Do I need to take open water course again?

[tracydr]

Well I witnessed a diver who had been certified nearly 20 years earlier. They were planning on going somewhere to dive and wanted to get a refresher course before they did. Probably a good thing they did because despite the fact that she had dove avidly years earlier she apparently over the 20 year period of non diving lost her ability to do simple skills like mask flooding. She tried and tried and tried but it just would not work.

What you have to remember is over time lots of things change that seem minor as we witness it.

One really way to notice this is to watch movies like Jaws and the scene where divers were going in and you will notice a variety of modern no nos. Regs with no octos, Horse Collar style floatation devices and the list goes on. Just imagine what all has changed since you got certified

We really did have octos, BCs and even computers 12 years ago. I haven't noticed that many big changes to equipment or OW training in the past 16 years. Certainly not the same as if somebody came to you having trained in the 70s, which was when my ex-husband had his training.


---------- Post Merged at 05:52 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 05:50 AM ----------

Sierra Leone, huh? Never considered that as a diving area

I lived in Tanzania from 1978-80 and went to school with the kids of the man who later became the president of Sierra Leone (Kabbah).

I try to return to Tanzania every year for a few months where my landrover and I seek out and prey on tourists and take them into Selous game reserve and other parks.

Hopefully next time I go back I will get the chance to dive in Zanzibar. Almost did my o/w in Mombasa.

If you get a chance, try Pemba Island. The diving is amazing and there is a good operator of a live aboard there. The operator also have some lovely cabins on the mainland for day divers.

Wow, I just realized this thread was pretty old!

 

[Diver Sam]

I will add my "here here" as well. I was certified in the 1970's and after lots of dives, took a 20 yr hiatus. I dove in Bora Bora and wanted to get back into diving. I chose the OW course skipping the refresher and was very glad I did. Lots of new info and procedures. I feel much more confident.

 

[Diver0001]

There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Peter actually often tries to break up couples and parent-child pairs, so that both people learn to be independent, and so you don't get the phenomenon where the adult can't learn because they're so busy being vigilant over the child.

I know some instructors do that as a matter of course and I have also been forced to do it as well but only in extreme cases. I think it's highly advantageous to try to keep "built-in" buddies together if at all possible.

My thinking is that while it's important that they both have ample opportunity to learn and focus on themselves I also have to account for the fact that they *will* dive together and I feel it's my obligation to address their functioning as a team.

Therefore, I strongly prefer to keep them together and to teach them how to dive "together". In some (many) cases you'll see that one partner is more inclined to take the lead and the other partner is more inclined to follow but in my mind, that's just one of the things that needs debriefing so they find a healthy mode. Let's face it, those divers will STILL be inclined to show the same behaviour when they dive together whether you address it or not! So instead of delaying that learning experience until they're alone, unsupervised and possibly even fighting about it after the fact, I think it has better long term benefits to both divers if they at least become aware of how they respond to each other in the relative safety of the class. Doing so also gives me an opportunity to set some "ground rules" or boundaries so their functioning as a team (hopefully) doesn't become dysfunctional once they're on their own.

I reached this conclusion over the years by simply seeing far FAR too many couples *literally* struggling to dive together.

R..

---------- Post Merged at 01:41 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:35 AM ----------

My 14 year old daughter is taking an open water course now and I want to start diving together. Any suggestions on whether I need to take the open water diver training again?

You have 44 dives already and aside from a refresher you shouldn't need much in the way of re-training. In that sense I wouldn't be inclined to want you to take the whole OW course again.

That said, in cases like yours (which actually happens often as parents get back into diving with their teenage kids), I would insist on having you present in one of the pool sessions and in all of the OW check out dives in order to function as your daughter's buddy so I could give you (and your daughter) a head start on diving as a buddy team. I laid out the reasons why I do that in the previous post to Lynne.

R..

 

[RonFrank]

Since this thread is almost 6 months old I would imagine that the OP has already taken some action and current comments are rather pointless....

 

[Diver0001]

Damn.... I'm rusty.



R..