Groundhog246 once bubbled...
Reasonable goal, yes. What was your max depth? I know a diver who deepest cert dive was 25 feet in a quarry, yet got a C-card certifying him to 60 feet????
My training sounds like it was similar to yours (Also did it at Toby). Gradually deeper dives to a max of 55 feet. How many dives since, how soon after did you next dive? How many and how long since cert?
But they reasoned that if you get actively involved while the training is fresh, in the long term you will remember more and have better skills.
controlled ascent. If you've never done an straight up ascent from 50 feet, with no guideline, you should try it. At the 25 foot mark, when viz isn't much more, maintaing your ascent rate and keeping contact with your buddy is not such an easy task.
In order... Max depth: 45', and that was actually on our first dive. Mind you, on that dive we were about as tightly supervised as possible. One buddy pair of new divers, one buddy-pair of instructors, while the assistant-instructors kept herd on the rest of the class in a shallow (15'?) area.
The other dives were 25', 30' and 40'. And theoretically my C-card says I'm good down to 120'. Yeah, right.
It was a long time until I did the next couple of dives, and a longer time since until I went again. Fortunately I was able to join up with the same instructor again for a few sessions of review before going back out.
I blame the big gap on (well, other than myself not persuing the sport rigorously) student-budgets, and an artefact of when/how the course was taught... It was taught through the recreation program at the university, not a LDS or club. So when I wanted to go diving again after the course finished, I didn't know anyone in town to go with, the people I'd done the course with having graduated, or otherwise gone out of cotact.
And I'd agree about early and frequent post-training diving being good for you. Essentially, I see that as one of the biggest benefits of a longer course... Most of the basics are covered in the first couple of sessions, and later sessions help you practice and reinforce those skills in a more supervised environment.
Heh. I still consider ascents the hardest part of a dive. Up until about 15' it's all pretty good, and holding the 15' stop is fine. But the last little bit tends to be pretty jerky... Either I end up letting out too much air, and have to swim up, or else the ascent gets a bit out-of-control, which usually leads back to dumping too much air...
Mostly a practice thing I hope. Learning to balance letting air out with rate of ascent. <grin> That or a good engineering project... Hey, I've got a project course in 4th year...
Jamie
