSR class in rental gear because at the time I only had my BPW and I was told that I should get a rental from the shop that had buckles to get me out of it, as opposed to cutting my harness. When I did my DM class a couple of years later, both my instructor and I somehow managed to work through the gear removal in the rescue scenario without cutting each other's harnesses, though. Weird how a better instructor can do that.

Like others have said, stress and rescue is one of the most valuable classes you can take, so do it in whatever gear is available to you.

one had a back inflate jacket

A what now?

 

[Boarderguy]

Valuable observation - thanks. I always ask about making my first dive after a hiatus a "warm-up" dive for exactly that reason. And if it's been more than a year, I will take a refresher course beforehand. There's supposed to be some good lake diving in Colorado, and looking into dry-suit diving sounds like an idea worth exploring.

If you're looking at dry suit (highly recommend it) then Seaskin may be your best best. Inexpensive and custom made to you. All that for the cost of a used suit and someone else's problems.

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Review - Seaskin Nova drysuit

I ordered a new Seaskin Nova (trilam) drysuit at the beginning of June. It arrived last week. I took it up to the Saint Lawrence River and did 7 wreck dives from Fri to Mon (yesterday), as part of an Advanced Wreck Penetration class with @Trace Malinowski. I am VERY pleased with how it worked...

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[Jim Lapenta]

The last rescue class I taught I had divers in single tank jacket BC, BPW single tank, BPW with doubles, And sidemount. Some were diving wet and some drysuits.

I used SM and BPW single with a harness that I set up where I had to be cut out of it as I did every time I taught a rescue class. Worrying about 12 bucks worth of webbing is silly when it comes to showing people how well an EEzy-Cut and shears work on webbing.

I even had a rebreather diver show up and explain to the class the concerns with that.
Every time I taught a rescue class over the years I wanted as many different configurations as possible involved.

I have heard of shops requiring only jacket BCs so that people don't get confused. That tells me their instructor staff is incompetent or lazy as hell and just want to get things over with.
Or they are afraid people will see the gear they recommended to them was over priced, not suited for the type of diving they want to do, or their main concern was the shop's bank account instead of the diver's best interest.

I would have loved to teach a rescue class with everyone in BPW's. I'd have even offered to replace everyone's webbing just so we could cut up 4 or 5 harnesses with different tools. And experimented with adjusting them so that they still were properly fitted but didn't need cut.

BTW, even though cutting me out of mine was "required" they still got to get at least one person out of a BPW without cutting it. If it's properly adjusted, it's easy once you do it.

 

[SlugLife]

The last rescue class I taught I had divers in single tank jacket BC, BPW single tank, BPW with doubles, And sidemount. Some were diving wet and some drysuits.

I used SM and BPW single with a harness that I set up where I had to be cut out of it as I did every time I taught a rescue class. Worrying about 12 bucks worth of webbing is silly when it comes to showing people how well an EEzy-Cut and shears work on webbing.

I even had a rebreather diver show up and explain to the class the concerns with that.
Every time I taught a rescue class over the years I wanted as many different configurations as possible involved.

I have heard of shops requiring only jacket BCs so that people don't get confused. That tells me their instructor staff is incompetent or lazy as hell and just want to get things over with.
Or they are afraid people will see they gear they recommended to them was over priced, not suited for the type of diving they want to do, or their main concern was the shop's bank account instead of the diver's best interest.

I would have loved to teach a rescue class with everyone in BPW's. I'd have even offered to replace everyone's webbing just so we could cut up 4 or 5 harnesses with different tools. And experimented with adjusting them so that they still were properly fitted but didn't need cut.

BTW, even though cutting me out of mine was "required" they still got to get at least one person out of a BPW without cutting it. If it's properly adjusted, it's easy once you do it.

I'm not an instructor, but it might possibly be worth having a 2nd BPW loaner for that purpose. BPW isn't that different from jacket BCDs, so a student borrowing it for a dive, and then having the webbing cut wouldn't be a big deal.

The main concern I'd have if someone suggested cutting my webbing for the class, would be getting everything adjusted back to where I had it before the dive.

 

[VikingDives]

Valuable observation - thanks. I always ask about making my first dive after a hiatus a "warm-up" dive for exactly that reason. And if it's been more than a year, I will take a refresher course beforehand. There's supposed to be some good lake diving in Colorado, and looking into dry-suit diving sounds like an idea worth exploring.

If you end up coming down to Blue Hole (Santa Rosa, NM) and you need a buddy, you're welcome to dive with us. You'll likely end up in BH/Santa Rosa for your classes too.

 

[jsarche]

If you end up coming down to Blue Hole (Santa Rosa, NM) and you need a buddy, you're welcome to dive with us. You'll likely end up in BH/Santa Rosa for your classes too.

Thanks - that's where I got my OW and AOW certs.

 

[NYCrecdiver]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts. First off, I think I’ll definitely use gear during the course, so I appreciate that advice! To address some questions, I have only about 60 dives since I got my AOW certification, but I feel like my skills and knowledge are up to rescue diver. Also, I’m feeling really obsessed with diving lately (a week in Roatan and another week in Cozumel last year will do that to a person) and I know I want to dive a ton more and improve and progress. And I want to know I could be part of the solution in the event of a problem. Rescue diver seems the best next step for me, and I may be buying my own setup before my next week in Roatan this summer anyway.

So thanks again for your opinions.

I was much in the same situation when I did my RD course and a few specialty courses last year. I wanted to get in diving more seriously and locally. RD and other training with an LSD was the perfect way to do that and also getting used to NE coast diving which is quite different than Caribbean diving. No regrets of the path I took.
And as for doing the course with rental gear. Absolutely fine. Might as well abuse rental gear during the training instead of your own. You probably also will find out a thing or two what to get or not to get gear wise during the training. Scuba is an equipmemt/gadget heavy hobby and you'll change your mind more than once.

 

[Damselfish]

Matters at least as much if not more what other divers in the Rescue class are wearing. Rental gear is fine. Taking the class is good. Diving more is good. I wouldn’t overthink this one.

 

[60plus]

Something to be considered and quite probably a failing on the part of BSAC and PADI. BSAC regard someone who has PADI AOW as equivalent to Sport diver when in fact they are not. Someone can attain PADI AOW without knowing about decompression tables and only using a wetsuit. Anyone only trained in ascending with a casualty only in wetsuits would probably loose control of a dry suited casualty. Whether to use rental gear or not is inconsequential in comparison.