Zero to Hero

[Paul M]

Came across a guy's blog the other day about his journey from non-diver to CCR Cave within the span of 6 months, ending the year with 120 dives.

I can't deny that he's dedicated, and he's certainly very proud of his accomplishments. But at the same time I feel that there's so much that he hasn't yet experienced, for him to be training/diving to that level.

This makes me think of a guy on YouTube that likes to talk about diving. Started diving sometime in 2018 and is now a full rebreather cave diver and some level of instructor.
He has a stack of c-cards. Everytime I stumble across the YouTube channel it makes me think the title of this thread.

I took my training from Nico in Mx. An experienced cave dive explorer.

 

[Germie]

I did my cavern to full cave in a week. After that no problem with diving in caves on my own.
So was it zero to hero? Not in my eyes, standards are followed.

Some divers can go faster than others. But there is also another point. I live in Europe and really, if I had to stop after intro, this means that you dive outside limits in less than 5 dives. You see it everywhere, always here. Even stages and deco are done on an intro to cave card. We don't have laws about cavediving and even without card you can go. The first 'rule' that is outside the certlimit is the 1/6, then it comes to jumps. T's are on some agencies teached in intro, so if a T is not in intro, that is also skipped in a few dives after the cert.
So then it is better to teach to full cave in my opinion. I also do. Just a few times I stop at intro level.
But divers that come in a course have at least an adv. nitrox cert. So are not coming from recreational sportsdiving and jump into cave. Cavern I don't teach. First we don't have caverns here (or we have, but they can be gone in less than 1 hour), and a cavern cert means for sure you go further in a cave than just stay within the first meters.
If I plan a cave course, I do 1 day diving with the students to prepare them. Just shallow open water, basic skills as valvedrills, laying lines, OOG, etc. Before I accept them in a course and I don't know them, I want to do a dive to learn to know each other. Sometimes it ends in a no, not yet.

It is always a question, when is a diver ready for the next step? This depends on the diver. There is not 1 answer right. I did 200 dives in the first 10 months after open water and then decided to move into tech. 18 months after my open water cert I was full cave, 2 years after open water cert I was full trimix and finished my first 100m dive. My adv. nitrox cert was from 1 april, my full cave from half april, my full trimix from 12 october. So all tech courses are done in 6 months. In 3.5 months (a few years later) I went from ccr mod1 to mod3 and 128m depth. But if you look just at time, it is fast. But remember, my qualifying dive for full cave was dive no. 390. My first 100m and qualifying dive for full trimix was no. 521.
So in amount of dives it was not fast.
If you want to judge about a diver, look at amount of divers, real dive experience (some dive 4-5 times a week, different divesites), and some divers are more talented than others. You cannot say this is too fast for every diver. And there are also standards that tell the minimum amount of dives needed for a course. I had just 1 time a diver that went into intro to cave with 50 dives. But I decided not to pass that diver directly. That took some more dives. Most divers that want to start cave diving have between 150 and 200 dives.

 

[Scuba Client]

I have the same conversation with people pretty frequently.

"I'd like to come down to do Cavern, Intro, and Full."

And then I wind up writing a zillion word email on why that's a terrible idea.

Usually people are receptive. I like to think that they're asking a cave diving instructor about cave diving because they want to know about cave diving. And then, having been given advice, they think, "Wow, I've just learned something about cave diving from a cave diving instructor."

Sometimes, however, people believe they know about the thing they're trying to learn better than the instructor of said thing already. And get upset about the answer.

Then they look for a different instructor who will give them the answer they want. Which always breaks my heart a little bit. But, by then, I'm out of the equation and can go back about trying to teach people things properly to the best of my ability.

Anyway... because I'm asked the same thing so frequently I wrote a thing. Call it a blanket response. Now I can just tell people who ask...

Go read THIS blog post.

And they can make of it what they will.

I read his blogs; quite interesting views.

 

[Superlyte27]

Captain pull back your throttles and have a look at this

"You see, I just learned to fly a few a crop duster a weeks ago,"

The funny part is, crop dusters are super complex, carrying massive loads, a turboprop engine and a completely reversible propellor. I have a multi-engine rating and more hours in the last six months than most private pilots get in a lifetime and I’d for sure bend up a crop duster.

 

[Dan G]

This makes me think of a guy on YouTube that likes to talk about diving. Started diving sometime in 2018 and is now a full rebreather cave diver and some level of instructor.
He has a stack of c-cards. Everytime I stumble across the YouTube channel it makes me think the title of this thread.

I took my training from Nico in Mx. An experienced cave dive explorer.

Nico is great. I took Essentials and Cavern in the same week with him. I enjoyed every moment. I cannot imagine moving ahead with more cert until I practice more of what I learned with Nico that week.

 

[Manatee Diver]

The funny part is, crop dusters are super complex, carrying massive loads, a turboprop engine and a completely reversible propellor. I have a multi-engine rating and more hours in the last six months than most private pilots get in a lifetime and I’d for sure bend up a crop duster.

I swear I posted it here, but it might have been on Facebook, but crop dusters are the cave divers of aviation. They are highly skilled pilots that take all the rules you learn in flight school and toss them out the window. They operate within their own rule set, with unique equipment and high skill requirements. With many dying to develop those rules, and still occasionally there are deaths (in fact there was one in Georgia a couple of weeks ago).

 

[lermontov]

I swear I posted it here, but it might have been on Facebook, but crop dusters are the cave divers of aviation. They are highly skilled pilots that take all the rules you learn in flight school and toss them out the window. They operate within their own rule set, with unique equipment and high skill requirements. With many dying to develop those rules, and still occasionally there are deaths (in fact there was one in Georgia a couple of weeks ago).

really? do you see cave divers as the elite ?

 

[Superlyte27]

really? do you see cave divers as the elite ?

I do.

 

[Manatee Diver]

really? do you see cave divers as the elite ?

I didn't use the world elite, but I do think that the average skill level is higher than any other sub group in sport diving that anyone can join by taking a class.

 

[ofg-1]

The funny part is, crop dusters are super complex, carrying massive loads, a turboprop engine and a completely reversible propellor.

Ever seen a PA-25 or Cessna 188? Spray in the spring, tow gliders the rest of the year.