Experience level

[cobaltbabe]

Wanted some opinions on how long, and how much experience, in your opinions, should someone wait before going technical? The person is very comfortable in the water and would have very experienced dive partners with them. Any opinions on this matter?

[Diversauras]

It seems to me that who ever does enter the tec arena should understand all the principles cold. Tech training, IMHO, should be about tweeking / formatting your diving to the environment whether deep or overhead or whatever. If the expectation is to learn tec from scratch then that person isn't ready to start.

[MikeFerrara]

I'm sure there are all sorts of opinions out there. One thing you can look at for reference is the experience requirements of different agencies. I'm not sure I could make a recommendation based strictly on time or even experience. IMO, technical diving calls for a level of skill and commitment obove and beyond that of recreational diving. In addition some people should never consider it. IMO, the kind of person who closes their eyes and locks the brakes when in a tight spot in a car, should never consider it (if they should even consider diving). That might not be the best analogy but overhead environment diving doesn't leave you any quick easy way out of trouble (simply ending the dive and ascending). If you have a thousand feet to go to exit a cave or an hour of decompression you have no choice but to use what you have and what you know to get by until it's done.

Also I have no advice on how to know if technical diving is for you other than to some real soul searching. Even then you might find you made a mistake.

I don't think technical diving should be viewed as a part of the natural educational progression. When there is a real or virtual overhead the game changes completely.

[O-ring]

I think I can boil it down to three tracks for simplicity..

Track 1 - recreation diving - pick your rec agency and go through Master Scuba Diver or whatever.

Track 2 - educator/guide - pick your rec agency and go through DM/DiveCon, Instructor, Master Instructor, whatever.

Track 3 - technical - pick your tech agency and go through either cave, wreck, deco or some combination of those.

I think that there is no natural progression for recreational diving other than Master Scuba Diver/specialties and just diving. Track 2 and Track 3 are soooo different than rec diving that it requires a whole other decision process to decide if it is up your alley.

[cobaltbabe]

As you all know I would rather be informed then try to do something that is way over my head. If I ask questions then I will have the knowledge to make an educated decision. Thank you all for your input.

[MikeFerrara]

More points...

I really think it depends a lot on the person and their goals. I know divers who went streight from OW class to cave training with very few dives inbetween. I certainly wouldn't recomment that for most people. However these folks were experienced cavers and started diving only for the purpose of diving caves and had little or no interest in any other diving. While they had little diving experience they had lots of caveing experience.

[cobaltbabe]

Obviously it is me who is thinking of going tech. The people I am diving with are tech and I want to see what they see. I am totally at ease in the water with all my gear. I do want to get some more dives under my belt before I go tech though.

[O-ring]

cobaltbabe once bubbled...
Obviously it is me who is thinking of going tech. The people I am diving with are tech and I want to see what they see. I am totally at ease in the water with all my gear. I do want to get some more dives under my belt before I go tech though.
...other tech diving friends/mentors will do a lot to accelerate your learning curve.

[roturner]

cobaltbabe once bubbled...
Wanted some opinions on how long, and how much experience, in your opinions, should someone wait before going technical? The person is very comfortable in the water and would have very experienced dive partners with them. Any opinions on this matter?

There's more to it than experience. Your water skills need to be next to perfect (which, unfortunately, experience alone does not guarantee), you have to be very calm under pressure and you need to be intelligent and creative enough to solve novel problems with very little margin. And most importantly you need discipline. And not just the "I can do it when I want to" kind of discipline; you need the "I can't even spell sloppy" kind of discipline.

R..

[cobaltbabe]

I am learning alot from them from my friends/mentors. Reading alot when I have the chance to try to immerse myself in the whole thing. I want to take it to the extreme.

[wreckchick]

I've talked to an instructor about doing an Intro Cavern/Cave thing at some point in the future and his recommendation was to 1st: dive a lot and 2nd: dive like you're in a cave even when in open water. This means being ultra picky about buoyancy, learn some different kicks, watch air consumption and start tracking SAC rates so you can get a feel for gas management, and handle everything that comes your way at depth "pretending" you can't just ascend. Obviously if you have to, you have that option, but just to get mentally prepared for what those environments will throw at you. One other thing is to be aware of how big you are and try to complete each dive without silting or knocking into anything, this is good practice anyway, but get your buddy to tell you if you silt up and do the same for him/her.

