Diving intensive course?

[Flygal4]

Hi! So diving is expensive...but it's always been on my bucket list. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago where I came into a bit of money. I'm gainfully employed, I have enough savings, and after investing a good bit of it, I'm ready to blow the rest away on (drumroll) diving!

1) Where can I get the most bang for my buck when I'm getting certified/logging dives? Does anyone know of any programs, locations that would accommodate my request (seen below)? I prefer getting certified in SSI but am open to Padi.
2) I can take up to a month off work. How many dives can I log, realistically, if money was no issue and I wanted to eat sleep dive repeat? As in, do you think I can go from zero certification to logging 60 open water dives in a month or am I an idiot?
3) If you were in my predicament, how would you go about planning this dream/holiday?

I live in the US and travel is not a problem.

I'd rather take the whole month off instead of doing smaller holidays. But I don't know anything about diving so here I am!

Will someone be a doll and help me orchestrate my diving dream?! I'd rather you not be brutal, but I am way too excited and know too little about diving that I need someone to help tame this newbie's expectations.

Sidebar: In case stamina is an issue, I have zero experience, but I was a D1 swimmer till a couple years ago and swim every day since. Is that even relevant? Probably not. Oy vey.

 

[iamrushman]

howdy and welcome from south Florida.....being that you have the world at your feet and the time to spare you can get 60 dives in a month with out a problem. I'm not sure where you are but perhaps Florida is a place for you with all the dive shops down here. Good luck on your bucket list and remember to have some fun fulfilling it.

 

[victorzamora]

Stamina shouldn't be a huge issue, as it's a very different type of tired....but being a D1 swimmer can be either really good or really bad. Comfort in the water is huge, but breaking the habit of not inhaling is stronger than you'd think.

As far as where to go to log that many dives, you'll get plenty of different opinions. One of my favorite places is Roatan. You can rent a little place near the water for a month, hook up with a dive shop and do 3+ dives per day. It's fairly cheap but you can pay up to gain luxury (though I don't get that on dive trips). You can do something similar in Cozumel and a few other places but I'm biased towards Roatan. Plane tickets are expensive but the rest of the trip is cheap.

As for PADI vs SSI....it doesn't really matter which jumble of letters certifies you, it's more about the quality of the instructor. Unfortunately, most "dive destinations" don't do a great job with the instruction (in my experience) but the number of dives you'll collect will add up to some good experience.

What I would do if I were you is find a budget, figure out what region you'd like to go (Caribbean, Southeast Asia, etc) and figure out how much you want to be catered to. At your age/health/fitness I think it'd be most fun to not be completely catered to.

 

[mselenaous]

You didn't specify where you are located.
Here is a good discussion on finding good instruction
How to find an excellent SCUBA class

 

[KevinNM]

The SSI shop near me teaches OW over a month, with either 4 * 3 hour pool blocks or 7 * 2 hour blocks plus classroom, plus the actual OW dives. I have no idea how it works elsewhere, but if you are willing to pay for private instruction or get the OW training done before your month starts it should be doable to get that done in less than a week.

There are advantages to doing something like getting certified by a shop right before a shop trip somewhere (somewhere appropriate - Roatan, Bonaire or the Keys - not a Galapagos trip or something absurd like that), so you are doing your first few dozen real dives with someone who is familiar with you and you know. Then hang around there after they leave or go somewhere else to dive more.

It's pretty easy to get 2 boat dives a day without doing a live aboard trip (which is usually not the best choice for a new diver) and I had days in Kona where I did 5 boat dives. If you are where shore dives are easy then you can do multiples of those per day.

 

[victorzamora]

I'm not sure I'd recommend Bonaire or most of the Keys to a new, single diver. Bonaire is a destination really built for a group of divers. The Keys, in my limited experience there, have been the same. Belize, Cozumel, Roatan, St Thomas, St Martin, St Lucia...these places have guides on every dive, will buddy-up single divers frequently, and are the kinds of locations that offer "appropriate" diving for a new diver.

Getting the pool work and book work out of the way locally might be a good idea before travelling, and I know most of the big organizations have some mechanism for that.

OP: One thing I forgot to mention is diving that frequently for that long. I'd probably recommend taking every fourth day off, so dive 3 and then be lazy the fourth. You will slowly build up nitrogen in your "slow compartments" (don't worry about understanding this) that can add up to be a problem. The other thing I might strongly recommend is a good recreational dive computer. Given what I know, I'd be most tempted to suggest something like an Oceanic Geo 2.0...but your situation could call for something else if you have different wants/goals. I wouldn't worry too much about buying much gear, but having a personal dive computer for that kind of trip would give me some peace of mind. I try to suggest that people not buy gear until they're certified, but you're in a different situation than most so I'm ammending my recommendation.

 

[fjpatrum]

If money is no problem contact one of the resident SB instructors and see what they can do with respect to getting your training in a reasonable amount of time. I know at least one will travel to your preferred location if you're willing to cover costs. Then you can get "known good" training from instructors with excellent reputations and continue diving as you see fit after that.

I took a PADI OW course that took two or three weeknights for the classwork and a weekend for the pool dives. My OW dives took another 2 days. You can do a lot of the classwork online now and save some of the time before you travel. Then it's just confined water/pool dives and then your open water dives.

Places I would recommend: Florida with a rental car so you can do lots of different types of diving in the time frame. Shore dives, boat dives, drift dives, reef dives, wreck dives, cavern dives, you name it. Plus the surface interval options are pretty good. I'd consider Carribean options as well, assuming you're in the USA just because accommodations can be had cheap and, again, plenty of diving options that are good.

 

[Wookie]

It's summer in Australia. If it were me, I'd go to Cairns, find a dive instructor and one of their groovy hostels, and get certified there. Dive your butt off, and don't forget to take a 4 or 5 day trip to Madang, PNG and dive some there. Maybe Indonesia is good for you. On the way home, fly Air New Zealand and take advantage of the free layover in Aukland, or Tahiti, or Roratonga, or Hawaii.

I did this for a month when I was 30. I had just learned to dive. It was an incredible experience, one I heartily recommend.

 

[DevonDiver]

1. Get over to SE Asia, enjoy the exotic culture, cheap cost of living/diving and dive in the highest marine biodiversity on the planet. Destination hop, to get the best experience.

2. Choose by instructor, not agency. Independent instructors have more capacity to schedule flexible and/or private training.

3. Dive 3-4 times a day, but allow a dry day to offgas 1-in-5.

4. Pay for training, not a license. It's the training, not the card, that matters.

 

[gchilcott]

This would be a great way to get up to speed before diving more independently. University diving courses are more similar to what you want than a dive shop course, but they're still quarter- or semester-length. There are also concierge instructors that facilitate equipment selection, travel, etc. in conjunction with teaching.

If training is your goal, consider a location with more challenging conditions for the training. For instance, train in cold water and then resort diving will be easy for you. That wouldn't be true the other way around.

One challenge might be finding another person to take the course with you. Some instructors will prefer to have at least two students. My $0.02's worth is that being a D-1 swimmer will be 100% to your advantage -- you obviously don't have a problem with difficult or regimented training.