AOW before Tech?

[tbone1004]

I believe that some Cavern/Cave certs require AOW first. Ask your cave instructor to be.

instructors can override. I never actually got AOW....
Nitrox Diver-Rescue-Full Cave-Instructor where the only cards I had for quite a few years. Now there are a couple more cave specialty, but never got AOW. With NAUI we didn't need it for depth since the nitrox diver is good to 130ft, and skills were evaluated by an instructor. Card didn't matter. Granted that was 2010, but still.

I'm sure it's been said above, but haven't gotten through all the posts yet. AOW is 99% of the time a waste of time and money. It won't actually teach you any new/useful skills since @jtsfour said cave is the goal. If I were you, I'd just go find a good cave instructor now. Get them to run you through an intro to tech course, or GUE fundies, etc etc. which will actually teach you the skills you need to know and practice. From there you can go into the cave courses and save the weekend of wasted time/money in AOW.

Now, there are instructors who make AOW useful and you actually gain real skills from it, but none that you won't get out of an intro-to-tech type course anyway.

Based on your age, it then becomes finding a mentor to actually dive with who knows what he's doing. Find one, then dive your butt off until you feel comfortable. Nothing says you can't combine the itt with a cavern course so you can start practicing the skills in clear/warm water in anticipation of cave.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I’d suggest before taking AOW (which does typically very little) to take a DIR gatekeeper course like GUE fundies or UTD Essentials.

Work at getting a technical pass (won’t be easy), but the advantage you have versus me at 380 dives when I took it, is that you will have fewer bad habits to break and/or yours are easier to break.

GUE/UTD are not going to let you take cave without being a solid diver first. Your dive count won’t matter as much.

While I am a recreational instructor, I do believe that there is too little return in most con ed courses. The exception is from quality instructors who have high standards for meeting the definition of mastery of required skills (I.e. student didn’t drown completing skill) and/or augments their courses appropriately.

Look for the best return for your training budget. It is your time and money.

 

[rongoodman]

Diving with technically trained buddies is useful in that it will give you examples to emulate. I certainly never saw flat trim and precise kicks illustrated by my OW/AOW instructors, or many I've seen since then. OTOH, the first time I saw GUE trained divers in the water was a revelation.

 

[JackOfDiamonds]

First of all i dont think any serious instructor will accept you with such minimal experience.
AOW skills might not be required in Tech diving, its still diving experience which you need.

Think of it like getting your motorcycle licence . If you just got it getting on one of those 1000CC rockets will get you killed very very quickly, the same principle applies with tech/cave diving.
Get your AOW, get more experience and then you can consider cave diving.

 

[LakeCountyDiver]

From my last OW check out dive in Blue Grotto I knew I wanted to do cave. I didn't even know the magnitude of the cave in FL. I just wanted to keep diving places like BG. From OW I continued to dive. I dove springs, lakes, ocean, and every "OW" cavern FL had to offer. I quickly found myself distancing myself from all my OW friends. I was clearly heading down a different path and wanted different things.

I worked for a shop for a while and went up the ranks as a rec diver getting AOW/rescue/nitrox to DM just to help gain as much experience as I could. I began reading everything I could about "tec gear & diving" and started to assemble my collection and diving with it as often as possible. I then searched for a cavern/cave instructor and eventually took cavern. That cavern class was a huge turning point as it was NOTHING like any recreational class I had ever took.

I told you all that to tell you this. Being that you are OW only seek out a cave instructor now that also teaches recreational classes and can train you up the right way from an early stage. It would have saved me a lot of time and allowed me to practice my cave/tec skills in many earlier dives.

 

[Colliam7]

I have OW and EAN40. i have around 60 dives logged

I am about to start calling around to find a good instructor. I just had a quick conversation with someone and he basically said get AOW first. Are the skills learned in an AOW class that applicable to technical diving?

The AOW skills are applicable. The certification itself is NOT required, at least for the PADI Tec sequence. What is required is EANx certification (which you have) and Deep Diver certification (which you should have before starting).

