Hello all,
Over the last few months I been diving with a lot of new divers. I have also attended a few classes with friends during their OW training. I watched a friend, in my opinion perform horribly in the pool, grotto and River environment. When we where done for the day, the instructor passed him and said, yesterday I would not dive with you, but you did better today, enough for me to think about diving with you.
Now my friend is retired military, and been in far worse situations in his life then the grotto. He never appeared to panic in the water, he just had zero control of himself on day one. There was no Buoyance control, even on surface floating he keep rolling around. Day 2 was better, but I still saw a lot of Buoyance control issues.
I befriended the Assistant Instructor during the class and he and I did some spear fishing this weekend. At one point my buddy came up in Convo, and said he I did not think he was close to coming out here. The AI agreed and told me they actually had to rescue my buddy during his last checkout dive.
I have another co-worker that I have dove with (Controlled Grotto/1 open water), that I also would not dive with in the open water again. The shorter version for this story was I watched him in the grotto and he was dog paddling all around again not a lot of buoyancy control, I never saw him during our OW trip as we had different partners, though I know they bailed on one dive because he could not get down.
These are 2 cases of friends that I have watched closely, but on the only cases I have seen. Now that I am preparing for my DM Cert and hope to do Instructor next year, I think I am getting a lot more aware of these scenarios.
For my military buddy, I believe I can help and improve him, we all have had mentors. Since I am not an instructor yet through, is it my place when things are IMO really bad and liability?
So again, how or where does one draw the line on pass or fail?
Over the last few months I been diving with a lot of new divers. I have also attended a few classes with friends during their OW training. I watched a friend, in my opinion perform horribly in the pool, grotto and River environment. When we where done for the day, the instructor passed him and said, yesterday I would not dive with you, but you did better today, enough for me to think about diving with you.
Now my friend is retired military, and been in far worse situations in his life then the grotto. He never appeared to panic in the water, he just had zero control of himself on day one. There was no Buoyance control, even on surface floating he keep rolling around. Day 2 was better, but I still saw a lot of Buoyance control issues.
I befriended the Assistant Instructor during the class and he and I did some spear fishing this weekend. At one point my buddy came up in Convo, and said he I did not think he was close to coming out here. The AI agreed and told me they actually had to rescue my buddy during his last checkout dive.
I have another co-worker that I have dove with (Controlled Grotto/1 open water), that I also would not dive with in the open water again. The shorter version for this story was I watched him in the grotto and he was dog paddling all around again not a lot of buoyancy control, I never saw him during our OW trip as we had different partners, though I know they bailed on one dive because he could not get down.
These are 2 cases of friends that I have watched closely, but on the only cases I have seen. Now that I am preparing for my DM Cert and hope to do Instructor next year, I think I am getting a lot more aware of these scenarios.
For my military buddy, I believe I can help and improve him, we all have had mentors. Since I am not an instructor yet through, is it my place when things are IMO really bad and liability?
So again, how or where does one draw the line on pass or fail?