Advanced

[Esprise Me]

I've found most courses to be less than I was hoping for, but never useless. I think you can get a lot out of just diving with more experienced buddies, but formal instruction does often mean you learn more in a shorter time. Sometimes it's less about the course content than the instructor, and sometimes it's less about what you learn than about just having a safe environmentto try new things. I took a night diving course in which I ended up being the only student. A local dive shop organizes weekly night dives, and I wanted to join. But I'm a little shaky on surf entries in general, and felt especially apprehensive doing them in the dark. It was really helpful to me to have a professional looking out for me as I pushed my own personal comfort envelope. It also happened that my instructor was a marine biologist, so he taught me a lot about the critters. I'm thinking of taking the deep course just so I can have someone looking out for me the first time I get narced.

AOW was pretty helpful for me as a brand-new diver; I think it would have been less helpful after I'd gotten in 25-50 dives. Since you may need it to get on some boats going to deeper sites, why not do it now, while you can get more out of it?

 

[Jody Freitas]

The Advanced Course I offer is one that, while within and meeting all agency standards, is one I wrote myself and actually have a book about. Most by the agency book Advanced courses leave much to be desired. It does depend on the instructor. All instructors are free to add material and skills to a certain point. Some are permitted to require those additions to be met to issue the card. It depends on the agency.

I don't believe in using the advanced class to remediate basic skills. They should be pretty much nailed down before taking the class. The reason for this is that in many places the advanced card is used as a liability waiver by operations to put people on dives they may have no business being on.

I was out on the Spiegel Grove with an op and there was a couple with AOW cards. And a total of 12 -15 or so dives under their belt each. They had trouble setting up their gear, difficulty with the entry, and then burned through their air by the time they reached the deck at 95 feet. Then the wife complained that her computer had the previous day so while she was wearing it, it was non-functional and she was just following her husband's unit. But no one asked about anything more than that AOW card to let them on the dive.

My own personal belief is that if you are going to take an AOW class to get access to different dives like that, the course should not be a taste or tour of those dives. If should give the information and skills necessary to do them safely and with an understanding of when, even with the card, you should just say no and not do the dive. An AOW course generally has a training limit of 100 feet but the card will get you on dives to 130, or more depending on the site. So you should have a good understanding of gas planning, use of a redundant air supply that you carry, emergency deco procedures, and excellent buoyancy and trim.

For this reason and for the other dives in the course, I have minimum entry requirements.
1. All basic skills able to be done neutral and horizontal with less than 2 feet change in depth. By the end of the class, we'll get it down to one foot. I may require a non-cert workshop with me to address this.
2. 10 - 12 dives post-OW certification outside of a class if I wasn't your OW instructor.

The dives I do I choose and are in this order for a reason. The subsequent ones build on those that come before it.
1. Advanced Skills - Anti- Silting kicks, Stage bottle use, DSMB from depth, non-silting kicks, buddy skills, and communication
2. Underwater Navigation - Compass use, line and reel use, measuring distance via kicks, time, air consumption, or line. Buddy awareness, task sharing, communication. Attention to detail and selection of landmarks. Planning limitations.
3. Night/Low Vis - Buoyancy control and trim, light use and selection, touch contact and communication, lost diver procedure, navigation, site choice and hazards.
4. Deep dive -Max Depth -100 feet. buoyancy control and trim, horizontal descents and ascents, rate of ascent and descent control, narcosis exposure, and determination by task loading using actual dive skills including reel and line, air share at from max depth to 50 ft, and deploy stage bottle.
5. Search and Recovery -dive is done at 25 feet or less, patterns and risks, communication, use of line and reel for circular pattern search as buddy pair, raise object using lift bag, and swim it horizontal 100 feet. Then bring to the surface under control and return it to depth under control while maintaining neutral buoyancy of the object and diver.
6. Buddy Skills and Assist - depth 30 ft or less. 100 foot no mask swim with buddy leading, 100 ft no mask air share swim, 100 foot no mask air share swim and ascent. Loss of buoyancy ascent assist and support at the surface. Non-responsive diver from depth (not to exceed 25 ft). Rescue tow of the non-responsive diver to shore or boat.

There is a lot more to this class and while using the agency text, I also supplement it with my own book. Especially the chapters on gear selection and gas management. The class is not for everyone. It was never meant to be.

I just picked up your book on Kindle.

 

[formernuke]

So just wanted to update with a few points. I am in the northeast so the water gets a bit colder and I am held hostage to seasons. I don't own a drysuit yet. I am also a person who likes to plan things out and use my time as efficiently as possible. So while I am still diving now I am thinking of additional training during the winter, that I can actually use come next season. I also tend to have an easy time with academics and bookwork, so online learning in the evenings just comes natural. Really just trying to not be stagnant over the down season.

