Lets tell the less experienced what our OWC was like..... ( if you remember)

[Jax]

What a lovely thread!

I wanted to scuba for ages, and was totally excited about my husband and I doing it for our honeymoon.

We trained with our home LDS -- I almost didn't make it! You have to swim a certain distance, and then there is the underwater swim. Unfortunately, it was February and the pool heater had quit. The water was 70 degrees, and I thought I was going to die! I was hyperventilating, and I'm sure did the skills very poorly. In the pool, on the bottom on scuba, I was shaking like a leaf. At first, I think my instructor thought it was fear, but out of the water, my chattering teeth and violent shivers told him otherwise. For the rest of our pool work, he found me a 7mm farmer jane.

I didn't understand the mask off exercise - how stupid, why do we do this - until my husband kicked my mask off. hbrother:

Our Open Water Dive was in San Carlos, Mexico, at Window Rock. It was during a rare peaceful period, and the vis was spectacular. It seemed we could see for miles! We slowly dropped to the sand at 40 feet, and immediately the instructor waved us over to point out a perfectly camouflaged stonefish on a nearby rock. We assembled, and executed our drills, and then had 10 minutes to ourselves.

Everything was so bright and beautiful, and I suddenly spotted an 8" moon jelly, the first and last I have seen in San Carlos. I reached for my husband's shoulder to point out the jelly.

D'you remember that thing they teach you about everything is larger, or appears closer, underwater? My husband was not that close . . . my hand missed his shoulder and instead snagged his primary reg hose, neatly snatching the reg from his mouth . . .

Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to not breathe water, and I had the presence of mind to run my hand to the end and shove the reg back at his mouth. In spite of the steely, hard eyes, I did manage to divert his attention from whatever his contemplated revenge, and he, too, became enchanted with the lovely, glowing stranger.

Therefore, I survived my first OW dive.

 

[Laurie S.]

My certification dives also were at San Carlos, but at San Pedro Island. I had problems with buoyancy because the dive shop tech had not installed the hose for my Air2 properly and there was a bad leak. There wasn't enough time between the pool dives and San Carlos for them to fix it. So, I did the dives knowing there would be a problem (the instructors and DMs were aware of it, too). It actually may have helped me, because it made me very sensitive to buoyancy issues.

The biggest problem was that my mask didn't fit properly and it leaked, a lot. On the first dive, my mask was really messing me up and two DMs came over to tighten it down. Just as they did that, I saw my first turtle underwater. It was about 10 feet away and big. I pushed the DMs away and swam over to be nearly face to fin with that awesome critter. I immediately lost all my fear of the mask, etc., and knew that diving was what I wanted to do. I started to think of turtles as a good luck charm and always feel good when I see one.

 

[Wolfie]

My open water dives were in Northern Lake Michigan the first weekend of November. Shore dives after a big storm leaving us with about 6' viz. At the end of day one dive 3 it was snowing when we came out of the water. Instead of trying to change on shore I jumped in the car with full 7mm suit still on, drove to the hotel and proceeded straight to the hot tub with the suit on. The looks on the faces of the others in the hot tub was priceless.

 

[AquaAli]

My first OWD was a Discover Scuba. I jumped on the boat, had no idea what to expect. No confined water or pool sessions, just a couple of quick skills on the boat (this is how you equalise, this is how you clear your mask). I was really excited, but I was also a little nervous. The reason I did a DSD instead of going straight into OWC was because I expected to have issues equalising (I used to have a terrible time on planes).

Got the strange gear on (having never seen it before) was told how to do a giant stride entry, and off we went. Put the reg in my mouth, felt so strange. Started descending down the buoy line, and I freak out a little, resurface. Because the breathing just felt so strange! Luckily my instructor was super calm, got my breathing under control and down we went again. Equalised no problem! Off we goooo, this is SCUBA! I LOVED it, we went down to about 16m and stayed for 45min. I was IN LOVE. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever done. On the second dive, we did a swim through and had to deal with some current! I now know how advanced that stuff was, compared to my experience level at the time, but I wouldn't change anything!

Ahh, just thinking about that first time makes me want to get back in the water like NOW!

 

[tyesai]

My open water class was a mix of pleasure and pain. I talked with the instructor about my concerns and he pacified my by laughing and saying "I teach 12 year olds to do this all the time". I had a blast completing the pool portion of the class, having grown up with a swimming pool I was very comfortable with that portion of the class. The only thing I didn't like about the pool was I got to see how dirty a clean pool actually is. We were using the base pool at the end of the day and the amount of boogers and little pieces of toilet paper was kind of gross.

75% of the open water dives I didn't enjoy. The skills were no problem, but I was nervous, had a BCD inflator that was stuck ever so slightly open, and I was severely out of shape; the BCD inflator and my physical fitness were the biggest problems. On the "tour" portion of class I was constantly trying to float up and I was having a hard time keeping up with the group swimming and was getting a headache from breathing way way to hard, but I knew that diving could be much more fun for me if conducted at a slower pace.

The best dive I've had was when I was recently paired up with a photographer and we moved along at a snails pace and I actually got to look at all the cool critters but I can spend 5 minutes watching a stingray sitting quietly in the sand or a small fish eating algae.

The academic portion was interesting for me as well. The PADI book can be a little corny at times but I enjoyed reading it. The test was the proverbial piece of cake.

 

[Felipe Telles]

I described mine in this thread:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...between-good-instruction-bad-instruction.html

 

[Splitlip]

When I did my BOW (well it was called Open Water I Scuba Diver) I had nothing but exhilarating pleasure. As a teen (immortal) every exercise was like an oyster being opened. Met with excited anticipation. Even the drills when my instructor pulled off our masks or shut down our valves. The doff and dons were fun too. (no BC's..we had weight belts, so our buoyancy never changed.)

