3-Day Open Water Certification?

[maj2]

I just came across this thread, and have found it most interesting.
I just wanted to reaffirm what everyone has said here, but from the perspective of a past student in a short course who just watched a family member do a longer course.
I got my OW in 2001 with a course that was two full days (mornings in classroom, afternoon in the pool), followed by the usual weekend of four open water dives (two per day). I can't remember now if the two days was Saturday and Sunday, or done on consecutive weekends. This was in the days before eLearning, etc. There was a LOT of material to have mastered in the book for each week. Especially the first week when you really did not know what to expect. We then spent three or four hours in the pool in the afternoon, and as mentioned in the thread, it did get cold.
Trying to go through that many skills in two pool sessions also means that everything pretty much has to go right. If there is difficulty with a skill by any student, then time became a factor. Things got rushed near the end of the pool time when you were at your coldest. Hardly conducive to either learning or mastering the skill.
My daughter just got her open water certification this past weekend. I would not let her do an abbreviated course like I did. Heck... I do not even know if it is still an option locally. She took a typical five PADI week course. One week per chapter. Things never got rushed, she had far better attention from her instructors than I did, and she had more time each week to fully master each chapter in the book.
It is also worth noting that my training was through a different shop and different instructors than hers.

 

[TMHeimer]

My OW in 2005 was the PADI 2 nights a week for 3 weeks (classroom & pool each night), then the OW dives weekend. This was fine for me. I haven't heard of a 5 week once a week PADI course, but that may be even better. Ideally, I'd like to do that for the practical training and e learning for the academics (I have done no e learning for any course myself, but students and instructors alike say it is considerably better than the old classroom, which I believe). Our shop still offers the 3 week course, but that, I believe, is with traditional classroom. The 2 weekend ones are far more often and are with e learning.

 

[PhatD1ver]

Are you serious about this? While it might meet standards in some way I do hope you are part fish. Have you looked into exactly what risks there are in diving? While this is a fun, educational, relaxing, and if done properly safe activity, it can also kill you in a heartbeat. In some very nasty and creative ways.

While it is normal to do 2 dives a day, even more for trained and experienced divers, there is a lot of material to cover and skills to master before you should even get in to open water. Go to amazon and get the kindle version of my book - SCUBA: A Practical Guide for the New Diver.

I don't know where you are from but there are supposed to be five distinct parts in confined water you have to do. Each has skills specific to the section that are supposed to be mastered. Not just parroted back once. But actually done smoothly and comfortably. Some people can get it the first time. Many can't. Some of those that can't are still passed only to find out they really don't know what they are doing and end up never diving again.

What you have signed up for is going to cram a great deal of material into a very short time. The OW class I teach is six to eight weeks long. Twice a week, 2 hours in the classroom and 2 -3 hours in the pool. I will not put people in the water for more than 2 hours at stretch. They start to get cold, tired, and informational overload comes into play. When that happens the learning stops. And what a student might miss from being so overloaded is the thing that could hurt them or worse down the road.

How much are you paying for this? I hope it's not much because I seriously worry that there will be a great deal of information, skills, and practice time that you will not get.

Ya know what? I am so upset about this that if you will PM me your email address or email me at jimlap212@comcast.net I will send you the Pdf of the first version of my book for free. Then if you want you can buy the second version in print from amazon.

Now before anyone gets jerked about my offer I am only doing it because I don't know if he has a kindle and time is short if he wanted the print version. Otherwise I would not offer it for free. But this kind of course is one of the major problems with the industry today and why we can't keep divers.

Well, I'd say it's a little fast and furious... the actual OW dive days are pretty straightforward, but I had a 2 hour pool session, a learning session, and Discover Scuba OW dive before I did my actual OW course... and I spent a full day doing knowledge reviews and another long pool session.. then we did skills on all four of my open water dives, some multiple times (because repetition is a good thing)..

I don't know how you could do all the confined water work in one day unless it was multiple pool sessions...

Just my take, from someone finished OW in May and AOW in July... I'm pretty comfortable in the water, maybe you are too, but I'm a little skittish about something this aggressive, like Jim says, you are talking about your life here...

---------- Post added August 20th, 2014 at 10:58 AM ----------

When you finish your course, come up to North Florida and I will , for no charge, complete by NAUI standards everything your PADI zero to hero course has left out.

Can I come next summer? I'm always open to good training, whether my guy left it out or not.

---------- Post added August 20th, 2014 at 11:08 AM ----------

Can I have a free copy of your book too, Jim?

I just want to know when I can get it on kindle, and I'll pay for mine thanks...

 

[gfaith]

Kindle $ 9.99
I have it good book for new divers.

SCUBA: A Practical Guide for the New Diver: James A Lapenta: 9781494900250: Amazon.com: Books

 

[PhatD1ver]

I'd like to pivot on the success metric. So the DIVER isn't getting themselves killed after a 3 day course, but I've seen enough coral being kicked off and sponges walked on and sea fans flattened to say unequivocally that the death and destruction being caused by the budget course divers is substantial. I guess that's an acceptable part of things. Who cares what shape we leave the local reef in so long as the budget crowd gets to tick off their bucket list *shrug*.

I'm going to have to pile in on this one... a 3-day course or a 8 weeks course won't stop people from stomping on the environment... that's all about awareness and that needs to be taught during every dive.

