Is calculating experience by # dives a good thing?

[TX101]

Firstly, A bit of background.. I've completed PADI OW, AOW, Drysuit & TDI Nitrox. This year Im looking at doing Rescue & TDI Adv. Nitrox. Currently, I have around 50 dives and have been diving nearly a year. All my training and most of my diving has been in the UK. This means cold water, low/zero vis, thick gloves and hoods.

At around 25 dives, I had completed AOW. My wife had also been doing her pool dives here in the UK and every time she went to the pool (around 6 session in total) I had also went with my own gear and practiced basic skills in midwater - air on/off, switching regs, mask remove/replace, getting trim & weighting done perfectly, etc. All these dives were in a drysuit and I don't log my pool dives. I have been swimming since the age of 5 and am very comfortable in the water.

So, I went back to australia (Im an aussie) for christmas and did around 10 dives on the GBR. The dives were great. I only wore shorts & t-shirt, 4lbs of lead, scuba unit, fins & mask. It was like wearing nothing at all and it took no time to gear up.

So, getting back to the UK, the first few dives I was *all over the place*. Id jump in & forget to connect the drysuit inflator. My bouyancy sucked. I had to wear 8-10kg of lead again (18-22lbs). This was also compounded by the fact that soon after returning I bought a twinset, backplate & wing and have been sorting that out (as an aside: I don't think it's much better than a jacket bcd - if at all, but thats another thread). I have put around 10 dives and 3 pool sessions on the twinset so far.

The point of the whole post is this: I think I had better skills & buoyancy control at 25 dives than I do at 50. Going to Australia and diving in warm water, excellent vis and no drysuit was too easy. Perhaps I picked up some bad habits..

So is # of dives a good way to measure skill?

 

[mikelegurra]

experience can help master the skills, obviously. as you said 50 dives in clear water are very different from 50 dives in cold, low vis.

you can measure experience by a load of different items. nr of dives is one of them but it's not the most important in my book.

 

[The Chairman]

Introducing a ton of variables can always confuse a diver. You learned in the cold and dark... went to where it was warm and sunny and converted to that modus of diving. Now, you have to "re-convert" your diving habits back to cold and dark. It is not unusal for a diver in your situation to feel that they have digressed in their skills from time to time. Just remember, that we aren't in a race, and that the true mastering of skills takes a long while. Sort of like switching between standard and automatic. You know you have them mastered, when your foot only goes for the clutch pedal in the standard during an emergency manouver but doesn't in the automatic.

 

[CBulla]

Good analogy Pete

 

[diverbrian]

Sort of like switching between standard and automatic. You know you have them mastered, when your foot only goes for the clutch pedal in the standard during an emergency manouver but doesn't in the automatic.

I still dislike renting cars for that reason now. Do you know how many times my foot has tried to hit the brake in a rental looking for the clutch on instinct ? The worst part... I didn't know how to drive a stick until I bought my current vehicle in 1996.

 

[glbirch]

You know you have them mastered, when your foot only goes for the clutch pedal in the standard during an emergency manouver but doesn't in the automatic.

Hate that. I drive standard, and when I drive my wife's car the first thing I do is step on the non-existant clutch to start the car.

Number of dives is an indicator of dive ability, but I don't think it is necessarily the best indicator, especially by itself. Experience at diving in a variety of conditions, training, and time in the water all factor in. The instructor on my wife's DM course had ten times the number of dives as her, but she said that my wife probably had more experience in some ways because all of her (the instructors) dives were in the Red Sea in perfect conditions.

On another note, TX101 you don't sound happy with your bp/wing setup. Are you sure it's fitted properly?

 

[TX101]

On another note, TX101 you don't sound happy with your bp/wing setup. Are you sure it's fitted properly?

Im not unhappy. It just that after reading alot of posts here on how much better the bp/w setup is, I expected a huge improvement. Fact is however, that I think my trim was just as good with my jacket BC as the wing. Since my jacket BC can accomodate doubles, it feels like a waste of money when it has made very little (if any) difference to my diving.
In fact, Id say that in my experience, the number one advantage of a bp/w is that you can reconfigure the position of your d-rings. On the downside however, you lose pockets.

 

[simbrooks]

You can add pockets to the webbing around your waist, not that hard and they are nicely out of the way, i cant even see mine when diving, they are just below my kidneys (about 4" below) and are about 4-5"wide, 8"long and expand to 1.5" out when full, but still not in my line of sight as i look down my near-non-existant rig and they only cost about $15-25 each. I place the D's just in front of the pockets for using, in fact from what i see, my D's arent much further forward than others i have seen, so no real lose there, just using up the room i have on the waist strap to store things (currently a slate and safety sausage, soon to be reels as well). I disliked all the bulk of the jackets and some other mainstream back inflates, some didnt seem bad, but were so small (typically more the travel size stuff) that they couldnt handle what i would like to throw at them in the future like the BP/Wings can. As for trim, just do what you can with weight positioning and see where you go from there, maybe you need time again in the pool like you had before you went to Oz (and had the better conditions) to get back in the swing of things. It also sounds like you are in a transition of changing your set-up anyway, so that wont help matters and will take time to get used to.

On the cars, my next will be a manual (stick), i got an auto when i moved over here and after many years of using manual i dislike it immensely to the point where sometimes i would like to run my car off the road and claim insurance just to get the manual sooner and retain the control i once had on gear changing, power etc that i used to have without some computer deciding if i have the gas pedal down far enough etc -grrrr, just makes me mad thinking of the drive home from work again in the heap of automatic transmission i have. My dive gear however i am very happy with - i havent had that long and been playing with it a load!!!! Would love to go diving right now in fact.

 

[The Chairman]

You know... being an "Automotive Pro" for thirty years, really broke me of ALL habits when it comes to driving cars. I learned to drive on a stick (I was 11 or so) and was not comfortable with automatics for quite some time. I was an ASE Master Auto Technician (it has lapsed), but I know many Master Techs who have a hard time changing a light bulb. There will always be posers... just don't be fooled by yourself into thinking you have skills that you don't. There is NOTHING down there worth dying for. Humility is the fundamental basis of safe diving.

 

[in_cavediver]

Im not unhappy. It just that after reading alot of posts here on how much better the bp/w setup is, I expected a huge improvement. Fact is however, that I think my trim was just as good with my jacket BC as the wing. Since my jacket BC can accomodate doubles, it feels like a waste of money when it has made very little (if any) difference to my diving.
In fact, Id say that in my experience, the number one advantage of a bp/w is that you can reconfigure the position of your d-rings. On the downside however, you lose pockets.

You know, its entirely possible to get a jacket or back inflation BC trimmed well. What I can say is that the BP/wing is more streamlined than most jacket BC's. How much of a difference it makes is really relative. Look on the bright side, if you do go tec, the harness on the BP will be a lot more friendly to canister lights and other gear.

Mike