But hey, I'm Batman. There were others who had to repeat the class or flunked out entirely.

 

[RTee]

Scuba diving for me is the result of trying different things for the sake of adventure. Summer of 1977 I got my private pilot license at the age of 17 from a flying scholarship I received with the air cadets. Two days after my wing graduation, I was joining a military academy. Then in rapid succession I registered and completed a civilian skydiving course, damage a knee playing football and decided to register for a scuba diving class.

I still vividly remember my OW training even though it occured in....78. Classes and pool work were done during the winter at the indoor pool of the military college I was attending at the time. Initial qual was through NAUI and involved a lot of swimming, on the surface and underwater, followed by snorkel pool sessions, underwater hockey sessions (where a bunch of guys split in two teams were attempting to push a weight at the bottom of the pool between the two posts of the opposite team with masks being kicked from your face and water swallowed through snorkel) and eventually we got to strap a tank on our back, swim underwater from tank to tank (eight swimmers/four tanks...did not take too long to notice who was an air hog in the group) and do various form of buddy breathing exercises as a basic kit consisted of an orally inflated horseshoe vest, tank mounted on backpack and a single second stage mounted on a single stage...and no dive computer.

OW certification dives were done the following spring ...and I mean early spring, in the river adjacent to the college as ice chunks were still migrating on the surface in the current. Vis was close to nil except very close to the bottom. You and your dive buddy were leashed together through a six foot nylon rope worn on your wrist. I dove wearing only a watch, in relatively shallow water, using a 72 LP steelie and when the breathing got a little bit harder it indicated that you were close to the 400 psi mark. I would then pull on the rod of my J valve to open the reserve valve and then head for the surface .

For some unknown reasons scuba diving seems much easier nowadays. Even though I now have and use modern equipment and tools, I can still operate comfortably and safely without some of them if they do malfunction.

 

[down4fun]

I had just finished working full time and putting myself through RN school and decided now that school was over it was time have a life and that I needed a hobby. I have always loved the water and now that I was living in Florida I signed up for my OW.

There were three of us in class two super fit young men and me...the middle age no sot fit woman. Imagine my embarrassment as they lapped me in the pool during the open water swim. I also remember the first time i put my head under water with the regualator in my mouth. I was thinking in my mind "I can't breath I am underwater" and yet at the same time I was breathing. It took what seemed like forever for my physical body to make the connection with my mind that I was breathing through the regulator and was ok. Seas were 2-4 for out checkout dives and there wasn't an open spot of railing on the boat as students vied for a place to puke. I had followed my instructors advice and taken some dramamine and was I ever glad I had.

I immediately fell in love with diving. In the beginning I had no friends who dived so every time my instructor went out I tagged along to get some bottom time. In no time I was showing up at the boats by myself and soon had a group of friends who were divers. I completed 100 dives my first 6 months. From there I continued on into technical diving, caves and rebreathers.

 

[fncrow]

I did my OW in Cairns, Australia through SSI.

Day1: Admin stuff at the shop in the morning. Then we drove out to where the pool/classrooms where. For the first part of the day we did classroom stuff. Watched a video, then talked about the video and went over things on the board. After lunch we did the swim skill test. We had to do 8 laps in the pool, but the instructor stopped us after about 6 or 7. Then we had to do the 10minute tread. During which time we would toss a ball back and forth and if you had the ball you had to tell something about yourself and so on... basically it was an excuse to use the ball to float. There was no underwater swim test or anything like that.

Afterwards we drew gear and learned how to put it all together. Then got everything on and went to the shallow part to start learning skills. We did the mask clearing/mask removal, OOA buddy drills, giant strides, regulator recovery and im sure some other stuff i just cant remember. We did all this in the shallow and deep part. Then after that we did buoyancy. He had us do fin pivots and then try to float just off the bottom in the deep end. Then we did where you sit in the indian postion and float. After that we had like 30min to just scuba around the pool doing whatever you want.

Day2: This time we started the morning off in the pool. We did all the skills again, then OOA buddy ascending, CESA (but we did it horizontaly) and the instructor would actually turn our air off during these exercises. Then we did the whole taking off and putting on gear while in the water. We never did the thing though where your gear is at the bottom and you swim down to put it on. It was all done on the surface. Then we did classroom, watched some more videos, went over dive tables and so on. Then we had the test. Before the test though we went over all the question as a class. Then he gave the test to us individually.

Day 3: Out on the liveaboard. First dive was to about 60feet. We did all of our skills and then swam around for 15min or so. On the ascent we did OOA drills. Then back on the boat we learned about filling out our dive logs and figuring out SAC rates and so on. The second dive was not much to talk about. Dove around looked at stuff and then did OOA ascents again. We had the option that night to do a night dive with the instructor also and me and my partner did but no one else in our class did. The boat had rules about not going below 30feet or something like that at night... yea we broke that rule.

Day4: Had to be up at 5am for our last two dives.... keep in mind we had been out drinking with the instructor and rest of boat crew till about 3:30am so i was running on an hour of sleep or so. Did our last two dives that morning but all our skills had been done so they were basically just fun dives. Finished out our log books and signed some paper work. Got to do an afternoon dive on our own and then caught the boat back to the harbor.

We were our instructors last course before he took off with his GF to travel the world so it was bit of a party class. Especially since he was former Ausie military and my buddy and I are former military... basically meaning the three of us clicked and went out every night during the class and even after the class getting drunk and trying to pick up girls lol. Our class only had 5 in it including us.

Overall since then do i think there were some things that were left out that should have been covered more? Yes, like i think he should have spent more time on figuring out your SAC rate and explaning how to figure out ATA and so on. But besides those things our instructor was awesome and it was a good time.