After your ow course, were you able to dive without Dm/instr?

[Chavodel8en]

Was I "able" to dive without a professional after I was initially certified? Definitely. I did so in fact with just friends who weren't certified much longer than I was at the time. Was I "competent"? Nope, but I was "safe enough" and "knew enough" to avoid doing harm to myself, others, or the environment. I attribute much of that to my first instructor doing an excellent job of making sure I knew the theory, could comfortably do the "skills", and making sure I understood that I only knew a little.

Thats about where I was after my OW, and I agree w/ Storker above that this is reasonable expectation of an OW course.

My OW (~15 yrs ago) was a couple of classroom days, two days in the pool, then in the ocean, with about a dozen students.

Was my buoyancy perfect, my weighting dialed in, perfect trim? Nope. But I could dive safely, and work on my skills.

I appreciate that my instructor told us honestly that we needed to continue to improve our skills. In the brief time we had in OW, he worked on our skills so that we could continue improving.

 

[EFX]

Right after my OW recertification and not long after I completed AOW, I hooked up with a guy who was on his way to becoming a public safety diver. He was more experienced than me but not that great of a diver. We dove a lot at Haigh quarry and I gradually improved my skills and confidence. I logged about 40 dives that year all without an instructor or DM. Then a couple years later I hooked up with an old volleyball buddy and we started diving together at Haigh. He was full cave and that's where I learned and got my trim right and changed over to a BP/wing/long hose/bungied second. All that diving was done without any pro's. I did dive occasionally with pro's from my local dive shop but I did not in any way lean on them for underwater support. We were diving as buddies in a group dive. The main reason for diving without a pro is that I wanted to do a lot of diving and to do a lot diving I had to find a non-pro buddy -- the pro's were to busy teaching/guiding students.

 

[Belzelbub]

Apart from checkout dives, I've never actually dove with a divemaster or dive instructor in an official capacity.

That said, I actually have OW certs from two different agencies. My initial OW certification was a complete joke. I only did a single "checkout dive," and no pool work. I use quotes, because it wasn't really a dive. Max depth was about 8' and visibility was about 4'. I was certified anyway, but did not feel comfortable diving. Didn't dive again until my second certification which was the polar opposite of my first one. Course was a university course over 6 weeks. Once a week we'd have a classroom lecture to go over the assigned reading. Twice a week we'd have lab courses. Lab courses were 3 hours long. First 30 minutes - 1 hour were doing desk work. Reading tables, figuring out repetitive dive groups, etc. Then the balance of the class was in the pool. I felt much more comfortable diving after that course.

 

[Esprise Me]

The discussion of training shortcomings in this thread seems focused on agencies not wanting to flunk students. I don't think I should have been flunked; I think they should have taught me more.

My OW course did a **** job of teaching bouyancy control. The PADI manual emphasizes taking slow, deep breaths. Italics in the original--I just checked. Nowhere does it say that breathing as deep as you can will have you bouncing all over the place; I had to relearn to just breathe normally from one of my AOW instructors (and still not the book.) Nor did my OW course teach me to exhale fully while deflating my BCD to get under initially. Fortunately, unlike (apparently) many OW courses, they didn't overweight me, so it was a little tricky to get down; no one offered me any tips on that (there were about 5-6 instructors and assistants in all, 3 at a time during the first 3 ocean dives) until the last guy on the last day advised me to use my arms to push myself down.

Dive planning was even more neglected. The manual gives an example in which you and your buddy agree that 50 bar/500 psi is ample reserve pressure, and "based on the depth" (not specified, though presumably 60 feet or less?) "you agree that you want to save 20 bar/300 psi for [your ascent and safety stop.]" Then it walks you through the math of figuring out your turn pressure, but never says anything more about where those figures came from. It then gives you an exercise in which, "due to conditions" (what conditions? Current? Low viz? Surf? Drunk captain? A sociopath in the White House having access to the nuclear codes? All of the above?) "...we are planning very conservatively," which in this case means 800 psi reserve and 500 for ascent. Which figures should we use and when? The book is silent. My instructors didn't cover this at all in class; when I asked they gave vague answers. On the final checkout dive, we were to plan the dive with our buddies and then share the plan with the group. I was in a trio and suggested we use the 500/300 numbers from the first sample, since we'd just assessed conditions and, as confirmed by our instructor, they were "ideal." One of my buddies brought up the rule of thirds, which wasn't mentioned in the course but he'd heard about somehow. My other buddy suggested taking the average of my number and the other guy's, so we did. Our instructor said it wasn't conservative enough but didn't explain why. The next buddy pair exchanged glances and offered a more conservative number. The instructor said that was fine, but that we wouldn't be turning the dive at the turn pressure we'd picked; we'd turn it when he said to. I felt like this was defeating the purpose, but at this point I was so tired of being that student that I didn't bother; just took my cert and vowed to get more and better instruction somewhere else before I dived alone.

