Why do Advanced Open Water?

[Walter]

relevant experience... those are the last 2 words of the sentence you quoted...

If I need to be more clear. If the YMCA Open Water program was so good they would not offer Open Water Diver 2, Advanced, Silver Advanced because our advanced isn't quite good enough, then .... etc and finally instructor. The divers should have all this stuff already and require no further training until such time as they have enough experience to enter into the instructor program.

If you believe PADI falls short then most agencies including YMCA fall well short of what you believe should be required.

Open Water 2 is merely the Open Water course with additional experience. It's issued instead of the Open Water card, not in addition to. The only extra charge is for the dives (assuming they are made from a boat).

AOW is the additional course, not Silver Advanced. Silver Advanced has been part of the program since before I started diving, although it was once called Silver Star Advanced. It's a much older course than AOW. I don't know why AOW was created, perhaps a misguided attempt to compete with PADI's AOW class? I believe it was a mistake and I have never taught the class. I've never advocated one class that teaches everything. I do advocate an Open Water class that enables someone to dive safely even when things go wrong. Most Open Water classes do not accomplish this. The YMCA class does. Is it perfect? No. Far from it, there are several things I think should be changed, but it's much better, IMO, than the PADI standards require their Open Water class to be.

 

[Walter]

I've heard of him, probably from Lee Somers. We may have meet at one or another function.

You started diving at about the same time when diving was a much smaller community than it is today. I thought it worth a shot to ask. He was one of my mentors about 20 years ago, a great guy, an incredible diver and always having a good time.

 

[fisherdvm]

I still stand by my statement, a good instructor will make the class valuable regardless of the agency.

I have no first hand knowledge of PADI as my training has been with SSI, and then NAUI but one of my dive buddies and mentors is PADI trained and speaks highly of his instructor and AOW class. As a mater of fact the group that I regularly dive with represents every agency except YMCA and when I asked them about AOW the very first thing any of them said was find a good instructor!

A poor instructor selling guided dives as AOW will be the same guy no matter what agency he is affiliated with.

I was being sarcastic... Your point is exactly my point.... I just can't keep those darn gnats off any posts that mentioned PADI.

 

[jpsexton]

I was being sarcastic... Your point is exactly my point.... I just can't keep those darn gnats off any posts that mentioned PADI.

I see, sometimes sarcasim is hard to read.