I've just completed the confined portion of the PADI Open Water course. I had the book for a few weeks before the class, we were supposed to have read the entire thing before beginning. We then spent an hour or so each of four days discussing the material, answering questions, clarifying, etc. After this, we spent seven hours over those four days in a pool learning the basics. The instructor had his first accident, says he's been diving for 30 years, right before this class because the person freaked out while clearing his mask at depth. We spent a lot of time demonstrating competence with mask clearing. Not just that we could but that we were calm while doing so.
One of the highlights was at the very end where he did a no-visibility exercise. We each placed a wet paper towel in our mask to obscure our vision. One of us, me, was touching the wall of the pool, while the other two students were in a line on my other hand. We needed to make a circumference of the pool while the "current" hassled us, without losing each other, moving from our only reference point (the wall) or banging our head on the other walls as we approached them.
My thoughts are that this was an excelent course for equipment and environment familiarity but not much more. I'm very aware that larger bodies of water have hazards I haven't experienced but at least some familiarity with those will occur with our ocean open water dives. I'd like to get some dives in to practice what I've learned so far before <cough> diving into the advanced course. I'd like to be confident in my abilities with the basic skills first and get in 6-8 dives to practice.
While I want to practice all of the skills in the open water, I think the one I have the most need for more practice is entries.
The most disturbing part wasn't anything that occured in the class, rather it was when he said that he didn't believe the rescue course would be useful unless you were planning on going to divemaster. Based on the description of the course on the web site, I thought that this was something that would be really good to have. Since I'm just starting on this the only reason I see for having the card is to be able to get refills and dive with tours. Otherwise, it's all skills.
One of the highlights was at the very end where he did a no-visibility exercise. We each placed a wet paper towel in our mask to obscure our vision. One of us, me, was touching the wall of the pool, while the other two students were in a line on my other hand. We needed to make a circumference of the pool while the "current" hassled us, without losing each other, moving from our only reference point (the wall) or banging our head on the other walls as we approached them.
My thoughts are that this was an excelent course for equipment and environment familiarity but not much more. I'm very aware that larger bodies of water have hazards I haven't experienced but at least some familiarity with those will occur with our ocean open water dives. I'd like to get some dives in to practice what I've learned so far before <cough> diving into the advanced course. I'd like to be confident in my abilities with the basic skills first and get in 6-8 dives to practice.
While I want to practice all of the skills in the open water, I think the one I have the most need for more practice is entries.
The most disturbing part wasn't anything that occured in the class, rather it was when he said that he didn't believe the rescue course would be useful unless you were planning on going to divemaster. Based on the description of the course on the web site, I thought that this was something that would be really good to have. Since I'm just starting on this the only reason I see for having the card is to be able to get refills and dive with tours. Otherwise, it's all skills.
