I had a roughly similar situation last year and chose to do the entire OW course here in Ohio instead of getting a referral to the warm water vacation spot.
Factors included cost, waste of good diving time doing skills, and man oh man did I appreciate a nice reef after certifying in a quarry
One thing by buddy and I did upon our arrival at the resort was to go to the dive boss and tell him that we were completely untested post-certification and our first dive was inside the reef, very shallow and we did a wee tune-up/check-out dive. It ended up being really great, we got all the weighting issues out of the way, had a little refresher and orientation to the environment all at once.
The other 13 dives we did that week were spectacular and I had a great time, very glad I didn't spend 2 days doing the check-out dives.
JMHO
Rachel
Factors included cost, waste of good diving time doing skills, and man oh man did I appreciate a nice reef after certifying in a quarry
One thing by buddy and I did upon our arrival at the resort was to go to the dive boss and tell him that we were completely untested post-certification and our first dive was inside the reef, very shallow and we did a wee tune-up/check-out dive. It ended up being really great, we got all the weighting issues out of the way, had a little refresher and orientation to the environment all at once.
The other 13 dives we did that week were spectacular and I had a great time, very glad I didn't spend 2 days doing the check-out dives.
JMHO
Rachel
