Certification Soon (Maybe....)

[MJS1946]

So, here’s my tale of woe. I was originally certified in 1969. I don’t have my certification card and NAUI who I believe was the certifying agency has no record. So approximately 3 years ago I signed up for a basic OW class. Filled out the medical questionnaire and needed a sign off for mild asthma-no joy from my allergenist. Fast forward to a bonefish trip last November to the Bahamas where I was the only fishing guy at a dive resort. I decided to give it another go and my primary care doc signed off on the asthma. I signed up for the referral program and made arrangements to complete the OW dives in Hawaii in January. A week before the trip, while shoveling snow off my stairs, I slipped on the ice, fell backwards hit my head (9 staples and mild concussion) on the stairs and severely bruised my back and hip. Obviously did not make the OW dives. My choice is now to go to Puget Sound (March?) or wait for the ice to melt and finish up in a local lake. Both will entail a thick wetsuit or more pool time to get familiar with a dry suit. My future diving plans will all be in tropical locations. Any recommendations???

Thanks

 

[tursiops]

Stick with your plan to do classroom/pool at home and go to the tropics for your OW referral dives.

 

[jonhall]

As one of the local dive shop guys told me when I informed him I was planning to get AOW certification, he told me I could do it with the shop (where I did OW in 1998) and dives would be done in a quarry with 40º F water at 60 ft. and I would be a better diver OR I could get it on a trip at an op someplace in the Caribbean since that's where the majority of my diving is (through discussion the last few years he knew the trips I'd been on.)

To this day I haven't done any diving on the mainland U.S.

 

[happy-diver]

Mate find someone else to shovel snow off your stairs
and a doctor that doesn't know about your asthma, like the
many others that don't know about it's relationship with diving
and the championship olympic medalist swimmers that manage it

 

[Malarky]

If you have the means then just do it on some sunny shore. Save the drysuit until later or unless cold water diving really appeals to you.

Lake/quarry is convenient but you aren't up against a ticking clock. Do the class then get some fun dives in with your remaining vacation.

 

[jlcnuke]

As someone who got certified twice, once at home and once on vacation, I'd say that you're probably going to find that most of it "comes back to you" in the class, (though I only had one decade between certs, so maybe not as much for you) so wherever you choose is probably fine. I will say that the course I did in a vacation destination didn't include an instructor trying to go "above and beyond the minimum requirements", and I think that's likely typical since they need their reviews to stay high, while my local instructors have all seemed to want to teach me to dive with them, and if that meant doing more than "checking the boxes" then they were going to do more than just check the boxes. YMMV though.

 

[Neilwood]

Personally I would do theory and pool work at home and get a referral for the OW abroad if you only ever plan to dive warm water.

If you have any plans for diving (or potential dive buddies) locally, do the course at locally with a drysuit. Learning with a drysuit will make diving wet a breeze however it is not quite as easy the other way round.

A cold water diver will tend to have it easier adjusting to warm water than the other way round due to the additional buoyancy & weight issues of diving in cold water.

 

[rick00001967]

i agree that you may gain some more valuable experience if you do your ow dives at home in cold water. i always told my students "if you can dive well here, the caribbean will be a cake walk". haha but the truth is, if you have no desire whatsoever to dive around home then why bother. but i would suggest you do your research and find a good instructor no matter where you end up doing your dives.

 

[Anish]

Im not sure I agree that diving in a cold quarry makes you a better diver in the warm open water. Sure, you may deal with lower visibility better and colder water but the tropics the water is always warm and visibility is most often good. What the quarry doesnt give you is ripping currents, surges, waves on the surface, reefs to bang into etc. So if youre going to do tropical diving then get certified there. If you are going to be lake and quarry diving then get certified there. Anyway certification is just 4 dives. You will only really learn diving over the next 50 dives anyway!

 

[halocline]

Its always better to start off learning new skills in an easier environment. I would suggest doing the OW dives in tropical water, followed by several days of continued diving in the same place. Bonaire, Cozumel, Roatan are all places with some great dive instructors and fantastic places to dive that are good for beginners. Of the three, Cozumel is maybe the least beginner-friendly as the dives tend to be a little deeper and there's some current, but they're all great.

Then, once you have some confidence and experience in warm clear water you can continue your learning in the colder more challenging environments near home, if you want. There's a lake near santiam pass that is reputed to be one of the best lakes for diving in the U.S. but the water is in the 40s so it's drysuit only.