AOW as Family or adults/kids? Vacation or home?

Hi! My husband and I have been certified for a while but put diving on hold until the kids were old enough to get certified. They all did their OW a year ago and have about 30 dives under their belts (ocean, lake, shore, boat, quarry, we are trying lots of stuff). We are lucky that we all love it! They are almost 15, 13 and 12. My hubby and I never bothered with AOW when it was just us, but now feel we can't be too safe with the kids in tow. My question is 2 part: 1. Should the parents get AOW 1st and the kids a bit later or should we do it as a family project? 2. Have people found it better to get their AOW at home (which would require some waiting..we live in Michigan and it's too cold now) and then go on vacation or had more fun doing a "learning" vacation. Thanks for any input!

I always vote for doing classes at home so you can just dive and do other stuff on vacation.

Advanced Open Water is a great class to do as a family activity either at home or on vacation. With very little class time and mostly dive time, it's a great way to improve your dive skills, see new dive sites without impacting your vacation time. It's also a great way to get to know your local dive sites as well. You will complete 5 adventure dives including deep, navigation, and 3 others as selected by your instructor. Your junior divers (under age 15) will be limited to 70 ft deep dive while the other divers will complete a 100ft deep dive as part of the deep training. Keep diving and training. Your newly learned skills will be useful in any dive environment.

I also strongly recommend that families who dive together complete Rescue Diver training as well. Rescue is a fun challenging class that makes you more aware as a diver while emphasizing accident prevention and self-preservation.

I agree with TM... why not devote your vacation to recreational diving, instead of classes...

With family diving, I'd also recommend you do your AOW, and then Rescue as soon as possible. You'll get differing opinions on SB (duh!), however, AOW, for me, was just a series of exercises in different skills. Rescue, on the other hand, was incredibly practical, the best class I've taken, and perhaps even more applicable if you're diving with young teens...

Enjoy...

Thats really cool ur family dives. My wife and I do but no kids in home- yet. I'd normally say the parents take classes first then kids but since they have some divers under their belt do AOW if poss at home save vacation for diving - non cert dives that is. But Rescue? Hmmmm Def for you parents but kids? Maybe if they're really into it and understand the life saving lessons. But if they really want to then Hell yeah let em ride the train!!! whooo whooo The more divers in the family/friends circle the better!

If I had kids and was in your shoes I'd get out of the cold and fly down to Lauderdale, rent a cheapo car from Payless car rental at the airport and head for the Upper Keys, namely Largo about70 miles south (Take the Turnpike, it's $4 each way and you can roll on.),and all five of us would do our AOW right there. I've been calling around to find an operator with enough divers to fill a boat this week and most of them can't guarantee that they will be going out on most specific days. With five of you you would get a charter price. I'd do it right now. Check out Soutwest Airlines since they don't charge for baggage, two plus a carry-on. I don't know off hand what airport they fly out of near you but if you get your tickets online it's usually $62 each way plus taxes from Columbus, Ohio for their "Wanna fly" tickets if you buy them ahead of time. There's a ****load of operators on Largo just looking for customers right now and it takes only a couple days to get your AOW. I can't think of a better way to spend a couple days out of a vacation. Good luck if you decide to go with it. If you want to go another 20 miles on down to Islamorada you can check out Key Dives. Very friendly and a good outfit for beginners or thse wanting advancement. If you do that check out Key Lantern Motel. Cheap rooms with or without kitchen. Nothing fancy or 5-star but sufficiently clean and decent for the price. They are both on the Internet. If you want to spend more money there are loads of expensive hotels and motels both on Largo and Islamorada plus many family theme parks.

Great to see you whole family diving I am working on that myself at the moment. one at a time.

do it at home, maybe take the course first your self and assess the instructor as you are taking it, pay attention to how much control there is over the group especially during the deep dive.treat them like you would a babysitter you have never seen before.
Personally my limit is 3 to one on the deep and no increase for Dm. but I teach in generally poor vis. having said that i would not be happy with 5 to one where 3 are kids.
alternatively you could join as a family and ask can we all do the deep together ,if they explain that for safety reasons the answer is no you could be onto a winner.
you could always do some prep work with your kids, stationary hovering , mask clearing , safety stops hovering at 5 m in 10 m of water. that kind of thing.

scubamum3:

Hi! My husband and I have been certified for a while but put diving on hold until the kids were old enough to get certified. They all did their OW a year ago and have about 30 dives under their belts (ocean, lake, shore, boat, quarry, we are trying lots of stuff). We are lucky that we all love it! They are almost 15, 13 and 12. My hubby and I never bothered with AOW when it was just us, but now feel we can't be too safe with the kids in tow. My question is 2 part: 1. Should the parents get AOW 1st and the kids a bit later or should we do it as a family project? 2. Have people found it better to get their AOW at home (which would require some waiting..we live in Michigan and it's too cold now) and then go on vacation or had more fun doing a "learning" vacation. Thanks for any input!

Click to expand...

Hi scubamum3,

Your situation is almost exactly the same as the situation my wife and I found ourselves in two years ago... 3 kids the approximately the same age, I was certified in 1976, my wife in the mid-80's.

There is no reason you cannot do AOW at the same time as your kids. That is exactly what we chose to do, and was a fun experience.

You should know what AOW is and is not. AOW is more time in the water with an instructor. This is certainly a good thing (with a good instructor).

But depending on you and hubby's dive experience, you may already have progressed past, possibly WAY PAST what AOW will teach you. Think of it as simply OW version 1.1

As far as doing AOW at home.... will you be diving much at home? If the answer is YES, then that is where you should do it! The kids (and you) should train in the conditions you plan to do most of your diving, and if diving is possible where you live, then go for it, and save the valuable vacation time for "fun" dives (although I think you'll find the AOW dives to be fun). If you have no desire to dive at home, then do the AOW training where you DO plan to dive.

Best wishes.

AOW is 5 dives: Deep, Navigation, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Search & Recovery and, perhaps, Boat. Something like that. There are variations...

I am a big fan of supervised dives in the most likely environment but when you think about it, AOW is just a sampling of the specialties. I would always accept the argument that doing them in local waters is better but there just isn't that much to the program. If you have the opportunity to turn the class into a family outing to warm water, why not? The holidays are coming up!

Now Rescue is a different deal. If you routinely make beach entries through pounding surf, that's the way you should do Rescue. It's supposed to be tough. But it's also a little later on.

I would try to get 2 instructors: one for the adults and one for the juniors. I could see the 15 YO going either way. But I would be very interested in the capabilities of the instructor handling the juniors. I would try to get both groups together while in the water.

I worry about kids. My grandson got certified last year after his 10th birthday and we watch him like a hawk!

Have fun!

Richard

TMHeimer:

I always vote for doing classes at home so you can just dive and do other stuff on vacation.

Click to expand...

We did AOW, Deep, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Naturalist, and one other cert while we were diving as a group in Bonaire. We did a minimum of three dives a day, some days four. No classes in the evening, only during SI's. It went so smoothly, we hardly noticed it, and I don't think we came up short on the content of any of the certs.

I think a trip is a great place to do some advancement, but I guess that depends largely on the instructor(s) and the commitment of the group to buckle down and git 'er dun so it doesn't consume the trip. And it probably helped that everyone on the trip, about twelve of us, were all in it together.