Also, the predive checklist--BWRAF--says to test breathe your regulator two or three breaths. Then, in a separate sentence, it says to check your air pressure gauge to be sure it shows a full cylinder. Nowhere does it say or imply, nor did my instructors mention, that you should be watching the gauge while you take those breaths to be sure the needle doesn't drop suddenly, which could indicate your air was turned off after having been turned on. I learned that, not from OW, not from AOW, but from reading Diver Down, the Red Asphalt of scuba diving. And I used that knowledge just this past weekend, when a "helpful" boat captain mistakenly turned off my air--but I caught it before splashing in.

I've learned so much from the independent reading I've done and the pros I've had a chance to interrogate, stuff I feel I should've gotten from my OW course. I executed all but one of the skills correctly on the first try; the remaining one, underwater compass navigation, wasn't itself the issue so much as I lost control of my bouyancy and had to do it over. The instructors I've had since OW have all told me my bouyancy control was better than most people they've seen with my level of experience, and I gather from the groups I've dived with that my air consumption is about average for where I am, and it's getting better. I missed maybe 2 questions in all of the tests and quizzes in the entire course. I'm capable. I just needed to be given more.

For those who did feel comfortable diving without a DM/instructor right away, did you learn in your OW course the things I complained about not having learned in mine, or did you not think those things necessary? If the latter, do you still hold that view?

 

[Storker]

For those who did feel comfortable diving without a DM/instructor right away, did you learn in your OW course the things I complained about not having learned in mine

Yes and no. When I got my OW cert, my buoyancy control sucked so bad it could have sucked a tennis ball through my HP hose. We learned rudimentary dive planning (max depth, max time, turn time, be at the safety stop with 50 bar left). I believe we were taught to watch our SPG while pre-breathing the regs during BWRAF. On my own, I was able to deduce how to calculate some kind of minimum pressure at a given depth, based on what I could read in the OWD manual.

As @jlcnuke said, we'd learned just enough to avoid getting too far up that proverbial creek, and it was up to ourself to advance our diving in small enough steps by ourself.

 

[jlcnuke]

For those who did feel comfortable diving without a DM/instructor right away, did you learn in your OW course the things I complained about not having learned in mine, or did you not think those things necessary? If the latter, do you still hold that view?

Buoyancy control - my initial OW instructor did a good job with teaching me basic buoyancy control. It took practice to get it to where I am now, and my trim wasn't perfect, but I could get down and hover in a 2-3 ft window at any depth below ~10 ft I'd estimate. I'm a lot better now, but I think it was covered adequately and practice is what was needed to get better. Of course, we didn't do our skills kneeling on the bottom of the pool or anything, like so many courses do, and buoyancy was stressed and practiced throughout the course.

Dive planning was discussed in depth in my classroom sessions for my first OW cert as well, including going over the rule of thirds and discussing scenarios when it's appropriate (long swims, technical dives, deeper dives, etc) and when you can be more relaxed about it (shallow dives near the boat, dives where the boat's gonna come pick you up, etc) and just making sure you get back/to the surface .

Breathing and looking at the SPG during gear check was covered by the instructor in both of my OW courses.

I agree that the elearning/books alone don't do a great job teaching dive planning, but that's where the "get a good instructor" comes in ideally.

 

[BikerBecca]

my buoyancy control sucked so bad it could have sucked a tennis ball through my HP hose.

Thanks for the laugh. I love the description!

 

[MichaelMc]

I think I knew enough to manage a 30' spring or a side cove of a calm lake, which is what I had seen:
* Buoyancy was delicate but there
* Trim was controlled by thrust, or gravity on my low belt/integrated
* Planning was watch your gauge, know your max depth/time, surface w/ 500.
* Mask/reg clear/recovery was at least tentative and a bit stressful
* Pre-dive was check all the parts were there and worked.

Not that these are good levels to leave OW with, just that is where I was.

 

[Foothills]

I was going to answer "yes, completely capable of diving without supervision after OW certification", but I don't know if that is true. After my 4 OW training dives I had the fortune to rack up another 10 dives (I was on a 2 week vacation). After getting home from the Caribbean I signed up for the PADI AOW course to learn how to dive a 7 mm 2 piece wetsuit at altitude, as well as to learn about a few local dive sites. I was in the water the weekend following the AOW planning dives and diving them with some of the other divers I met in AOW.

So, I had training for the conditions I was diving in, buddies I had confidence in, and felt more than capable of planning & executing my own dives with that skill & knowledge foundation.

 

[Alan Browne]

If I had a good buddy, I'd go. My SO is not confident enough to dive with just me - she wants adult supervision.

I've done one "dropoff" dive w/o a DM after the 3rd dive of the day last year in Roatan at Fantasy Island. This would have been logged dive number 40 or so, overall, for me.

There's a largish wreck in the channel at about 50' down. As the dive boat comes back after dive#3, the captain puts you near the stern of the wreck and off you go. (Yes, you need to make sure tanks were brought on board for this dive).

I went with a very experienced Quebec diver. But I speak French so I understand the the hand signals.

We encountered a solo diver on the wreck (he was not "solo equipped") who was out of the resort northeast of Fantasy Island (Coco View).

From the wreck it's a compass bearing to a gazebo on the resort. There's also a steel cable from the wreck to the gazebo that can't be missed... so you can also shore (gazebo) dive the wreck and come back, obviously, but the drop off is a nice lazy way to get there.