So
@ginti are you saying that you feel like it's less time consuming to find an instructor that is consistent with the quality set by GUE than it is to find an instructor with a similar quality from the other organisations?
I am saying that if you go with GUE, it is easy to find the quality you expect, so you do not need to spend a lot of time. If you go with another agency, you may need to spend a lot of time to find an instructor with the quality you expect.
So
@ginti
By the way, I feel we're shifting from "content" to "quality control" a bit.
Very real, better to switch back, the quality control has been debated a lot, and I guess there is not much to add.
So
@ginti
Right now I choose to train with GUE so that makes the search for trainers that dive in a similar fashion easy, other than that I feel an instructor that matches your needs both in knowledge but also as a person is important whatever the organisation. How difficult did you find it to find instructors that suit you outside of GUE?
Outside GUE I have never tried (besides ow, aow, rescue, deep and nitrox). As I said, I change country relatively often, and with GUE I solve many issues: every time that I change country, I post on the teammates facebook group, I find some people, and I start diving; I know the skills and the mentality of my new friends even before meeting them. And if I need to change instructor, it is easy as well. Besides, I like GUE mentality.
I have heard many different stories of my friends about awful experiences outside GUE, never inside (except here on scubaboard and one "second-hand" story of a friend of a friend). So I assume outside GUE it is harder; but again, this is more about quality control, which is a bit off topic.
So
@ginti
If a diver is looking for GUE style of diving and GUE requirements (including compatibility with other divers) they should be looking for GUE training, but if that isn't you what difference does it make to a single diver/team that trainer X teaches different procedures than trainer Y? They still can receive a high level of training you just need to find the right trainer as a diver.
For me, the training content is strongly related to this point. I understand that
- you can be a very good solo diver
- you can be a very good diver even without following some standardized GUE rules (e.g. you may want to use a different style of lights or another type of rebreather for instance)
No doubts about it. But all the other training contents should be the same to make a very good diver. This is why I think training content is important, and my purpose here is to compare it with the one I will get from GUE.
So
@ginti
On training content:
My first plan to get into cave diving was to take the NAUI route. If I recall correctly they allow you to make 1 jump at cave diver level 1. All in all the first level seemed less constricting than GUE and it seem to me as a more finished training.
Frankly speaking, I think it is better to compare the full cave level. The reason is that each agency can distribute differently the contents across the various courses, so maybe an intro to cave with an agency will focus more on some aspects than on others. But it is really important that
- everything is safe during the course
- the final result (namely, the multistage full cave diver) is consistent in terms of skills and communication, even across different agencies (imagine during a dive you meet somebody in troubles who has a different training... you want to be able to help him/her, and to do that you need to communicate at first)
So again, in theory, I totally understand some variances in terms of standardization and mentality across agencies, but the other parts should be the same. Is this the case? I don't know, I am trying to figure it out. Jon said other agencies do not have strict SOP, so it is more about the instructor.
What can you tell me about NAUI? Can you go more into the details of the course so to compare it with GUE cave1 and cave2?
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