First Dive Trip Without Instructor - Need to Rent Gear & Help Planning

[halocline]

Our PADI certified instructor who is a GOOD INSTRUCTOR took the entire open water class into a cave on our FIRST DIVE!

Some caves are more dangerous than others!

Oh sure, with zero dive experience under your belt, you're fully qualified to evaluate dive instructors AND determine the amount of danger that specific caves present.....

 

[_Slacker_]

Do yourself a huge favor: Stay out of the springs until you have more experience and have the appropriate cave training for the dive you intend to make. Obviously the temptation is too great once there.

 

[DanielRJones]

I took padi nitrox course and was tought alot more than what was in the book.
It helps when the instructor is a tdi advanced trimix instructor.
I didnt learn anything more in the tdi advanced nitrox books than i did on my padi nitrox course

 

[halocline]

It was a brief pass through between two open areas in a cenote and I felt perfectly safe the entire time and I’m not throwing my instructor under the bus.

It probably was not a cave as defined by the agencies. You've taken the cavern course, and certainly one of the first things you're supposed to learn is the difference between a cave and a cavern. So maybe you should review a few things. As far as you feeling perfectly safe, well......that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the actual safety of the situation. What if one of your less confident classmates got a little spooked, maybe a leaky mask followed by a mouthful of water, and grabs your regulator....these things happen all the time in OW classes.

I checked, TDI requires 25 logged dives for their cavern class. You don't have that, so I suspect the PADI cavern class that you did take doesn't have that prerequisite. That's one big difference in standards, IMO. I also checked the prereq for Intro to Cave, all it says is TDI cavern or equivalent. I guess that means that the logged dives are also a prereq.

Honestly, I can't imagine any responsible cave instructor taking a student in a cave class who has so few post-certification dives. I took TDI cavern with several hundred OW dives and a PADI DM cert. And it still kicked my ass.

 

[divad]

I took TDI cavern with several hundred OW dives and a PADI DM cert. And it still kicked my ass.

Hey wait....what if that's just sour grapes?

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . .

I’m committed to skills practice. I’ll even do it in a swimming pool if necessary. Where is the closest spot to Atlanta?

Great question. I can tell you what I do. After getting a provisional pass in Fundies down in High Springs, I came back to Atlanta and practiced the Fundies skills in a pool. (I say "I" here, but my wife and I are doing this together.) About 10 hours of bottom time later, I felt good enough to continue working on the skills in open water. From Atlanta, Lake Jocassee is a good place for this. There's a quarry in Atlanta I have never been to, and another in Alabama, but I don't like quarries that much. Anyway, I went back to High Springs after those practice sessions and got the rec pass. The key to progressing in your diving is to intersperse skills practice with just plain diving for fun. If you do nothing but hover above a platform and practice Fundies skills, you'll go mad. After the rec pass, I just dived for fun for a year--the Keys, Caribbean, Cozumel, whatever. I still practiced the skills a bit, but not all the time. Then I acquired the rest of the gear: a used set of doubles, a drysuit, canister light, etc. I took the Drysuit and Doubles primers in High Springs. Then I got serious about practicing skills, spending about every other weekend or so doing at least an hour dive. Lake Jocassee is cold in the winter, even in a drysuit (to this wuss, at least), so the springs are a good option. Blue Grotto is the easy button--perfect for practicing skills--but expensive. Troy spring is good for practicing ascents because it's deep and clear. I like Vortex, too, though as you know, the deep part is small. I think you said you went to Jackson Blue. Just yesterday, I was at Manatee spring practicing skills. It's been about a year and a half since I got serious about my journey toward cave training, and I'm still not quite ready. I have hired an instructor a few times to give me some coaching--what I need to work on and how to get there. That's a very common thing to do, and GUE instructors are happy to spend a day with you. It can be a long road. You sound athletic, about 10 years younger than me, and may get there faster than I am. I think I'm exceptionally untalented as far as diving and have to work harder than some. We're all different. A good read is Andrew and Tina's blog about their GUE journey, beginning with Fundies, acquiring the gear, practicing practicing practicing, the tech upgrade, and on through Cave 1 and 2: www.frogkickers.com. They're more talented and/or more dedicated than me, but otherwise theirs is a very typical story, and they do a good job of documenting it. It should give you a good idea of how the GUE route feels.

 

[bamafan]

# of dives isn't a good indicator of the diver's ability or how successful they will be in tec training. Some progress faster than others and getting an excellent instructor as early as possible can really help.

 

[boulderjohn]

# of dives isn't a good indicator of the diver's ability or how successful they will be in tec training. Some progress faster than others and getting an excellent instructor as early as possible can really help.

I agree. The more you practice, the more deeply the skills you are practicing become ingrained. What skills do you want to have deeply ingrained--your beginning level flailing or more advanced techniques?

I learned to ski in my early 20s. Being poor, I could not afford lessons. I learned by watching others around me and imitating them. Watching others around you on the beginner slopes is not the best way to learn good technique. When I later could afford lessons and tried my hand at citizen racing, I could never break the initial bad habits I had so thoroughly ingrained when I was beginner.

 

[CavernFrog]

North or south?

I am inside the perimeter, northeast quadrant.

 

[tbone1004]

to echo what @boulderjohn on getting "fixed" quick, thankfully GUE has broken out fundies into two sections so you can get the "primer" in 2 days. I recommend getting that one ASAP. I don't care if you finished your OW checkout dives yesterday, next weekend isn't too early. Take part 1 over 2 days and get "fixed". If you want to log 10-20 dives before you take part 2 like @Lorenzoid mentioned, then 100% behind that and recommend it.
Once you take that part 1, you should at least be "fixed" and if you have good mentors and aren't going through the GUE track, then chose whether or not you want to finish the 3-day "part 2" but at least you have a better foundation before you get into anything else.

one of the big problems is there is no real mentorship anymore so people chase courses thinking it will actually make them a better diver