What prevents you from diving after OW Certification?

[Imapseudonym]

I'm still in the process of getting my OW and I can already start to recognize what my barriers will be:

1.) cold water
2.) confidence issues
3.) cost
4.) potential buddy issues
5.) time sink when transporting, cleaning, and properly caring for gear.

Out of all these things I would say cost would be the biggest issue. I would like to invest in my own gear because I'm having a blast but it's just extremely expensive and going to take some time to achieve this. I also would like to consider a drysuit too but again another expensive cost. Well see how it works out in time though. This has been an interesting read for me as well.

 

[sharky60]

I've been an OW diver for over 30 years ... finding a partner has never been an issue.

 

[rollintrollinsharkie]

As a student, my biggest issue is money. Almost $100 for a day of diving is PITA.

Another is finding/having a dive buddy.

 

[DiverRtNY]

biggest barrier for me was breaking away from the nest of diving w/ someone other than a dive instructor although it wasn't much of a barrier but overcoming the anxiety of knowing there isn't someone with UBER experience to "watch" over me. I quickly joined SCUBABOARD and scoured the forums for insights and tips and experienced divers input. And i've obsessed with reading as many novels about diving as I can: Encyclopedia of scuba diving, Diver Down, Shadow Divers, Last Dive, Blind descent, The Cave Divers, etc... I'm on to reading all i can about Jacques Cousteau and ordering his documentaries. Now I wanna dive as much as I can but I need much more experience! Education: EAN cert, rescue cert, and cavern and intro caves because wreck diving is high on my list (great lakes). But now the cost issue w/ dry suit and further gear and equipment for redundancy and sidemounts.... the thoughts are endless!!! But I know I still need much much more diving under my belt before i get too carried away.
Having a brother who is also certified helps immensely in being able to get wet. Feeling prepared and confident (not arrogant) and humble w/ my underwater skills and knowledge truly helps to have the mindset that "where there is a will, there is a way". LDOs are always doing dives and river drifts etc... it's just taking that first leap and pursuing the passion.

 

[Learn It]

Certified in high school and only dove in the Carribean until this year. I went away to college in Maine with no dive buddies or $. Now that I have graduated and am back home the main restriction is no dive buddy/equipment.

 

[Diving Dubai]

For me I certified in Egypt in 2007 on vacation. Living at the time I was unprepared to really dive in UK waters, plus living inland to continue diving I would have had to join a club which would have been great but then because renting equipment would be difficult there would have been to cost of gear. Hence I did nothing until I had the time and money to go on vacation again. My next dive was 2011 when I had down time on a work trip and got my AoW in Qatar. Again after that nothing until I moved to Dubai in 2013 where diving is accessible all year round and finances allowed the purchase of all my own gear.


I know from friends in the UK that fuel cost is a huge issue for both boats and cars so quite a few limit their dives to vacations only

 

[NAM001]

My work schedule interferes with my diving. I have thursdays and fridays off. The wife to be also works and she has wed and thursdays off. She is a new diver so when we dive together,,,, the dives are more training and experience dives for her in boring holes. Next year we will both be retired and we can start going to the better spots to enjoy the visibility and all that is available in the gulf areas. She is very good in that the likes learning to dive and not just doing something that I like. When ever we go to a resteraunt that has an aquarium she just stares for a moment to so. She wants to get to the blue water but knows she is not ready yet but is anxious to get wet so she can and practice skills. She feels at home with the hogarthian rig single tank and H valves. I normally dive solo, so.... with he,r she is on a steep learning curve and i am having to relearn a lot of buddy skills. Who could ask for more. Unless of course if she had a compressor. But then we sould have 3.

 

[CGE925]

Like so many others, it seems, my principal problem is lack of available regular (or even insta-) buddies. Three of my co-workers are all divers, and would make great buddies, but none are available. One is a DM who gave up diving to raise a family, one ONLY dives with his wife down south on vacations, and the third abandoned the sport since her new boyfriend can't swim. No other family members or friends are interested in taking up diving and neither is my wife. I recently approached my LDS to see if I could get some pool time to try out a new warm-water configuration for my BP/W when they do their monthly OW confined-water sessions . The instructor said "absolutely, great idea, no problem, love to have ya'. You DO have a buddy, right?" I said no, and they couldn't find one for me, so even diving in 10 ft of warm, gentle pool was off limits.

