A whole bunch of noob Questions

[ColdH2Odvr]

JohnF once bubbled...

I spent much of the time on each of those dives worrying about the other people, the few who looked scared stiff, and were pretty hopeless in the water.

I’ve seen a lot of people uncomfortable (read not having fun) in the water because of poor buoyancy control. It seems to me that it would be fairly difficult to drive home the importance of good buoyancy control in two pool sessions let alone teach the skill. My niece took her OW course about six month ago. When it came time to do fin pivots, she couldn’t keep her feet on the bottom so they put ankle weights on her. Now she dives with ankle weights. What’s wrong with this picture? Learning is difficult, un-learning is just plain hard.

Frog on!

Dave

PS. love the Andrew Jackson quote. I’m a spell check junky but the damn machine doesn’t know I mean plain when I type plane (though now that I think about it I’m not a big fan of flying… Freudian slip perhaps?)

 

[JohnF]

ColdH2Odvr once bubbled...

I’ve seen a lot of people uncomfortable (read not having fun) in the water because of poor buoyancy control. It seems to me that it would be fairly difficult to drive home the importance of good buoyancy control in two pool sessions let alone teach the skill. My niece took her OW course about six month ago. When it came time to do fin pivots, she couldn’t keep her feet on the bottom so they put ankle weights on her. Now she dives with ankle weights. What’s wrong with this picture? Learning is difficult, un-learning is just plain hard.

Frog on!

Dave

PS. love the Andrew Jackson quote. I’m a spell check junky but the damn machine doesn’t know I mean plain when I type plane (though now that I think about it I’m not a big fan of flying… Freudian slip perhaps?)

When we did our OW the instructor wore a drysuit and always had ankleweights. But he never finished the dives with them as they both ended up on someone's tank valve. I wasn't honestly sure what they were really for after that till I started diving with drysuit divers. Fortunately by the time I got a drysuit all the folks I dove with were good enough not to want ankle weights so of course I never got in the habit. I tried them once just for fun and hated the feeling.

As for the spelling, I have a thing about that. I refuse to use a spellchecker on principle. My own little conceit. Of course that doesn't preclude keeping a dictionary close at hand. 8)

John F.

 

[g8trdiver]

The anxiety comes from "not knowing" - but soon you will know, and you'll wonder what all the anxiety was....

I am not an Instructor, but here's a quote from PADI's FAQ web page: (http://www.padi.com/english/common/courses/faq.asp)

You need to be a reasonably proficient swimmer and comfortable in the water. You must swim 200 metres/200 yards nonstop, without a time or specific stroke requirement or a 300 metre/yard swim with mask, fins and snorkel. You'll also perform a 10 minute tread/float

Maybe the 2 dives you mention are actually 2 2-tank dives, as is usually the case with boat diving. So, a total of 4 dives.

My sister recently did a weekend OW certification (Friday evening, Sat am class/Sat afternoon Pool - Sunday am class / Sun. afternoon Pool). She was certed in the springs, and I tagged along. They had to demonstrate the emergency ascent and, separately, they had to demonstrate doffing and donning their gear at the surface.

So it wound up being at least 12 hours in a classroom, and 6-8 hours in a pool altogether (?)... My advice to her was to study the books ahead of time because you don't really have time to read through and understand when the course is flying by so fast.

With a course that is broken up over several weeks, you can read and understand each section as it is presented, and have time to absorb it. However, she did very well - even aced the test. You'll do fine.

 

[Cafka]

Thanks for all the encouragement.