Certified! Now what?

[RonFrank]

One first step is to find some divers. This can be a dive club, an LDS, friends, Dive Yakers, a travel group that likes to get together and spend $$$, or some combination of all of the above.

I also believe that the best thing to do after completing OW is to take AOW. Funny how many folk think that OW is incomplete but somehow one should not take AOW right away? Take it right away. It will give you confidence, reinforce your OW skills, gain new skills, and get you in the water with an instructor for a few more dives. Don't worry about Deep, that is why an instructor is there to watch your back. The only downside is it cost $$$.

If you wait until you have deep dives, navigation dives etc. the class becomes useless, but you can not take rescue without it... Some folks even become resentful.

Another option is to take a guided (like drift) Dive. This is not quite the same as having your own instructor, but can be very reassuring if you stay close to the guide. In Boynton for example the guide is included in the price.

Your lucky to live close to some great water. I drive 400 miles routinely to dive (Blue Hole, NM). You can be in Ft. Lauderdale in the same time or less...

Have fun, and dive safe.....

 

[molina67]

UPDATE: So we went to get nitrox certified, because they were offering for free if you were certified during the month of july. While we were taking the exam the instructor gets a call, steps out and to take the call, and after the exam tells my wife and I that he has a friend going to Ginnie Springs the next day to dive if we were interested. Not to make it seem that I was settng my wife up I said no. The Instructor continues and says if you want to go I will let you borrow "all" the equipment. I'll have my buddy take it down for you and he will bring it back. My wife thinks about it and says why not. To make this story short.... we went and we were underwater for over an hour and a half. So now she is way more comfortable and looking forward to more dives.

 

[Searcaigh]

Good call molina67, get as much experience as you can. I had a lot of dives under my belt before I eventually did my Advanced course, fortunately I lived next to the sea so it was not difficult to do.

Enjoy your new hobby with your wife.

 

[molina67]

We learned alot from that dive. Although we went with a group the instructor told us you are certified so you can go on your own because he was teaching someone, so we were able to go at our own pace. First lesson... Don't just dive in a river without a dive flag. A boat went by trolling a couple of times. My wife who was apprehensive at first, wanted to go deeper. Her gauge kept telling us we were only 20'.

After the dive we went to a dive shop to buy some equipment and realized that I need to go with someone who knows what they are doing because when all was said and done, we paid almost $500.00 for a pair of Masks, snorkles, fins and booties. Don't get me wrong.... I'm sure it's pretty good equipment, but didn't think it would be that much. So when I go buy the rest of my gear, I'll have someone with me. I pretty much know what I want, just don't know if it is above my needs or not. I plan on diving in the Carribean, Keys, and other exotic places as time and $$$ permit, so I want to make sure I have the right stuff. I plan on buying everything except tanks and looking a buiding a package deal.

 

[scubadiveilat]

You've learned to dive? Now apply those skills and have fun. that's the most important part in diving. Dive and Have fun. If your heading to Florida there are a lot of dive sites everywhere. Simply go have fun and get dives on your belt. When you get to a hundred dives think about advancing then.

Have fun diving!!!

 

[n733lk]

Get off this board and go dive!

Have fun!

 

[hellhole]

Go and dive, esp with a good dive centre. Forget about the gears to buy. Rental is the way to go in the beginning. U learnt to check your gear and set up right? Time to remember them.

Why dun buy gears first? Because everyone is different. During your dives u can check out what other people gears are and why they like it. If they are nice enough, and I am sure many divers are, u may get to try it out.

Go out enjoy the dive....

 

[Knight_of_Avalon]

We learned alot from that dive. Although we went with a group the instructor told us you are certified so you can go on your own because he was teaching someone, so we were able to go at our own pace. First lesson... Don't just dive in a river without a dive flag. A boat went by trolling a couple of times. My wife who was apprehensive at first, wanted to go deeper. Her gauge kept telling us we were only 20'.

What about yours? Did it also say that you two were only 20' deep? Equipment failure does happen, after all.

After the dive we went to a dive shop to buy some equipment and realized that I need to go with someone who knows what they are doing because when all was said and done, we paid almost $500.00 for a pair of Masks, snorkles, fins and booties. Don't get me wrong.... I'm sure it's pretty good equipment, but didn't think it would be that much. So when I go buy the rest of my gear, I'll have someone with me. I pretty much know what I want,. . .

That actually sounds about right, particularly if you went with hard soled boots. But having expert advise never hurt - and don't forget to check the equipment forums here.

. . . I plan on diving in the Carribean, Keys, and other exotic places as time and $$$ permit, so I want to make sure I have the right stuff. . .

You're in Georiga, right? If so, take a look at the Atlanta Aquarium - certified scuba divers can dive it, swimming with all sorts of exotic fish and plants without leaving home.

 

[molina67]

Okay so I have been looking into the different scuba shops around where I'm at and have been looking at different dive sites, I guess we would like to go with someone with a little more experience than we have.... Sure I can go to the beach and just walk in with gear but is the right? I'm closer to Jacksonville than I am to Atlanta. The Savannah River looks good but do you just jump in? There are plenty of bodies of water around us, but we also have alligators in a lot of them so just finding a body of water and jumping in is not such a good idea LOL... I guess we'll stick to the springs in Florida for now until we can find a group to go out with.

 

[Beowulf]

I happened across this, you might find of interest http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/so...north-augusta-savannah-river-dive-report.html.

Here's what we've done:
Classes and CW dives 8/10
Continued practice in pool at LDS 8/10 - 1/11
Refresher 2/11
Cert trip 3/11
Done several trips with LDS. They put together some good reasonable trips and there is always an instructor or 2 around.

One of the trips was to West Palm Beach. The dive op put DMs in the water with the flag for drift diving. We'd do this again without a group. Drift diving takes the navigation and propulsion issues out of the way so we had less to worry about.

We head to Loch Lo Minn, a quarry in TN as often as possible. The quarry is great for practicing skills like buoyancy and dive planning and nav. No way to get lost, worst case a long surface swim. We really like the quarry and it gives us a great way to dive independently.

We're not really comfortable with going off on our own for ocean dives, but getting close. There is comfort in knowing the other divers around us even if we don't need them there.