During my OW, we did most of my skills 'hovering', because there wasn't a place to kneel in the sand. And my instructor was very 'vocal' (as vocal as you can get underwater), about not bumping the reef, touching the pretty things, or sticking fingers near moray eels.

Idiot divers are just that, they don't care about anyone but themselves, and you can put them in an 8 week course, and they'll still go out and destroy a reef

 

[supergaijin]

Idiot divers are just that, they don't care about anyone but themselves, and you can put them in an 8 week course, and they'll still go out and destroy a reef

I agree that divers who care nothing for the environment in which they immerse themselves will continue to touch, harass etc. but IME experience of having taught 3-day courses in Koh Tao and Perhentians, 4-day courses in the Maldives, Egypt, and multi-week courses in New Zealand, when all things are equal the longer the course, the better the neutral buoyancy skills. Better buoyancy results in less accidental contact, and when contact inevitably happens, appropriate responses can be made. I see more damage being done from divers kicking off the reef than the intial contact.

Beginners with cameras are a liability to the reef as well. More and more beginner divers arrive with cameras- some even want to take it during training courses.

4 days is usually enough time for me to teach the basics to most people (assuming 'normal' comfort and waterskills). After certification, the onus is on the operator and guides to demonstrate proper ethics towards the environment. The operator can select beginner dive sites, and the guide can refrain from poking/touching. Most (but not all) beginner divers copy those whom they see as role-models.

I also witness divers with 100+ dives with terrible skills. Some of these 'divers' were trained (and are quick to point out) back before the BCD was even invented, in 'old-school' courses. They try to dive as if it never were...

 

[Diving Dubai]

Let me plunge in here...

I did my OW in 2005 in Egypt. Before hand I did do some research, but my knowledge was of course somewhat lacking.

My Course was 4 days and was as follows:

Day before - get fitted for equipment.

Day one, Morning theory, afternoon 2 x pool dives on skills. Evening homework
Day two, Morning theory and exams, Afternoon 2 x pool dives - this included "showing" DSD divers how to assemble their gear - under the supervision of the instructor, so I guess a practical test

Day Three 1 x tour dive, 1 x skills dive
Day four 1 x skills dive 1 x skills/tour dive

Points to note, I started the course on day 3 of my vacation and carried on diving with the operator logging 18 dives by the end of the vacation (it seemed a huge amount then). What was my diving like? I could conduct the skills although some like mask clear was accomplished (a number of times) but I didn't feel comfortable with it. All skills were done on the sand. I was overweighted and floundered in the water (hindsight) at the time I believed I was a diver. BUT all that said I still feel it was a good course in that it gave me the basic foundations where only more hours in the water could improve me.

3 years later I did my AoW - rubbish instructor rubbish training learn't nothing that I wouldn't have learnt in a scuba review

3 years further on I returned to diving - my first dive in the opinion of others was fair - in that my buoyancy and gas consumption was better than they expected (they never did tell me what their expectations were!)

18 months and 150 dives later I'm happy in the water - probably more comfortable than some with a greater dive count. Although I still hate mask clear. Now fortunately I'm a member of a club that has a good pro porting of instructors from differing agencies, tech divers rebreather pilots so while not always doing further courses you do on social night talk diving (in between talking cr@p) which often leads to knowledge begin expanded on the more technical theory and sometime I might mention that I want to improve on xxx and someone offers to dive the next weekend and work on this, so we all benefit from continuing education.

As others have said we all learn at differing speeds - we all learn in differing conditions a warm water learning doesn't set you up for cold water, neither set you up for blue water boat diving in the Maldives or Indonesia etc. I think what is important and not done is that people should deb made more fully aware that like driving, getting the cert (or licence) is only the first step, only with many more hours do you start getting proficient.

 

[TatianaSilva]

right .... i must be one of the few ... i did my open water in three days too and for me it was the first diving ever .
everything was fine , had a lot of fun, learnt all skills , did elearning, deep dive , etc ... no problem and no rushing either

 

[String]

3 day courses are generally the normal schedule in most resort destinations and generally they work. Sometimes people need more time, sometimes they don't. We're not teaching people to fly the space shuttle here - we're teaching a few basic motor skills and a bit of knowledge and its set at a level a 10 year old can understand. For a small class and a person of average ability 3 days is perfectly acceptable although admittedly they're long days, particularly the first.

A single student who is comfortable in the water can complete all the confined in 3 hours or so without issue. Certainly easy enough to do theory 1,2,3 in the morning of day 1, confined 1,2,3 in the afternoon. Day 2 doing confined 4/5 which on the old course takes maybe half an hour then the 2 open water dives leaving space in-between for knowledge reviews and quizzes. That leaves a fairly easy day 3 with just 2 dives and finishing up.

Dragging that out to an extra day just to hit 4 days with a small number of good or average students makes no real sense.

It's perfectly within standards and is probably the most common world wide.

 

[TatianaSilva]

right , i must say after reading answers in my own thread and reading lots since i did my OW > depending on your instructor or what you want to get from your OW , you may not exactly know everything about diving after it.
The OW is great to get the confidence and basics you need to dive. Personally i wouldnt have got into this if i didnt have a certification. It gives you that knowledge and understanding of how many things works which made me feel better while underwater but still lots of things missing. After you have your card , if you are interested, you need to read and ask a lot lot more about everything