My wife recently certified ScubaDiver (12m, with a DM), has only 4 dives and some remaining fears. I would like to take her diving in January in the Miami/Ft Lauderdale area.
What are the best shallow diving sites in the area?
Most importantly, which are the dive centers serving those sites that are best at guiding beginners in need of extra attention?
Slightly sidelining the topic, not a direct answer to your question:
Similar situation with my water timid wife:
After initially signing up with someone else, specifically selected for her, who however had to bail last minute for health reasons, she ended up (a few weeks ago) in Key Largo with Rainbow Reef, going for her OW cert.
In principle that was not bad, the instructor was patient, although some of the "fearful misunderstandings" were a bit misdiagnosed at first, but all that worked out. BUT: RR does all their diving from a boat . The instructor initially flat out refused to have my wife do her initial OW dives in a local cove. Not for ill will, but because of bad visibility there. The water is calm, no dangling on a line from a boat in waves, just walk in and swim, but reduced vis and not much to see.
So, for my wife, who is quite comfortable UW, and a whole lot less so in waves above water, it was a huge step from the pool to a boat in waves.
She did it, but it also delayed her progress a bit because she could not address her initial OW skills w/o getting all scared up by dangling on that line at first.
But she also lost her fin (for good), dangling on that line at the beginning of open water dive 3.
Since it was a two tank boat dive and since no fitting spare fin was available, it was the end of her dive day...
In the end with the instructor running out of time my wife did do one cove dive after all to complete one missing skill and then got a scuba diver cert. and needs to still do OW dives 3 &4 for her OW rating.
After some search, we decided to do that next weekend in a local quarry with a local outfit. Our reasons were:
1.) Remedials, if needed are easy locally, hard on a trip when time is up...
2.) After the cove dive my wife was quite sure that bad vis did not bother her even remotetly as much as dealing with waves and lines on the surface. So, the vis in the quarty might be just fine now...
3) Although my wife now figured it out and is confident she will try again on vacation, why travel somewhere with "big bad boats" and with "big bad waves" and instructors that let students dangle on lines while caring for other students. Why be at the mercy of the weather for the few days there?
4.) If we wait for the next chance for a trip (next year), she might as well start over and we decided to fortify the new learned skills and water comfort before they get forgotten and old fears might come back into the foreground
Long story short:
Pending on where your wive's concerns are rooted, consider whether boat or shore diving is better... just to get the card more, carefully selected diving thereafter can address those fears as slow as necessary.
Taking real cold water out of the equation (FL), what bothers her the most? Wave action, or visibility, or the endlessness of an ocean, or?
If the former or the lattet, I am wondering if an OW class could be completed in one of those clear springs in FL. Don't know if they would be considered big enough.
Anyway I do wish the two of you all the best & success and lots of happy diving afterwards!
