Advanced diving course on a liveaboard

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As some of the other have suggested, getting some more dives in might be worthwhile before going on a liveaboard. It is a pretty intense diving experience with 3-4 dives per day depending on the itinerary. Also depending on the itinerary, you will be going deep (25-30m for most dives) and be in the water for around an 45-60mins with some explorable wrecks (Thistlegorm, GiannisD etc) where good awareness and manoeuvring skill is a definite bonus. Knowing alternative kicks such as frog kick are a boon within these situations.

With so much to see (the Red Sea is recovering nicely from being over exploited for years), it is worthwhile making sure your skills are up to scratch and trying to maximise your time underwater with regards to your air consumption. With a bit more experience under your belt you can spend far longer under water and be able to concentrate more on what is going on around you instead of on your gas, positioning, etc.

I did my first Red Sea liveaboard at around 25 dives but was pretty comfortable with my positioning. Even at that I would, in hindsight, have enjoyed it even more with another 20 dives on my belt. A couple did their AOW and Nitrox on the boat while the trip was going but they did seem to be spending a lot of the downtime reading the coursework/getting tested so I am not sure how that affected their enjoyment of it. Also they could have done with some sharpening of their skills prior to going - they ended up kicking up a lot of silt when close to the bottom and they needed to be so close to each other that it became a problem for other divers in so much that if they did get separated they would barge other divers out of the road to get their relative position sorted again (to the point at I almost ended up stuck in a reef wall).
 
As Neilwood said, I think that you'd better take an AOWD course and some experience before going on a livaboard.
But there is no law about it, only a usual pre-requisite of 50 dives min, although I've been many times with people passing AOWD onboard....

"With a bit more experience under your belt you can spend far longer under water and be able to concentrate more on what is going on around you instead of on your gas, positioning, etc."


and other divers are not obliged to skip more difficult (and nicer) dives because of you... what happens sometimes.
 

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