My class went really well. My instructor is an ex-public safety/rescue/recovery diver, and he had a major thing for safety/rescue skills. He put an emphasis on study and preparation -- I was snorkeling without a mask on and doing mask clearing drills on my own in our sub's pool before the course, after reading the course materials. The two other guys in my class were pretty sharp too, and that helped.
My class was a NAUI OW ("Scuba Diver" in NAUI parlance) course, given at his shop and a local commercial pool on a Thursday night, Friday night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and Monday night with 6 OW dives on a following weekend.
By the time we hit the pool, we all knew pretty much exactly what was going to happen, and had practiced some stuff (see above) on our own, so we whipped through the skills. Only things like "rescue unconscious diver at depth" drills took time to repeat.
Our open water stuff went good too -- 3 beach dives on a Saturday, 2 being on Scuba and one snorkel dive. The snorkel dive had to be in at least 15 feet of water, and we all had to dive and retreive a handful of sand, 4 times each. I dunno if that's a NAUI thing or just something my instructor cooked up, but I had never done that before and found it a confidence builder. Also, to get out deep enough, we had to swim about 250yds, and doing that 6 times (there and back 3 times) left us tired... but confident in our skills.
Our 3 boat dives the following day went pretty good. There was another group with us (different instructor) and they had one guy who got the heebies and aborted the whole day, one girl who got seasick after one dive and aborted, and one person had a nasty reverse block and got a maskful of blood. After our instructor drilled some dive physics/medicine into our heads, that didn't even surprise me when I saw it (at safety stop) -- I just thought "Oh, they got a reverse block. That must suck."
It was interesting to compare our two groups -- our group was all in wetsuits, even though it was relatively warm water. We all went down with everything clipped away and tidy, from dive slates and tables to octos and SPGs to a knife or shears, and these other folks were diving in cargo shorts and had their gear flopping around and catching on stuff.
Goes to show the difference in instructors. I definitely feel that our class all has the right knowledge, skills, and attitude required for our "license to learn." I was even comfortable enough to remove my regulator and adjust it a little at 55fsw. I plan to get a handful more dives in and continue my training, hopefully at least to Rescue Diver, just so I can be a responsible dive buddy.
I believe that panic is a diver's worst problem, and panic comes from fear. Fear comes from not knowing, so the best thing a diver can do is get educated. That and experience is the best thing one can do to stack the deck in your favor.
Just my 200BAR...
Ian
