Hello,
I wanted to share our experience of our cert dives we "completed" here in FL to finish our ow cert.
Would be interesting to hear some experienced divers thoughts.
We started our PADI OW corse in SC last year with doing our book work and confined water dives there with an extremly thorough and knowledgable instructor. (My wife had to retest on the books before he would pass her)
He took his responsibility seriously as one would expect in a hobby that can have fatal outcomes when your not trained. Else they would sell full tanks and cave maps at the local wal mart.
So we completed those there and then life happened and we ended up here in FL.
So we found a PADI dive shop close to our house and signed up to do our 4 cert dives with them.
Our dives were to be at "devils den" and "blue grotta" both fresh water springs.
We picked up our rental equipment friday eve because it was included in the price of the dive (regardless of if you had your own equipment you were familiar with and prefered to use) However, after a lengthly discussion about that at the dive shop they agreed to let us use our own bcd and reg.(But we still had to pay the rental fee tacked on to our dive fee. Ok, so fine, I paid the rental fee but still opted to use the bcd's and regs that were ours and were comfortable with.
(We are getting our ow cert, however, right or wrong we have been diving for about 5 years and prefer our own equipment.
So we are told to be at Devils den sat at 11am as the others in the class were going to do their confined water in the pool there and we would join them after that to do our ow dives.
So around noon we all geared up and headed to the entrance.
Which we then learned consisted of a 100 yard walk then decend down 2 sets of stairs (the last one being about 40 steep steps made of slick wood) and then we would be at the water.
So we all make it down (10 total) only to find about 60 other peeps already in the water and viz about 2'. So after an attempt to do 2 laps around the spring as a group and losing members of our class along the way we met up and our instructor and dive master decided that it wasn't going to work to do our skills there due to the conditions and opted that we would do 3 dives the next day to do our skills.
So we all meet at blue grotta sunday at 8am.
Don't know how many of you are familiar with this site but its bacically a "cavern" that allows ow cert.divers in to a specific point.
So we all decended to platforms in the intrance to the "cavern" and performed some of our skills. (Split into 2 groups, half with the instructor and half with the dm) after that we was to swim into the cavern down to "peace rock" (the deepest ow is allowed to decend there) (40').
Well that turned into a fiasco considering the only lights of the group was with the instructor and dm (and the other 15 divers in there not in our class) so trying to keep track of who you was following was near impossible.
So eventually every one ended back on the surface and were discussing the poor viz and the fact it was not an ow dive but more of an intro to cave diving dive when the class noticed (not the instructor or dm) hey, were missing one girl.and yep we was, so the instructor went back down into the "cavern" looking for her. (Mind you a good 3+ min had elapsed here) after another minute she surfaced and luckily had just got lost following the light from one of the other divers there.
And then the instructor surfaced and found her with the class on the surface.
So we took a break and tanked up and went back onto the platforms to do the rest of our skills. Except for one student that was too freaked out with the first dive to go again.
So we did our couple skills, filled out our log books, got our temp card and left.
Out of the skills we performed were, mask removal, mask clearing, removing bcd,buddy breathing, bouyancy control, and emergency accent.and that was all.
I know what I think about our 2 days of ow cert dives.
Any instructors or experienced divers out there want to give your thoughts?
I put all of this in my course survey I sent to PADI.
I wanted to share our experience of our cert dives we "completed" here in FL to finish our ow cert.
Would be interesting to hear some experienced divers thoughts.
We started our PADI OW corse in SC last year with doing our book work and confined water dives there with an extremly thorough and knowledgable instructor. (My wife had to retest on the books before he would pass her)
He took his responsibility seriously as one would expect in a hobby that can have fatal outcomes when your not trained. Else they would sell full tanks and cave maps at the local wal mart.
So we completed those there and then life happened and we ended up here in FL.
So we found a PADI dive shop close to our house and signed up to do our 4 cert dives with them.
Our dives were to be at "devils den" and "blue grotta" both fresh water springs.
We picked up our rental equipment friday eve because it was included in the price of the dive (regardless of if you had your own equipment you were familiar with and prefered to use) However, after a lengthly discussion about that at the dive shop they agreed to let us use our own bcd and reg.(But we still had to pay the rental fee tacked on to our dive fee. Ok, so fine, I paid the rental fee but still opted to use the bcd's and regs that were ours and were comfortable with.
(We are getting our ow cert, however, right or wrong we have been diving for about 5 years and prefer our own equipment.
So we are told to be at Devils den sat at 11am as the others in the class were going to do their confined water in the pool there and we would join them after that to do our ow dives.
So around noon we all geared up and headed to the entrance.
Which we then learned consisted of a 100 yard walk then decend down 2 sets of stairs (the last one being about 40 steep steps made of slick wood) and then we would be at the water.
So we all make it down (10 total) only to find about 60 other peeps already in the water and viz about 2'. So after an attempt to do 2 laps around the spring as a group and losing members of our class along the way we met up and our instructor and dive master decided that it wasn't going to work to do our skills there due to the conditions and opted that we would do 3 dives the next day to do our skills.
So we all meet at blue grotta sunday at 8am.
Don't know how many of you are familiar with this site but its bacically a "cavern" that allows ow cert.divers in to a specific point.
So we all decended to platforms in the intrance to the "cavern" and performed some of our skills. (Split into 2 groups, half with the instructor and half with the dm) after that we was to swim into the cavern down to "peace rock" (the deepest ow is allowed to decend there) (40').
Well that turned into a fiasco considering the only lights of the group was with the instructor and dm (and the other 15 divers in there not in our class) so trying to keep track of who you was following was near impossible.
So eventually every one ended back on the surface and were discussing the poor viz and the fact it was not an ow dive but more of an intro to cave diving dive when the class noticed (not the instructor or dm) hey, were missing one girl.and yep we was, so the instructor went back down into the "cavern" looking for her. (Mind you a good 3+ min had elapsed here) after another minute she surfaced and luckily had just got lost following the light from one of the other divers there.
And then the instructor surfaced and found her with the class on the surface.
So we took a break and tanked up and went back onto the platforms to do the rest of our skills. Except for one student that was too freaked out with the first dive to go again.
So we did our couple skills, filled out our log books, got our temp card and left.
Out of the skills we performed were, mask removal, mask clearing, removing bcd,buddy breathing, bouyancy control, and emergency accent.and that was all.
I know what I think about our 2 days of ow cert dives.
Any instructors or experienced divers out there want to give your thoughts?
I put all of this in my course survey I sent to PADI.
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