Getting AOW!

[Aloha Joe]

I just signed up for AOW this weekend: Fri/Sat/Sun. I’m psyched! Diving is getting more fun as I get more comfortable (despite the garbage I wrote about in my other thread). I already did 5 dives over the past 3 days and am planning a dive trip to Maui and Big Island for the last week in April . I’m so blessed!!!

Day 1: Deep Dive, Navigation
Day 2: PPB, Search/Rescue
Day 3: (TBD - maybe Enriched?!), PPB Specialty

Since I have the book and am a club member, it was about $400 total including the specialty cert. All are boat dives.

I’m not sure what I want to do for the last adventure dive: Self Reliant wasn’t an option and I don’t know if a night dive will fit the schedule. Maybe Enriched?? Probably good to have some instruction before messing with my air...

April 22 is a club clean-up dive and I’ll get to do some shore diving, which is the other major skill I wanted to cover before I leave for the other islands on 4/24 or 4/25.

Thanks to all of you who put up with my over thinking and over writing! I love this!! And I just bought some Seawing Gorillas!!

 

[Paul M]

EANx is definitely nice to have. I recommend it.

 

[Marie13]

Self reliant isn’t an option until you have 100 dives.

 

[rsingler]

EANx yes!
Do the eLearning self study course before, and see if you can arrange Nitrox certification while you're there. The Nitrox dive isn't necessary for certification, but this early in your career, it will be a nice Nitrox and computer addition to your experience.

Happy diving!

 

[JohnnyC]

I would do the nitrox coursework early so that you can dive nitrox for all of your dives. Then pick another adventure dive for your last one.

 

[Neilwood]

Good for you - glad to see you are having more fun. Once the experience ramps up the fun increases as you need to think less about what you are doing and more about what you are seeing.

I would definitely include Nitrox if I could if you are likely to do resort or liveaboard diving with more than a couple of dives a day. It will do one of two things : if you are gas limited, it will increase your safety (you will take on less N for the same dive length OR if you are NDL limited (on air) it will push that NDL out quite a bit allowing for longer dives.

Nav is always a good thing to practise. Even with a guided group it is worth having a good idea of the navigation plan and where you are. Case in point on my last trip - my group (6 divers - three pairs) were doing a drift dive along a reef wall. Despite the briefing before the dive which was to dive to 20-25m and then ascend to 15m and make a turn towards the boats once we saw a certain feature, not one of the group (two instructors and one DM included) picked up the feature we had been told to look for (I still don't have a clue where it was) so ended up following the reef wall for a lot longer than we should have. Ended up drifting further along the wall than we should have and, once we decided it was time to do a stop after about 50 mins (we still had plenty of gas) we popped up and were a good 1/4 mile from the boats (turns out 4 6ft DSMB's made us quite easy to see). Quite common on that reef though as I found out later.

 

[Aloha Joe]

I’d love to focus more on naviagation - I wanted Nav and PPB specialties but hadn’t thought about EANX too much. Maybe I can switch PPB to EANX, and after AOW I can find a shop that does more shore diving and get PPB and Nav and save a few bucks...

 

[mmerriman]

Self reliant isn’t an option until you have 100 dives.

and you need to find a self reliant certified instructor....

 

[TMHeimer]

IMO any of those you mentioned are good options. As opposed to others that don't really do much for your diving progression/safety. I suppose you can learn the stuff covered in either case by reading and being "mentored", but it's nice to be with an instructor.

 

[Trailboss123]

Self reliant isn’t an option until you have 100 dives.

And is a completely separate stand alone course and not an option for AOW certification.