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RetroBlader
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We started by exploring the possibility of doing our AOW locally before the trip, but quickly gave up -- dive shops around our area only do courses in the summer months.
We then contacted Scuba Club Cozumel to see how easy/disruptive it would be to add one or both courses into our 5-dive-day schedule. We knew with AOW there would be 5 course-related dives, including the mandatory Deep Dive and Navigation Dive. We contacted SCC and found out they do their AOW over 3 days, with 3 boat dives (Deep, Boat, Drift) and 2 shore dives (Navigation and Peak Buoyancy).
After much deliberation, we decided against doing the AOW course at SCC. My wife felt trying to fit a 3-day course into our 5 dive days would be way too much. (This was meant to be a vacation, after all.) Not to mention, as part of our Room-Board-Dive package we had already paid for 10 boat dives, some of which would get "commandeered" for AOW, but we would still have to pay full price for the course.
I don't expect SCC (or any dive operators at "resort" locations) to come anywhere close to the way Jim does his AOW courses, but what Jim said in another thread made sense to me -- the student diver should be able to choose the 3 optional specialty dives himself/herself.
There is nothing wrong with the ones SCC chose for their course, but Peak Performance Buoyancy, Night Dive and Search-and-Rescue (or more advanced Navigation) would have been my picks if I get to choose myself.
Anyway, my wife and I have seen too many AOW divers who were less knowledgeable and had worse skills than the two of us (even though we were "just" O/W). Part of this is probably due to too many resort dive operators simply rubber-stamp routine dives as course dives. We feel if we are going to get AOW certified, we want to "do it right".
Just a couple of months ago we stayed at an all-inclusive resort in St. Lucia, which included 2 boat dives every day as eligible "all-inclusive" activities. A guy who was also staying there decided to get his AOW there. He paid US$300 and did do some course work, but also ended up doing all but one of his course dives with the rest of us. We didn't want to take the chance of the same thing happening to us in Cozumel.
(In retrospect, we probably over-worried. During our stay, a couple on our boat had their 23-year-old daughter go through her O/W certification at SCC. After a couple of shore dives she did come onto our boat the next day, but she had her own DM/instructor and dove a different depth/profile than the rest of us. More importantly, after she got her C-card she joined our boat for the next couple of days, and although her trim was far from horizontal, she could definitely hold her own during the dives without too much help from her parents or the rest of us. I take that as one indicator that SCC did a good job training her.)
As for Nitrox, we considered both doing it locally beforehand and doing it at SCC. We visited two local dive shops, and also checked with the not-so-local dive shop (where we did our O/W classroom/pool sessions) in Toronto, about 1 hour drive away.
We also looked online, and found many organizations offering pure-online Nitrox courses. I even downloaded the PDF version of a Nitrox textbook and started reading it.
SCC's Nitrox course actually included a 2-tank boat dive for about the same price as some online-only courses. I definitely consider that a plus.
However, in the end, we decided to also leave Nitrox for another trip, another time. My wife just felt all that learning defeats the purpose of this trip (a vacation first and foremost). To be honest, I had already finished reading the online textbook I found, and thought the new knowledge was not that hard to absorb:
- don't go too deep (exceeding MOD = seizure = death)
- use 1.4 ata to be safe
- be 100% sure of the oxygen % in your tank (i.e. see it analyzed with your own eyes)
But happy wife, happy life, right?
Looking back today, I certainly don't regret diving air for the entire trip:
Most of our dives were not that deep (max 60-80 ft on most of the dives), and as photographers, we actually enjoyed the shallower dives (40-60 ft) more. At Palanchar Cave, we did go down to 94 ft, and I remember signaling my wife to move up a bit when my NDL time crosses the 10-minute mark. EAN32 would have bought us more time down there, but my SAC was for some reason unusually high on that dive (0.7, vs 0.5 on most of my other dives), so I probably would not have been able to stay much longer at that depth anyway.
My wife goes to the gym 5 days a week, and I'm a couch potato, but we have near-identical rates of air consumption (we almost always come up within 100 psi of each other). Considering we are still very new (62 dives each), our SAC of around 0.5 means we can probably get more bottom time if we were to dive EAN, but we were quite happy with the amount of bottom time we got with air.
Not to mention, with SCC being a good distance from the Southern dive sites, we were already coming back from our 2-tank dive around 1-1:30pm. Staying down for another 10 minutes per dive would mean no lunch until past 2pm -- not acceptable to us!
I hear a lot about people feeling less fatigued with Nitrox. We didn't feel that fatigued with air during our week (we did at least 3 dives each day, and 4 dives on two of the five days), but maybe we'd feel even better on Nitrox? I guess I'll find out when we eventually go to Bonaire and dive Nitrox all the time.
Like I said, we considered every single response we got and learned a lot. We are very thankful for everyone who contributed.
To help other divers who may come across this thread someday, I will mention a few additional comments which really benefited us:
a) Exposure suits
We already owned 3mm shorties and lycra skins prior to this trip, and thought those would suffice for the warm Mexican waters. After reading Bubbletrubble's comment we contacted SCC to check the water temperature, just to be sure. SCC suggested that we bring full-length 3mm wetsuits, because the water temperature in February was only 78-79F. So my wife and I went to a LDS and bought a set of full-length Bare suits. Boy, was that a good call. We would have gotten very cold with shortie+skin alone.
b) Safety equipment
Even though we've done drift dives before, for this trip, I decided to invest in extra safety equipment in case we get separated from the dive group/DM. I bought SMBs, whistles and signal mirrors. We never had to use these (and we never got lost or separated from the group), but I still thought it was a good decision.
c) Extras
I also bought a few extra items for the trip:
- magnetic message board: only used it twice, but very helpful on those occasions
- Goodman straps for our Intova lights: never used these -- we either held our lights or clipped them to retractable gear-keepers
- water-activated LED tank marker lights (blue, flashing): I thought they worked ok (particularly the couple of times when I had to spot my wife among all the night divers), but my wife felt non-flashing ones would have worked even better. The water-activated feature was great -- no need to remember to switch on/off.
- retractable geerkeepers: I didn't use mine that much, but my wife REALLY loved hers, since she used it to keep her console from dangling. (I am used to tucking my console inside the BC under my right arm in order to be as streamlined as possible.)
- ball-and-bungee tank marker/banger: never used them once -- the tank holders on our boat were NOT along the sides, but rather, all concentrated in a square area near the rear platform, and the holder tubes were much deeper than the boat-side holders we saw on previous trips. This meant the tank marker/banger could only be put on the tank only after it is removed from the holder. With the famous Cozumel current, most of the time all the divers in the group had to enter water within a short period of time -- no time to put marker/banger on the tank!
Anyway, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Cozumel, and we can't wait to dive again! Thanks again for all the wonderful advice we received.
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