As a tec instructor, I expect that students have very good buoyancy skills. That can come from a good PPB course, and/or good tutoring, and/or lots of practice, etc. I don't care if you have a PPB card, what I care about is whether you can competently control your buoyancy.

Being competent diving in a drysuit is also an expectation from my perspective. I don't care if it is a drysuit 'card', I care if the student can manage buoyancy and movement in a drysuit. Except in locales such as the Caribbean, for example, to get the depths required for training, cold water diving (e.g. quarries) is usually required. And, I don't care to take students to 120 feet in 40 degree water in a wetsuit. Other instructors may vary in their approach.

 

[Billy Northrup]

OP, one of my dive buddies is a 19yo female trained by John Chatterton, we do wrecks on trimix and she is solid. You can do it.

You are young and have time and options. I'd say go work at a dive company in the Keys, surround and submerge yourself in diving. Get to know the ropes, how to work a boat deck, lead a dive, network and such. You can make the transition to tech gear / skills and use them almost daily. It's not cave diving but it's diving.

Someone described a "gatekeeper" course and that is the most prefect way of putting it. I took GUE fundies before my tech and it made things "easy".

 

[Miyaru]

A year ago, a student approached me asking me if I was a cave diver. He was wildly enthusiastic about cave diving. I listened to him and told him: Cool. Now let's get in the pool for Confined 2.

I could have told him that he was dozens of hours of diving away from even glancing into a cave. Or that he had to do 200 dives first.
Instead, I tried to channel his enthusiasm into a learning curve. I put a lot of focus on buoyancy, horizontal position and frog kick. Open Water took longer than usual, but he finished it in a dry suit with more stamina than when he started.
A few months later he did his cavern course with me. Although we only went about 30m into a cave, he was thrilled about the experience.
Each little step we took in his progression, also illustrated the requirements he had to master before the next step. And the experiences motivate him to take each step without taking shortcuts.

I think finding an instructor who can teach you the required skills will progress you faster than doing loads of rec dives. Correcting bad habits is tougher than learning the better ways right from the start. But still, even getting experience this way, will take time. Lots of dive time.

 

[jtsfour]

You have 60 dives under your belt. The big question I would ask regarding those dives that you've conducted is what variability was there in the environments -- if you did 60 dives but they were all in Vortex your experience is not going to be as well rounded as a guy that has only completed 30 dives but they include the ocean, quarries and springs.

You've already got nitrox under your belt, that's highly applicable. With the exception of the deep dive, there's not much that is taught in a standard AOW course that is applicable to cave diving. However, what should be applicable is exposure to different environments because that will simply help make you a more rounded diver and more comfortable when dealing with new challenges. Sadly, not all AOW courses are taught with the idea of exposing divers to different environments and many are really just a waste of time, so signing up for an AOW course may be pointless depending on who teaches it.

You've stated your goal is to become a cave diver and you've put some time into diving. A cavern course may be a reasonable step, it is a recreational course and not a cave diving course, but it will introduce you to cave diving concepts and the overhead environment, plus give you practical skills that are applicable to cave diving when you're ready.

Compared to average OW divers I would say my experience is extremely varied

The biggest chunk of diving is in springs
But I have dove in

Standard shallow ocean
SoCal with mild currents
Mutiple quarries
Silty lakes
Swift shallow river

 

[halocline]

If you have the means, I would suggest going to Mexico and doing some guided cavern dives with a quality cave instructor. Then if that goes well, try the cavern class. One really good shop is Under the Jungle, but there are others as well. The advantage of Mexico is that the dives are usually shallower and the conditions are easier than in Fl. So it's a good place to start. You can also hop on the ferry and do some diving on the reefs in Cozumel, which is great fun and would give you some more experience, which you could really use.

Another good option would be to take an introductory course from one of the technical agencies. The GUE fundamentals class is really popular one. If you're going for training, I would forget about more PADI classes and just go straight to the tech agencies. In general (there are always exceptions!) the instructors for these agencies will be more what you're looking for if your goal is cave diving.

There's nothing at all wrong with jumping into training, but I'm sure you understand that whatever you are taught in a class needs to be practiced repetitively to become a skill you can count on in difficult conditions.