freewillie
Contributor
I'm going to start a new thread so not to hijack an earlier thread about refresher courses. Similar but slightly different question.
My last dive was about 9-10 months ago. I have AOW certification and 68 total dives to this point. I own most of my own gear except a tank and until last September dived at least once or twice a month. But parenting responsibilities with baseball coaching duties and a son who also plays club basketball I have not had a free weekend to actually dive. The one weekend I was free and thought about diving the surf rolled in conditions weren't appropriate for diving. My daughter also holds AOW certification and has roughly 30 dives at this point. She has not been in the water since last August when we dived Cancun.
I don't feel like I'm that rusty. Except for maybe some initial buoyancy issues I feel like my basic scuba skills are good enough to dive next week on vacation without a refresher. I also don't think my daughter's skills are adversely affected as she routinely goes several months in between dives.
Now I have another friend who has not dived in about 7-8 years. He previously dived quite a bit but has not been able to dive even on vacation over the past several years. We sort of planned to do a local beach dive but he has not gotten around to getting his refresher course. Whenever I ask him about diving it's usually, "have you done your refresher yet?" As answer is no we haven't made plans to dive yet.
So, how long in between dives would you recommend a refresher course; or, at what point would you feel as a diver you need to do a refresher course? At what point do you tell a friend maybe it's better to take one before you buddied up.
My last dive was about 9-10 months ago. I have AOW certification and 68 total dives to this point. I own most of my own gear except a tank and until last September dived at least once or twice a month. But parenting responsibilities with baseball coaching duties and a son who also plays club basketball I have not had a free weekend to actually dive. The one weekend I was free and thought about diving the surf rolled in conditions weren't appropriate for diving. My daughter also holds AOW certification and has roughly 30 dives at this point. She has not been in the water since last August when we dived Cancun.
I don't feel like I'm that rusty. Except for maybe some initial buoyancy issues I feel like my basic scuba skills are good enough to dive next week on vacation without a refresher. I also don't think my daughter's skills are adversely affected as she routinely goes several months in between dives.
Now I have another friend who has not dived in about 7-8 years. He previously dived quite a bit but has not been able to dive even on vacation over the past several years. We sort of planned to do a local beach dive but he has not gotten around to getting his refresher course. Whenever I ask him about diving it's usually, "have you done your refresher yet?" As answer is no we haven't made plans to dive yet.
So, how long in between dives would you recommend a refresher course; or, at what point would you feel as a diver you need to do a refresher course? At what point do you tell a friend maybe it's better to take one before you buddied up.