Advanced Open Water

[occrider]

I did my AOW in cozumel and my instructor thought it was a good idea for me to do the underwater navigator specialty. Let me just tell you that "completing the square" in the Cozumel current was no fun at all and I was definitely huffing and puffing by my 3rd 90 degree turn. Other than that it was a blast. Def do the night dive specialty. We ended up hanging out with Octopusses (octopi?) and cuttlefish.

 

[CuriousRambler]

I thought Deep Diver and Navigation were required? Then you got to choose any other three (or was it two?) from the list..

 

[homo maris]

T
My instructor said that the deep checkout dive is 130 feet, that makes him crazy or he just want to give us a little more than usual?

Not crazy. 130ft is the recreational depth limit. If he/she feels that you are prepared for it, why not. Particularly if you are likely to do more deep dives in the future. It's only about 25% more pressure. You will likely have to do some mental exercise to see if you are narced. What I found very interesting was to take 3 different computers and to see how they behaved on the same dive profile. It really shows the difference in algorithms. We had 2 Suuntos and my Oceanic Versa Pro (very liberal). Ask your instructor to strap a few computers to your other arm to compare if you want to experience the same.

I selected to do deep , navigation, multilevel and night dives if I remember well.
The most interesting to me was the night dive as I had experienced the others prior to the course. I with they taught gas management.

JL

 

[occrider]

I thought Deep Diver and Navigation were required? Then you got to choose any other three (or was it two?) from the list..

Hmmm perhaps you're right because I definetly did deep diver as well. Went down to about 120ft for that.

 

[homo maris]

I thought Deep Diver and Navigation were required? Then you got to choose any other three (or was it two?) from the list..

They are required. Then you can do another deep dive and perhaps combine search/recovery with navigation.

 

[SmileMon]

I can't believe I didn't do it before, I went to NAUI website and here's what they say about AOW:

As part of your certification, you will complete a minimum of six open water dives including three separate dives for navigation, night or low visibility diving and deep diving (130 feet/40 meters maximum depth), plus three different dives. Some of the many different dives you can do include:

*Search and recovery
*Boat diving
*Light salvage
*Hunting and collecting
*Exploration and underwater mapping
*Wreck diving (non-penetration)
*Observation and data collection
*Diving in surf or currents
*Altitude diving
*Salt water diving (in areas where most diving is in fresh water)
*Fresh water diving (in areas where most diving is in salt water)
*Shore diving
*Diving for photos or video
*Using dive computers

So here goes:
6 dives.
3 - Navigation, night, deep diving.

I already did in OW: Boat Diving, Diving in surf or currents, Shore diving, DC.

So I guess I'm going to do: S&R, Wrech Diving and Observation and data collection.

Not possible for me: Hunting and collecting (I prefer the fish will stay at the reef.. ) Altitude (Florida is flat...), Fresh water (No springs near by) and UW photo.

I think he selected for me the best dives..

 

[m3830431]

If you are scheduled you should get the book and read it. The deep and navigation dives are required by PADI. You get to pick the others.

 

[wstein]

I did the NAUI AOW course, and my instructor taught us the usual in class and then plenty of pool work in reinforcing buddy tactics, diver assistance, buddy breathing, and that from OW. Also we worked with lift bags and some other recovery senerio's. He was willing to accept the night dive I did 2 weeks prior with him as one of my check out dives and then I schedule a trip to West Palm with the shop and did the rest of my check out dives there, deep water, some navigation, photography, fish ID, and I managed to sneak in a little wreck diving too . All in all it is a good course, because it reinforces what you learned in you OW course and also teachs you some new skills.

 

[espenskogen]

Can you get Boat, Wreck, and Deep all on the same dive? Then maybe do a night dive with a multi-level profile after you locate something on the bottom (S&R). That's like 6 specialties on 2 dives. if you can do it all in a drysuit and if you can ID some fish while on deco, and maybe take some photos.. well... you get the idea.

That would break so many standards it'd not even be funny. Firstly, you can only do one adventure per adventure dive. So the deep dive is only the deep dive, regardless of whether you see a wreck on it..

And secondly, when did you ever hear of a padi course that went into deco?!

 

[espenskogen]

Not crazy. 130ft is the recreational depth limit. If he/she feels that you are prepared for it, why not.

JL

The reason why not would be because it would break standards. The deep dive on the Advanced Open Water must be conducted deeper than 18 meters but no deeper than 30.
After you've completed advanced open water, you can sign up for the deep diver speciality, which will take you down to a max depth of 40m/130ft.

I'm all for diving deep and all of that, but beware that if something happened on a 130 ft Advanced open water dive, the instructor is breaching standards, and you might well find that his insurance would be void.

One step at the time...


EDIT: Just realised that this was the NAUI course - In which case it might well be within standards. Had it been Padi, it wouldn't have been.