Piecemeal Advanced Certification - Is it possible?

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tomecki

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Location
Vancouver BC, Canada
# of dives
200 - 499
My girlfriend and I completed our (PADI) Open Water certification in Australia a couple of years ago. We considered doing the advanced course at the time, but we only had a few days on the Great Barrier Reef and decided we’d rather spend that time exploring than doing more course/training dives. We did, however, do a couple of “Adventure Dives” (night and deep). We have “certificates” signed by our instructors stating that we completed the theory and practical portions of those dives. Is it possible to get those two adventure dives counted towards an advanced certification? Ie. do the navigation and two more dives rather than having to do the entire 5 dive course from scratch? Thanks.
 
You can track down your local PADI instructor and find out, but if it is not going to change the price of the class do them over for the practice and bottom time.



Bob
-----------------------------------
I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.
 
Might have been cheaper and less time consumming to do the AOW rather than take the long and winding road.
 
Might have been cheaper and less time consuming, but we didn't want to spend our limited time on the Great Barrier Reef swimming through hoola-hoops.
 
My girlfriend and I completed our (PADI) Open Water certification in Australia a couple of years ago. We considered doing the advanced course at the time, but we only had a few days on the Great Barrier Reef and decided we’d rather spend that time exploring than doing more course/training dives. We did, however, do a couple of “Adventure Dives” (night and deep). We have “certificates” signed by our instructors stating that we completed the theory and practical portions of those dives. Is it possible to get those two adventure dives counted towards an advanced certification? Ie. do the navigation and two more dives rather than having to do the entire 5 dive course from scratch? Thanks.

Yes, as long as the instructor has filled out the training record forms correctly, and it sounds as if he did.
 
tomecki,

I'm going to disagree with Quero, by saying "it depends". When you say a couple of years ago, are you talking just over one year, two years, maybe three? Have you been diving since?

Where do you plan on doing the rest of your AOW? Cold water off Vancouver?

If you were to come to me, I'd have you re-do them. Too long ago and significantly different conditions....for me.

Bill
 
While the instruction & dives may count with all the proper documentation, I don't see any downside to doing more dives with an instructor. There is always something to be learned, skills to be refreshed or fine-tuned, and each instructor has different backgrounds that can enrich your learning experiences. Even when you think you are doing the same thing all over again, you'll get a new perspective from your new instructor.
 
I agree with both Bill and Elena (aren't I easy to get along with?). It does depend--it depends a lot on what the adventure dives were--and it really doesn't hurt to have more dives with an instructor.

However, the two dives you did--deep and night--are not really ones that change all that much from one destination to another, and more dives with your instructor could easily encompass yet other adventures beyond these two rather than repeating them. In fact, I've run into this problem before, and I generally still end up doing the equivalent of an entire AOW with the students, but I still count what they've done, particularly if they've done one of the required dives--deep or nav--since I can evaluate those skills on other dives that are nominally meant to be focusing on a different adventure. For example, if my students have done deep and want to do wreck, I'll take them to our wreck at 30 meters. If they've done nav and want to do photo, I'll have them lead their own photo dive.

But anyway, the long and the short of it is that yes, it is possible to have these dives credited to your AOW in many cases, but also it will depend on your instructor's assessment of your readiness, and standards permit remedial work in advance of continuing an interrupted course.
 
question -- Is it possible to do AOW piecemeal? Answer, yes. In fact my shop has just started a program to do that.

question -- Is it the right way to do AOW? Answer, maybe -- it depends! What do you want to get from the AOW program -- experience and education or a card?
 
Might have been cheaper and less time consumming to do the AOW rather than take the long and winding road.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to think that the Adventures in Diving Course (AKA "PADI Advanced Course") requires a lot of prep or classroom time. It's an EXPERIENCE program that allows you to participate in different types of dives under either the direct or indirect supervision of an Instructor. You're diving anyway, right?

I can't tell you the number of people that go through the AOW with us while on vacation because that is the perfect time to do it. Kind of goes like this:

- Interested in UW photography? Kewl. Here's an on-the-beach lesson on the care & feeding our small housed camera. Here's how to use it. Here's how photo u/w works. Play with the camera a bit. These are our objectives for this dive. Got it? Good! Let's go dive!
- Want to do a night dive? Excellent. Here's the do's & don'ts of diving at night. Here's the the primary & secondary lights, strobes, PLLs. This is how you use them. This is how you signal your buddy u/w at night... how close you need to be... etc. Tonight we're going to dive the house reef we just did at 7am this morning. Be here at XX:XX o'clock (an hour before sunset) with this stuff... We'll go over the objectives and then we dive.

Do the knowledge reviews after dinner one night. Instructor signs the paperwork. Done!

There is no time limit between dives for your AOW. If it happens that you did two dives during your vacation & didn't do the other three dives until a year or so subsequent to them, it's still possible to get your AOW. As long as you have a training record of all dives signed off by an Instructor, you can still get the AOW. However, the Instructor will probably require you to do a Scuba Tune-Up prior to any other dives if it has been a year or more since you were last in the water.

FWIW,








 

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