AOW right after OWD

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

dfx

Contributor
Messages
1,834
Reaction score
632
Location
Binbrook, ON
# of dives
200 - 499
I've seen this so many times now that I have to ask... New divers, newly certified OWD, finish their OWD cert and head right into the AOW course, sometimes without even doing a single dive on their own in between.

What's the idea behind doing this? I'm not PADI trained and it seems to be mostly (only?) PADI divers who do this. I've always been under the impression that AOW makes sense only after gaining some real-world diving experience (at least that's what I remember from the SSI system), but this common immediate OWD/AOW combo contradicts this.

Not trying to stir up anything, I'm genuinely curious about what the reasoning is. Do they feel that their OWD training was inadequate and they hope to fill the gaps through AOW? Not enough pool time in OWD and they want more before they start diving on their own? Or is it the depth limitation of the PADI OWD level (what is it, 60 ft?) that they think is not enough for what they want to dive? If that's what it is, what does the AOW teach them that OWD didn't, that would let them go beyond the OWD depth limit?
 
That was my path 13 years ago. Went down to Jamaica Thanksgiving 2000 for a vacation by myself and was offered a free discovery class. The full class with everything included was like $250 so even though I had never considered diving before, I went for it. Got certified and maybe a couple extra dives. Hard to remember.

Went back home to the frozen north and decided to go back down in April 2001. 2x dives a day was included but the morning dive was deep and they required AOW which was $200 everything included. Ok, sign me up.

At this point I probably had around 15-20 dives. (Log book long gone.) I went home to Virginia, waited for the water to warm up a little and headed over to Lake Rawlings to start doing some buddy diving and going on trips. The rest was history as I averaged 100 dives a year from 2001 - 2005. 2006 was a bad year with the wife getting sick and except for a week of diving in 2010, I didn't get to dive again until 2012.

I wasn't an "advanced" diver but I think the back to back training was probably a good thing. I added Nitrox and Rescue later on and didn't take another class for 10 years until I decided I wanted a Solo card. I bought a new Hollis DG03 a couple months ago and I already have 22 dives on it. I think it's going to be a good year.
 
I'm not an instructor, but I believe you "hit the nail on the head."
It's the limitations of OW.

For me personally, I scheduled a live aboard in AU. I found out that only AOW divers would be allowed to dive. I only had a few dozen dives under my belt. So I had to become AOW so I could go on the trip.

Did AOW teach me anything special. No, but in theory, I became exposed to Night dives, boat dives, navigation, deep dives (beyound 60 feet) etc. I had done all these dives before taking the AOW.
I just had to take the course for the card.

For me, diving and then more diving (experience) teaches me more then a class room.
 
A lot of this has to do with marketing diving at some resorts and areas of the world and and how PADI earned the acronym for Put Another Dollar In

I have met AOW divers in Thailand with 9 dives such is the success of this marketing, perhaps many of them carry on diving back home but I suspect that most probably do not dive again until their next vacation especially if they are living in northern America or Europe

Personally I was never encouraged to do anything after my OW except get out and dive with as many people as I could, which I did, as I was lucky enough to be in a dive club and had plenty of choice of buddies that worked in the same organization at that point of time.

However I would recognize that not many people have that advantage and live in areas that may be far from the sea, and like me see no attraction in diving in a cold murky quarry and want to make the most of their vacation and carry on with AOW immediately after their OW because it seems like a good idea or in order to save time later on?

Perhaps a poll of those who did AOW immediately after OW on the reasons why they did this will reveal the answer?
 
I think maximum benefit of AOW would be gained by getting in at least a handful of dives after OW, but I do see an advantage in doing AOW immediately: five dives under supervision of an instructor. When I completed PADI OW, in no way did I feel competent to go off with an equally inexperienced buddy and dive by ourselves.
 
I only had 2 dives between OW & AOW. I think the key is that you be reasonably comfortable (which I THINK I was) before AOW. Taking Rescue quickly is more important. PADI now only requires the Deep & Nav (I think) Adventure dives in order to take Rescue. You can always improve on rescue skills later when you are a more confident diver. AOW is a taste of other types of diving and can be done whenever. You can learn a lot or not much, depending on the instructor.
 
For me, it was the lack of ocean dives with our OW course and the shallow depths. We decided we needed AOW, after our first ocean dives in the Keys. IMO, open water class that just does quarry dives does not adequately prepare one for ocean dives, no boat, no surf, no current. Hard to learn that from the textbook. We decided to do AOW on vacation with all that and warmer water at depth! We had 15 dives at that point with 10 of those ocean dives.
 
Pro's and con's ... if your time is limited and you're only planning to dive under supervision, nine dives worth of training is better than four dives worth. On the other hand, if you're struggling with basic comfort, awareness, and buoyancy control, you're not likely going to get anything out of AOW ... and you certainly won't come out of it even remotely qualified to plan and execute a deep dive without supervision. Sadly, having access to deep dives is exactly why most folks take AOW.

I personally won't allow my students to go directly from OW to AOW ... not if they want the latter class from me. I want them to gain some experience, get comfortable with OW-level skills, and develop a little bit of confidence in their underwater ability first. That way they can focus on learning new things, rather than using the class to simply reinforce what they were supposed to have already learned. Then again, I don't train divers to follow dive guides and rely on someone else to make all their decisions for them. I won't take a diver deep until I'm confident that their buoyancy control won't result in an accidental ascent, and their awareness level is at least adequate to keep track of their depth, time, NDL and remaining gas ... and that's the bare-bones minimum starting point. I won't train complex navigation until they can look at their compass without losing buoyancy control, or need to settle on their knees first.

To be fair, there's only so much the typical student can learn in four or five OW dives (depending on agency) ... after that, they should get out and practice. My rule of thumb is get completely comfortable with what you learned in the last class before considering signing up for the next one. That way you can concentrate on the new stuff, rather than the things you should already have "mastered" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 

Back
Top Bottom