I was following a cave diver who was very close to the bottom, frog-kicking, and she didn't move a particle, another diver in front of me was higher than her by a few feet and was doing a traditional flutter kick and was silting up the bottom pretty good. It was nice to see how the style differences impact the visibility.

I don't know if you're talking about that kind of tech diving or just doing deeper stuff, but by being around divers doing the kind of diving you want to do, you can pick up some technique stuff just by watching even if you're within your limits.

Something to think about from another novice diver.

Rachel

[Braunbehrens]

Don't ignore the shallow stuff!

A lot of beautiful stuff is in shallow open ocean. It would be a shame to go deep right away, and miss out on it. One of the best dives I've ever had was at a max depth of 15 fsw!

Also, deep dives are usually short dives. It's nice to do dives to intermediate depths and spend some time just diving.

A friend of mine once told me how he got his son to wait until getting certified for SCUBA. He told him that to be ready to SCUBA dive you first have to be a competent free diver. A couple years later his son took him free diving. He went down to 30 ft, took off his mask, replaced and cleared it.

He was ready.

There are two aspects of diving that you need to get under your belt for safe technical diving. One comes from learning all the skills, but the other is from experience. I would say that if you do a LOT of diving for a couple of years it's ok to progress into more technical stuff, provided you are a great diver.

BTW, I don't agree that everyone should take DM etc. classes. While I enjoy teaching people stuff, I don't want the liability that comes with simply having those badges. No thanks.

I'll leave you with this tried and true saying: There are old divers, and there are bold divers. There are no old bold divers.

[Jimmy B]

The first thing I would do is to enroll in a DIRF course, to build your fundation and meet with some other like minded people. Tech/Cave or extreme Advanced what ever they call it now is a serious game.
After the DIRF course find and dive with people a little better and more experienced than you cause your not going to learn unless you do.

Most mistakes people make is to "cheap" their way in, it can't be done cause your going to buy someone else's problems. IMHO anyway

Hope you choose the right path for you.

Enjoy

JB

[Wendy]

I noticed that you mentioned that you would be diving with experienced divers. Remember that something might come up where you will have to help your more experienced buddy out of a situation. So don't fall into a practice on relying on your 'more expereinced' buddy. In technical diving I believe that you are part of a team and the team as to work well together. So in saying that practice skills in ow rec limits, As someone mentioned above, consider a DIRF course, or get yourself a scuba mentor like I did. But don't get into tech diving cuz all your freinds are doing it, just take your time, dive, dive, and do some more diving and when you feel you are ready, just do it.

[Al Mialkovsky]

Sounds to me like you're getting into this with the right attitude. I have seen divers get into tech with under 100 dives. I'm not sure they were ready but again, it isn't always about numbers. You have mentors, that's great.

An instructor I know recently got into tech diving. I read his release form, which they made him write out in his own handwriting. Very sobering stuff actually.

[diverbrian]

I find this interesting as I took the courses that I did to help improve my open water skills initially as I wanted to dive some deeper wrecks up here and the deep diving course through this route taught me far more than the deep diving course available through my recreational agency.

I discovered a great deal about what I want to do and don't want to do. I thought that I would never again do deco diving after I got my cert. because I would be leery of the risk. I just wanted to improve my skills.

I was wrong. As long as I have a lift bag and a reel, I have a path to deco on if all else fails. I now have improved my buoyancy skills (which were being improved in my DiveCon course and were fairly good to start with) immensely. My discipline, having been trained in the Nuclear Power field in the Navy, was never a problem. I have encountered problems at depth and I don't think about surfacing to solve them. Underwater problems are solved underwater. I love the redundancy that tech gear gives me under the water. I will pick my wrecks, but I plan to do more deco diving.

However, the additional equipment and rules to penetrate wrecks and go into caves with the possibilties of silt-outs, debris falling, guidelines getting cut (need I continu? the list is endless) will be beyond me for a while to come. For now, the rule of thumb is simple: if a guideline is required to get out, I have no desire to take the risks necessary to do it. The equipment and training to mitigate those risks are beyond my financial means and I have a lot to see just by extending my diving ability to the ability to PLAN deco dives, and FOLLOW the plan that my dive buddy and I have.