I didn't mention Nav or Deep in my post because I am a PADI Instructor and those two are required. So I took that as a given. The way Jim Lapenta teaches his AOW course is not the way you have to teach it according to PADI. I'm definitely not saying he is wrong. I would have loved to have had that kind of AOW experience when I did mine. Point I'm trying to make is that when you get really experienced instructors, like Jim, you typically get more than your money's worth. Reading the way Jim teaches his AOW made me take a look at the way I teach it and has inspired me to offer my students more out of their AOW. Kudos Jim!!
As to my entry criteria. This is why I do a preclass assesment that may incldue pool and a few dives at my expense. What you think may not be good enough skills may take no more than 2-3 hours of proper weighting instruction, practice with skills and not much more. The problem is that a number of OW instructors do their students a great disservice by making them think that trim, buoyancy control, and proper weigthing are not as important as they should be or by giving them some FALSE indication that they are beyond their ability. I have yet to meet a student where with a little patience and time that this is true. I can have most doing basic mask remove and replace and reg recovery while swimming and horizontal and even in a basic horizontal hover within an half hour of the first session on scuba. Some take a bit longer but I expect that to happen and just be a little more patient with those students. By the end of session two on scuba they are there.
Thanks Auvie. As you are probably aware I am not a PADI instructor and in fact have only been an instructor since May of 08. What I did in developing my AOW was draw very heavily on my experience as a diver first beginning with my very first ocean dive, (which was to 118 ft in the well deck of the Spiegel Grove), my experience as a DM for a number of different instructors from various agencies, and a great deal on the tech training I received and those dives I did.
My first priority in any course I teach and especially in the ones I write is simply "What will most benefit the student?" When we hand them a card that says advanced on it or specialty we owe it to them to, rightly or wrongly, assume that they are at some time going to use this for an advanced dive or a dive that truly requires the skills noted and depend on their training to do so successfully. I approached my course with this in mind. I asked myself why did I go for AOW in the first place? The honest answer was to go deep. Beyond 60 ft. Reading and talking to other divers seemed to indicate that this was a common thing. In essence my entire course was built around the idea that many divers were going to use this cert to do deep dives and put themselves at the higher risk.
So now what do they need and what is the natural progression. This was the core idea and guiding premise. Going deep is not where divers should be doing vertical ascents and descents-too little control. The advanced skills dive was born. Working on basic skills while horizontal, staying in trim, proper weighting, and keeping a regular breathing pattern while performing the skills. Propulsion- if the bottom is silty or the wreck covered with growth why would you need to contact it? But you still want to stay close to it. Frog kicks, helicopter turns and back kick. Current can blow you off the wreck- bag shoot makes it much easier to do a blue water ascent and for the boat to find you-SAFETY FIRST! Do enough deep and you soon realize that an al80 is a stupid choice and a redundant air supply is a good idea. So better to have an idea as to how to deploy from someone experienced than just buy one and start using it without a clue. Hand up here!
UW Nav is a core skill for divers IMO. Even a basic intro needs more than a reciprocal, square, and triangle. The swim out 25 kicks turn and swim back and if you're within 20 feet it's ok is out and out BULLSHIITE. Hence the 2 hours of classroom just on that to explain how to turn(stop, turn the bezel,helicopter turn, swim) how to hold the compass, what direction is right turn and left turn, and how to judge current. Then the reason to start with small courses (4-5 kicks per leg vs 20) and build up. The importance of teamwork when doing nav as a new diver and good buddy skills.
Night/low vis- more buddy skills- nav at night- using gauges effectively, and effective COMMUNICATION. And this is done on all dives underwater and ON THE SURFACE!
Deep dive- guess where the advanced skills fits in on this? Hint if you don't know stay shallow! Navigation skills-you can't just pop your head up from 100 feet like you can from 10 or 20 to say oh there's the boat! It's dark at 100 in many places. Better to be that way shallow the first time. Communication and buddy skills big time. Hence the air share ascent from 90 to 50. Narcosis? How many times will you really open a lock or do algebra at depth? But you may very well need to run a reel while managing a light and keeping track of your buddy! Then see an OOA at 90? Yeah you'd want to do that in a more or less controlled situation first! And making a multilevel out of it to aid offgassing and turn a 20 minute BS dive into a 45-50 minute that really gives you a chance to practice works very well.
Search and recovery- Lets see, you're now very aware of the need for buoyancy control and how to do that, effective team and communciation skills base, higher stress level- been there done that. Importance of antisilting kicks oh yeah when you have to go back where you've just been- more than once! And now using a lift bag and seeing why pace and control are so important. Stop adjust buoyancy in the bag not just going up but back down as well. Then when the object is located to take a compass heading and note distance to the search origin point.
I really need to say something here about the way I have seen this done. My own class was one person holds the reel and the other swims the pattern asking for more or less line, indicating object found, etc. I don't know when it was but at some point it occurred to me just how foolish and dangerous this practice is! It seperates the buddy team, it narrows the field of vision and increases the time required thus reducing gas supplies. I have the students use a fixed point to secure the end of the line and then swim as a team with the reel. Less chance of an accident happening.
Finally buddy skills and assist. Any class should have some rescue in it. Most of the items I include in this dive are in the SEI OW class. But what I was getting is students for AOW who had NO RESCUE beyond some BS tows. Outside of students I will not dive with someone who has not had even basic rescue skills such as assisting a buddy at the surface with buoyancy, assisting a panicked diver, and unconscious from depth. I'm safer diving alone. That way I know for certain and have no illusions of safety because there is another person near me. And with cattle boats it's a good idea to know how to lead a maskless buddy and share air with them.
This was longer than I intended but I just wanted to give an insight to the process behind my course. It is not about me being a great instructor. It is about IMO being a caring and thoughtful one who truly cares about his students being prepared. Any instructor can teach this course IF they want to. I only want what is best for my students. And the fact that this course is blast to teach is just icing on the cake. And I will not take more than two students at a time on this unless they are really good and totally comfortable and then I MAY do 3 with the 3rd being my buddy and he/she better be damn good. Otherwise no way as I only have 2 hands to grab with!