Nitrox and drysuit. Being northeast if you want to do deeper dives even in the warmer months a drysuit is preferred. Plus it expands your dive season so you can get more experience.

Which club are you a member of?

 

[Jody Freitas]

Nitrox and drysuit. Being northeast if you want to do deeper dives even in the warmer months a drysuit is preferred. Plus it expands your dive season so you can get more experience.

Which club are you a member of?

MetroWest

 

[Lostdiver71]

Find a good instructor that teaches beyond the standards, the agency doesn't matter as much. Definitely take the prerequisites for Rescue Diver with whichever agency and get rescue certified. Nitrox, solo, deep and night diver courses are also ones I would take when you get the chance, night diving is great if you take a vacation to a tropical location! I have actually been asked for a solo card at a facility before even though I am an Instructor and the maximum depth at the location was 35 feet, if you want to dive some places you have to follow their rules even if they make no sense.

 

[Belzelbub]

So definitely want to move up and continue training. I have been trained with PADI SSI and NAUI at this point. It appears that the advanced certification has a few required courses and a few elective courses. Is that right? I know I want Deep, Nav, and Night, but was wondering what others did and why?

You didn’t mention which agency you are looking at for AOW. For SSI, they are all elective, but Deep, Night, & Nav are often chosen, and recommended, but I don’t believe it is an SSI requirement. In my case, I took those three. I had also previously done Nitrox with SSI, so that counted as one of my 4 specialties. You might already have what you need with the three you are planning.

Also will probably need a pony bottle setup for deep, so what are people doing there?

I use a 19 cu ft pony. It mounts to my main tank with a couple of straps. I believe the straps were made by Zeagle. Inverted so I can reach the valve easily. That requires a longer hose.

 

[jejton]

The Advanced Course I offer is one that, while within and meeting all agency standards, is one I wrote myself and actually have a book about....The class is not for everyone. It was never meant to be.

This sounds pretty amazing. I took AOW last year locally in south Florida and was extremely dissapointed. I was given the PADI book to read and taken on 4 certifying dives. No didactic, minimal discussion and left not feeling much more confident or knowledgeable than before. Luckily I have filled in some of that gap by learning from friends and divemasters on subsequent dives but I really would like to get some more in-depth training to nail some of these things down.

 

[Barnaby'sDad]

This sounds pretty amazing. I took AOW last year locally in south Florida and was extremely dissapointed. I was given the PADI book to read and taken on 4 certifying dives. No didactic, minimal discussion and left not feeling much more confident or knowledgeable than before. Luckily I have filled in some of that gap by learning from friends and divemasters on subsequent dives but I really would like to get some more in-depth training to nail some of these things down.

That’s unfortunate on your AOW course, but it’s great that your friends and some DMs have helped fill in the blanks.

What you get out of the AOW course is entirely dependent upon your instructor. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen posts with people talking about how they didn’t learn anything useful from their AOW class. I don’t think that’s the fault of the curriculum, but the manner in which it was delivered.

 

[TMHeimer]

The course I took was pretty good. Navigation and Search & Recovery dives were the best. Deep only went to 63', but that's where the boat went in winter on the FL panhandle. I did all the knowledge reviews in the (paper of course, 2005) manual, which can't hurt.
Pretty basic stuff. But, I only had 6 post AOW dives then. Many have said that you pick up a lot of this stuff by just diving with more experienced divers. Then if you do enough diving and take AOW because some charters require it to go below 60', you may not get much out of it.

 

[Belzelbub]

This sounds pretty amazing. I took AOW last year locally in south Florida and was extremely dissapointed. I was given the PADI book to read and taken on 4 certifying dives. No didactic, minimal discussion and left not feeling much more confident or knowledgeable than before. Luckily I have filled in some of that gap by learning from friends and divemasters on subsequent dives but I really would like to get some more in-depth training to nail some of these things down.

That’s disappointing. While largely due to the instructor, the PADI AOW course is different from most other agencies. SSI, for instance, gives you an AOW card after completion of 4 specialties. PADI AOW is more of an introduction to 4 specialties. Most other agencies call it Advanced Adventurer, or similar.

My AOW course was pretty decent. I can’t say that I learned a ton, but that was mostly because I had years of diving under my belt at the time. The instructor was great, and took time to go through everything. Though Rescue wasn’t a specialty I was taking at the time, I did get to participate in a rescue of another student. Panicked at depth, largely unresponsive and gurgling at the surface. My instructor (shop owner) and a young instructor from the same shop (just arrived with OW student) handled everything perfectly. I learned quite a bit on that dive.