46 years of diving averaging 100dives per year
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And the best "experinced diver" is one with humilty/common sense/cool head and a sense of humor.
To add to my post-- I think we are confusing experienced with being good at something. That's why all this debate comes in. I figure being experienced means you have done something a lot (ei. logged a lot of dives, driven a car for 3 decades--how many people have driven that long and are still very experienced lousy drivers?). It doesn't really have anything to do with being good at those things. Therefore, if you have dived a lot, you are an experienced diver. Again, how many dives is "a lot" is debatable. Perhaps the question on the profile should not refer to "experienced", but maybe something like whether you consider yourself an average diver, a good diver, a great diver, etc. Semantics maybe, but "experienced" really tells one nothing much about the diver.Yeah, good one. As well, "experienced" can mean different things. In the band I play in we have many clarinet players. Some are young (students, etc.) studying music who are very good players but inexperienced. Some are my age with 40 years of playing experience but suck. And everything in between. Experienced SHOULD mean good at what you do, but not always.
I felt "experienced" when I finally realized how little I REALLY know about diving, how little I've REALLY experienced with diving and that the true edge of my diving abilities was far closer than I thought it was.
To quote Harry Callahan, "A man's got to know his limitations."
As simple and silly as it sounds, in it's most simplistic and basic terms, an "experienced" diver is a diver who returns safely to the surface with his, or her, buddy (unless you are trained properly to dive solo and do so) every time they go diving; without injury or incident (unless something happens that was out of their control - ex. equipment failure (and NOT because it was not maintained properly but because it was just a random failure and broke)