100' before AOW?

[waterpirate]

I will start with "if you have to ask...." This whole thing goes back to training standards and the dillution of training at the basic level by breaking down a wealth of information into a logical progression of knowledge and skills over many courses. Open water in 1980 is not what it is now. So my advice is to follow the training to its limits and progress as your knowledge progresses. Here is an old standard for you "there are old divers and bold divers, rarely is there an old,bold diver"
Eric

 

[bletso]

Then that answers the questions. I have done the Advanced class and it was a great experience on learning how to shoot a bag, run a reel with a blacked out mask, navigate using my compass, and diving deep at 90 feet. The biggest gain I got from it is that it provided me training on how to rig/deploy a pony and an AL40 (AL 40 I sling). This gave me confidence and the experience for deeper diving than 60'. In my recent dives I have been going deeper past 90 feet for reasons of cavern exploration and reefs

It sounds like you had a decent AOW instructor. The only difference between he an I is you would have had no mask. Cudos to the both of you. People have always criticized me for taking diving too seriously, and my reply is always that until I learn to breathe water I have no choice. Stuff happens and the more experience one has the better the chances are for a successful outcome. In diving, ignorance is bliss.

Yes, thousand upon thousands of dives are executed each year by divers grossly over extending themselves as regards skills and training. The problem is only apparent when things go wrong and then sometimes they survive and then sometimes they do not.

Safe Diving,

Dale

 

[RJP]

Diving to 210' with very experienced divers, is an extreme example of what we call a 'Trust Me Dive'. Basically, you aren't capable of safely conducting the dive by yourself and put your welfare at the mercy of your dive partners. A highly dangerous situation to put yourself in.

Quite right. And beyond that... any "very experienced diver" who would take a new diver to 210' has demonstrated that they are THE LAST DIVER ON EARTH that should be trusted on a "trust me" dive.

 

[Rhone Man]

When you are ready, you are ready. If you don't know that you are ready, then you are almost certainly not ready.

Quick anecdote: when I was recently in Truk, one of the expatriate contracts on island (a Kiwi) came out diving with us for a couple of days with his 10 year old son. The son had about 25 dives at this stage, almost all of which had been below 100 feet. But he was an extremely able and naturally comfortable diver. Is it a good idea for kids that young and inexperienced to be diving that deep? Generally, no. But I had no reservations about this kid after seeing him on a couple of dives. Good divers are about skills, not cards.

 

[soccerguy83]

It's your call... but that doesn't mean your self-assessment is valid.

Confidence in newbie divers can often be attributed to an incomplete knowledge of the risks they face.

This is IMO is a very true statement! Confidence with out the education is not true confidence in your abilities it's confidence in your ignorance. On dive number 5 for me first one out of OW I was in Cozumel. Followed the DM down to 82' didn't think anything of it. I blindly "trusted" that the DM would take care of me. I was young and dumb! Thankfully nothing bad happened, was a great dive, but looking back on the dive it was not a smart dive at all. Lots of things could have gone wrong and I was in way over my head, but at the time I was ignorant to that. I since have decided that I'm going to take it much slower, I want to learn so much more about diving and stay within my limits.

 

[dogglebe]

A week after I was certified, I was in Turks & Caicos. I dove down 80 feet on my first dive as I was following the group, including three or four master divers.

Around my fifth or sixth dive, my wife (AOW) and I dove down the wall to 100 feet. We didn't stick around down there; I did it to say I did it. After that, I don't think I went deeper than 70 or 80 feet.


Phil

 

[drbill]

I didn't get AOW until 2001, about 40 years after my first dive on SCUBA. I only got it because I needed a PADI card so the DMs would stop asking what my Los Angeles County certification from 1969 meant (where do they think the founders of PADI got their training?).

Of course the LAC certification was good to 130 feet anyway, so any dives I did that exceeded 100 ft after 1969 were all within my training. I don't think I did any from 1961 to 1969 since it was mostly in freshwater lakes and vacuuming up the deep diving wells of pools.

 

[sgl308]

If you ask any dive professional, they should say "don't dive below 100 ft until you have the training." There are some factors that come into play with deep dives such as nitrogen narcosis, wet suit compression (affecting buoyancy), and also air consumption. As a diver with 10 dives or so, you most likely will be sucking air like it won't be around tomorrow. Now your 100+ ft dive lasted 5 minutes before you have to come up. Was that 5 minutes really worth it?

I say build on your experience, get comfortable in the water, and practice emergency scenarios such as buddy breathing. Not many people can do an out of air ascent from 100 ft on the last little breath of air from their tank.

If I were to say I've never dove beyond my training, I'd be lying. My first open water dives after getting certified were in the Bonne Terre Mines. I was diving in overhead environments at 60 - 70 ft, but I did it because I was comfortable in the water, had good instructors, and had an instructor and a couple divemasters with my group on top of the safety divers and guides provided by the mine.

You'll know when you're ready.

 

[Gilldiver]

I didn't get AOW until 2001, about 40 years after my first dive on SCUBA. I only got it because I needed a PADI card so the DMs would stop asking what my Los Angeles County certification from 1969 meant (where do they think the founders of PADI got their training?).

I came up in about the same way as Dr. Bill. Here is my 1st cert card - in 1979 there was SCUBA Diver, Dive Master, Assistant Instructor, and Instructor>

This card was good enough to take me up through 1995, 2 years after my first Mix dives and many, many air wreck dives in the 100-200 range from Maine down through North Carolina and the Islands. But to get from the pool in 1979 to helium in 1993 was a school of hard knocks and advanced courses held on the back of the boats with the guys who were doing the “Big” dives, it was training by mentor and trial and error, and the errors were costly in time, money, and spirit. It was a very hard school and not many made it all the way through and just dropped out.

In 1995, I got this one after taking an instructor into the Engine Room of the USS Tarpon and getting him a gauge, all he had to do was hold the bag as I did the work, To tell you the truth, I shouldn’t have taken him in as he didn’t have the experience to do it…. When we got back on the boat, I gave him “His” gauge and he asked what he could do for me, I asked him if I had passed the Advanced Diver test.

I asked for the card as by the Mid-90’s I was getting hassled by shops and boats for not have advanced. Which is exactly the same reason I got my mix cert 12 years after my first mix dives.

So, just saying you have any card doesn’t impress me, in fact I’m more leery of divers who bost of being a DM, or Instructor than a diver who says they only have a few dives. The new diver knows they don’t know, the diver with the cards may think they know, but many times haven’t a clue as they have been quarry commandos with a few dives in other locations thrown in.

So yes, you can go to 100 without AOW, but you have to pay your dues one way or another and you need the right mental attitude to do it with.

 

[seaducer]

This is loaded question for sure.

For me, I took AOW straight after OW, so no I did not hit 100 feet before AOW. I am also not sure that AOW really made me more qualified than OW did, to be honest.

I did quite a few deepish dives with little experience back then, but I think if I had the benefit of the perspective I have today, I would have waited some before going down so far.

Now, would I take a new diver with 10ish dives to 100 feet on a trust me dive? No. But that is just me, and the more I have learned the more conservative I have become.