Preparing for GUE fundamentals and/or cavern class

I'm ready to take my training beyond PADI OW and Nitrox. I'm planning a trip to the High Springs area in early '09 and want to take a class or two while I'm there. I want to be judicious with my class choices b/c scuba is only one of two of my expensive hobbies and I don't want to waste money. Here's what I am considering and why:

• GUE fundamentals: Everything about my diving definitely improved after taking an intro to DIR class earlier this year. I learned so much. I'd like to take GUE-F in the next year instead of AOW. Is there any value in taking both? In what order?
• Intro to cavern 2-day course: I feel like I'd learn more in a 2-day cavern class than in a 1-day wreck. Don't they basically cover the same principles? And I would have to take PADI AOW before wreck.

Any advice on how I should proceed? Would it be too much to take GUE-F first, practice a few days, then take the intro to cavern class all in the same trip? Should it be the other way around? Or should I take only one class (which one?) and take another during my next visit home. I'm planning on concentrating on my frog kick, trim and buoyancy. I think I'm doing okay but should I also work on anything else before my trip?

Thanks!
Aileen

Aileen,

You're to be commended for seeking to improve your skills with such planning and foresight.

Obviously, different responders will have different opinions and reasons. Here are my thoughts:

The GUE-F and AOW serve fundamentally different purposes. Leaving behind cynical remarks, the purpose of an AOW is to introduce the diver to new skill sets or environmental parameters. Example: Navigation teaches compass skills, natural navigation, counting fin kick cycles (tracking distance) and swimming a specific compass heading in current or moving water. Deep introduces reduced response time at depth, as well as planning for time/duration exposure, particularly during repetitive diving. Photography, hunting, or environmental studies discuss habitat, creatures, food cycles, effects such as light or relative salinity, and introduce increased task loading due to bulky equipment. You get the idea. (Ideally) the new diver is introduced to a variety of new skill sets or different environments that require adaptive behavior or additional equipment.

In contrast, Fundamentals is about personal skills. It is about precision diving. Maintaining precise control of trim and bouyancy is difficult for many divers under non-stress conditions. It is significantly more challenging when things begin to go wrong in a confined space or under extreme duress. And yet, being able to rationally respond calmly under extreme duress (e.g. tangled in a line, in a cave, in silt-out conditions) demands that the diver first be able to maintain trim and bouyancy to avoid making the situation worse. Moreover, special techniques for finning and movement must be learned to avoid silting out confined spaces to begin with. These are the topics discussed in Fundamentals. It involves precise control of your personal skills, and has very little to do with the skill sets or environmental parameters you might be exposed to in AOW.

So both may be constructive to the diver. Which one may be most productive depends on the diver. In my humble opinion, the diver should first seek to maximize their own personal ability to dive precisely, and then transfer these skills to the other activities and environments introduced in other classes...but thats just MHO.

Cavern courses are ideal follow-on courses for Fundamentals. Because (ideally) they demand the same skill sets in terms of precise movement, they act to reinforce skills that are discussed in Fundamentals.

One significant difference between a cavern or intro to cave course and a wreck course is that in most of the former reel-handling and line placement are taught, as well as skills involving staying on a line and recovering a line after losing contact with it. In most introductory wreck courses that I've looked at, reel handling and line placement skills are not covered. Yet these are critical skills for survival within confined spaces...and worthy of your attention.

There are plenty of other divers on the board who will also offer their opinions, but from my perspective, a trip to Florida would be totally enhanced by taking a Fundamentals course followed by a Cavern (and possibly an Intro to Cave) course while you are down there.

Congrats again for seeking additional instruction, and I hope you enjoy the journey.

Regards, and dive safe.

Doc

I wish to add my my support as well for what Doc has said. Everything else you learn as a diver will be enhanced by strengthening your own personal skills. Buoyancy, trim, and propulsion. It is really just that simple. Consider the athlete who needs to develop their own personal fitness before they concentrate on the specificities of their particular sport. Every physical activity is easier if you have a strong fitness base to start with. Diving is no different in that if you develop your own personal skill set, you will be able to able these skills to any kind of diving. That is the very cool thing about the Fundamentals class: you will walk away with a knowledge of just where you are with your skills, as well as a roadmap of where to go to improve them. As Doc told me about 2 years ago, Fundamentals is all about "simple things done precisely". (Thanks by the way Doc). If you chose to take Fundamentals this winter, it will be very interesting for you to come back to this thread and tell us if we were right or not.... Good luck and have fun.

Bismark:

"simple things done precisely".

Click to expand...

110% agree.

I completely agree with what Doc says as well. I just wanted to throw something out there about AOW. As a diver with 50-99 dives, I assume that you have gone deeper than 60 feet, that you have a decent grasp on buoyancy, and probably have some amount of navigational skills (AOW teaches you to navigate in a square....not hard, and really not all that helpful). At this point, you are not really going to get all that much out of AOW....other than the ability to go on a dive boat that requires an "advanced" diver (which AOW certainly does not make you....I took AOW, there were people there that had worse buoyancy skills and air consumption than I had in my open water class, and still passed....standards need to be much higher, but that's a completely different rant).

I am absolutely dying to take fundies! I go diving with a couple friends who are very experienced, have successfully passed the fundies, and have continued to work on their own personal quests to become the best and safest divers that they can be. And I must say, watching their skill and grace in the water is breath taking. I want to take fundies to become a safer, more competent, and more confident diver....and of course, have the option to take cave classes in the future, in case I ever get near a cave.

Cliffs notes version: choose fundies over AOW....if fundies goes well and you are feeling competent and confident, continue on with an intro to cave class.

Fundies will be my next as well.

All of the aobove is spot on. I took AOW 2 years ago and GUE-F this year. Very different stuff but safe to say that Fundies is FAR more valuable. It has completely changed not only my diving, but my goals / ambitions and the pathway to achieve them.

PM sent, re: possible buddy for classes.

John