My LDS are a great bunch of people and I love working with them, but business is business and their charters aren't very newby-friendly. They are very active, and run regular charters two or three times every weekend during the season, but the majority are wreck dives in St Lawrence currents, most marked as "AOW Certification Required". Some of those dives, even with an AOW card, are challenging for a new diver like me. Many are also boat dives, so $$$s add up fast. Also, just about every charter dive they make is at least two hours drive away. IOW they cater to more advanced divers interested in quality over quantity. As a newby, I just want to dive, no matter where, to rack up dives and work on the basics, so I'll feel more comfortable when I do start to make those serious charters. I know from personal experience, having dove semi-regularly up here many decades ago before stopping (and restarting last winter), that there's tons of cold-water lake and river diving up here, very close to me, but my LDS, the only one practically available to me, doesn't do those kind of dives. They and their customers prefer the warm waters of the summertime St Lawrence, and the challenges of wreck, current and drift diving. I dive dry and was very used to 40 degree water, so I am much more open to tougher conditions.

In order to get some diving in this past season, I've resorted to taking PADI specialty courses to stay wet. I'm not taking them JUST to dive, I would have taken them anyway, but right now, it's the only way for me to stay active. A major problem for me is doing the PADI multi-day courses (AOW, Deep, etc) on consecutive days, thereby taking up an entire (and very physically demanding for an old guy like me) weekend in one shot. I realize that does seem to be the standard for most PADI operations, but coupled with a total of 8+ hours driving there and back over two days, or a night in a hotel on Saturday night, it gets pricey and very onerous for those of us with tough work schedules.

Sorry for the whiney rant, I know I'm obviously the only one responsible for my personal situation, but it does get frustrating not to be able to dive as much as I would like. I'll be doing a few dives over the coming months (next month in St Thomas off a cruise as well as the LDS's Ice Diver course), so I'll be semi-active over the winter. Early retirement is also on the horizon within the next few years, so that should free me up to dive more as well. Great thread, whoever started it. It's comforting, though sad, to hear I'm not alone in my inability to dive more often.

 

[Freewillow]

I only dive on dive vacations, mostly liveabords. There is no problem in finding buddies on those

 

[rx7diver]

There is a lot being written here about equipment concerns and buddy concerns. Regarding equipment, I encourage prospective divers with whom I chat to take a long view: Quality equipment, perhaps purchased slowly, one piece at a time over time, pays off in spades. For example, I still dive regulators I purchased new in 1987 (when I was a poor grad student), and I still dive a custom drysuit I purchased new in 1994 (although it is now a bit tight in places).

Regarding the expense and access to buddies, my open water course, a university course, required only the purchase of a swimsuit (and a physical and textbooks). All other required gear (such that it was) was owned by the university. The students who really took to scuba continued on as TA's (teaching assistants, unpaid) and began purchasing their own gear. (The instructor "facilitated" these purchases.) Not-yet-certified open water students could NOT use university gear (except tanks) for their open water practicum, but were able to rent required gear for a nominal price from the veteran students who already owned gear. Proper care of gear was emphasized throughout the course, so these veteran students knew that their precious gear would be well cared for by the certies renting it.

TA's were unpaid, but they were allowed to grab a tank for their own (local) diving whenever they wanted to, free of charge. And TA's had access to tools and schematics and instruction to learn to service their own gear, free of charge. (This is where and how I learned to service my own gear.) The upshot is, things were set up to allow/encourage new divers to continue diving, and certified divers had a ready supply of dive buddies to call upon.

It's unfortunate that many other new divers didn't have a similar experience.

Safe Diving,

rx7diver

P.S. These days, I solo dive. In fact, I began solo diving many years ago. So, lack of a dive buddy has not been a concern for me for many years.