What dives did you choose for your PADI AOW?

[Winterpeg]

Just did mine a couple of months ago - PPB, Drift, and Night. I have heard and read lots of people say that PPB should be an additional mandatory dive, and I would have to agree. Jose at Scuba Club Cozumel took 2 pounds off me on the PPB dive and I think that lesson helped me the most of all the AOW dives I did. Buoyance is key to everything. Even as an relative newbie, I could see other divers who could have benefited from a PPB lesson - I'm sure they were overweighted because they had trouble staying off the bottom, but they were nervous about being able to get down without the extra weight. My own concern about taking weight off wasn't not being able to get down; it was fear of not having enough weight left to do the safety stop at the end of the dive once my tank was low on air. Jose alleviated this fear by carrying a couple of pounds extra himself so that he could add them to me at the end if I needed; but I didn't. Trying this under supervision was a great learning experience and confidence booster and by the end of my 2 weeks there I'm sure I had better buoyancy skills than some of my fellow (more experienced) divers.

 

[vam302]

I think we did night, S & R, and wreck. If you keep diving, at some point you will probably cover them all.

 

[WTFOver]

I did: Night, Wreck and PP Buoyancy

 

[Darcey]

Peak performance buoyancy and search & recovery

 

[Byte Me]

I was thinking about night for the last one, and Byte Me, I'll be in Tulum, bout an hour south of Playa Del Carmen.

In that case, I agree with what a lot of others have said - night is good since you'll be close with an instructor and typically they may not do a night dive unless they have a certain number of divers, wreck would be great - however not sure if there is a wreck down there, you may have to come up to Playa for Mama Vina, and PPB - will teach you important skills you'll be able to use every time you dive, buoyancy is arguably your most important skill. Wish I had done that one!! Since you're in Tulum you can probably talk the instructor into going through drift, even if just the book portion, since all your dives will be drift anyway!

have fun! I did my first ever dive in Tulum when we stayed at Dreams Tulum, it was a discover and I was instantly hooked, went again with them the next day. What a blast that was!!

 

[PToone]

I did Night (very good), Search and Rescue(essential), and equipment techniques. If you own your own equipment, equipment techniques is a really good course.

 

[RAWalker]

My elective dives were Nght, Boat and Digital Underwater Photography.
Since I was on a trip with my LDS each of the dives was actually a boat dive althought my instructor did run through some basics for the dive we counted as the boat dive for AOW.
Since myself, my AOW buddy and the instructor all had UW cameras the final dive for AOW was a no brainer and the most relaxing of the trip. It was basically a gimmie.
The boat dive was our first of the trip and wasn't the first boat dive for any of us so it was a good way to start our AOW training.
Our second dive was later that day. It was our night dive and considering we hadn't done any Nav work yet and it was each students first night dive, it caused a bit of anziety but it went off without any problems.
Third dive was the next day and we started with our deep dive. We went to 101' and did some math and signe our names on our slates. This was to compare the narcosis effect of depth to our reasoning on the surface. Neither I or my buddy showed any difference at that depth.
Fourth dive was Navigation and we needed to put some effort in to it to adjust for current. Our instructor seemed to place extra emphisys on this skill.
As I mention DUW photography was our last section and we all just snapped a bunch of shots to compare that evening.

 

[NudeDiver]

So in a little over a week I'm doing my AOW while on Vacation, besides the required Deep and Nav, I have two of the three specialty dives chosen (P.P. Buoyancy, and Search and Recovery). So I'm wondering, what did other people choose for their 3 other dives?

I didn't choose any - they were chosen by the dive operator. I had no choice in the matter.

My AOW class did deep, nav, peak performance buoyancy, underwater naturalist, and night dive. However, I screwed up the night dive, so they let me do boat dive instead.

Fortunately, the class was free (on the liveaboard I was on) and didn't cost me a dime, so I can't complain about being ripped off.

My wife didn't have any choice in her dives either. Again, assigned by the operator. She did her class locally, and did deep, nav, drysuit, search & rescue and underwater naturalist. She also did an extra dive and got a drysuit certification. Overall, I think we spent $500 between the two.

Cheers!
ND

 

[ChimChim75]

Search and Recovery, Night, Underwater Naturalist...