Happy to always dive advanced within recreational limits, forever ? [Poll]

[rhwestfall]

My wife has no interest in going beyond her OW card (doesn't even have EAN). She has been diving for 20+ years that way, and has done enough here in the Great Lakes region to actually be AOW, but could care less....

I have attempted to try and get her to team up with my daughter and do the AOW class together, but am getting no traction.....

Any place we go, they just let her go as my credentials as her buddy make the grade....

 

[boulderjohn]

John, the students having certain skills when they showed up didn't get a discount but did they get more instruction on the other end because they'd made it "easier for you"?

That is a complicated question calling for a complicated response.

What I do varies by student and course. I always complete the requirements, of course, but what happens beyond the requirements depends a lot upon judgment and course requirements. In tech diving, we have a series of courses with a series of requirements. If you teach a skill that is not in your course but is in the next course, you have a potential liability issue should things go south. For example, Tec 45 limits a diver to one deco gas. In Tec 50 they learn to use 2 deco gases. If I have a gifted student use 2 deco gases on a Tec 45 course and things go bad--well, I am sure you can imagine what would happen to me after that.

On the other hand....

I have a student now who is on beginning side of Technical diving in terms of skills and experience. Looking at his total situation, I had him take the recreational deep diver specialty first, but I treated it like a intro to tech course. I had him do the dive sequence in doubles, carrying an AL 40 the whole time. None of that is required by standards, but it is not prohibited by standards, either. I had him do safety stops and extra stops, too, and I had him do them in horizontal trim. None of that is required by standards, but none of that is prohibited by standards, either. We both knew we were exceeding the standards with an eye to the future courses.

In general, in every course, I take a student where he or she is and take him or her wherever I can. We have to meet all standards, for sure. If we exceed them, fine, but I have to be careful about doing something that could potentially create liability.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Great answer as usual, thanks John.

 

[EireDiver606]

Very cool and congratulations on getting a pass (of any type) so early on! I think that is definitely something to be proud of.

But, as @boulderjohn alluded, I hope you won't let yourself get sucked into the "must look perfect" vortex before you proceed further. Nobody is perfect in the water (except maybe @Trace Malinowski ) and you don't have to be, either. That doesn't mean you don't have to be good. You just don't have to be perfect.

To be perfect is to have no room for improvement. People believe they have achieved that just before they die. (to put a hyperbolic spin on things )

Thanks but I did not think I would pass it.
The better you are in the water (how you look I suppose), the better diver you are in regards to lengthening your dives, not stirring up silt, not kicking marine life around, and overall general safety, and the more fun!

Now, I barely passed, in 6m of water in 20m vis, if I want to do serious dives in the future or tecreatioonal as soon as possible, I want to be able to do that in a Drysuit in doubles in a dark environment with a small current in less than 5m vis, because to me it’s safest as that’s the type of diving I will be diving (well maybe more than 5m vis deeper).
In order to do serious dives, why not have a good skill set that you naturally revert to in the water. I know how to dive now, but I’m nowhere naturally like that in the water, I think to think about it, it’s not 100% natural. Like I have to think about doing near perfect frog kicks but it’s hard.
Anyway I just simply don’t have enough experience in my opinion to do more advanced stuff yet anyway, my heart says I should, but my brain says don’t. I think I’d be able but not yet.
Just my opinion.

 

[boulderjohn]

Anyway I just simply don’t have enough experience in my opinion to do more advanced stuff yet anyway, my heart says I should, but my brain says don’t. I think I’d be able but not yet.

This is an excellent attitude. When you get into the really advanced dives, where divers are taking chances that are well beyond what most divers are willing or able to do, one of the most important reasons for accidents is the diver's mistaken notion that he or she has capabilities beyond what he or she actually has. That mistaken belief is driven by an earnest desire deep within their hearts to be the kind of diver they want to be, a desire that masks the fact that they are not there yet.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I had to answer “other” because I hold a couple tech certs but never plan to tech dive again in the foreseeable future. I prefer just to have fun and do purely recreational dives now that I’m getting older and never getting close to any sort of deco obligation. I could have ended up like so many of my original buddies that went the whole tech route then had no where else to advance to and ended up giving up diving for whatever reason. They couldn’t bring themselves to go backwards and just have fun. I had to really think about what was the most joyous thing that I remembered about diving when I first started and I just stuck with that mindset. To me it’s not so much about the title of the dive or the type of dive, it’s more about perception and being perfectly happy with the little things. I can have more fun looking at things in 15’ of water than I can in 150’ of water. Depth means nothing to me, it’s the content of what I see, and what I can gather (I’m a hunter).

 

[aquacat8]

I’m with you Eric, the older I get the more I’m into simple pleasures, and that’s how I want my scuba diving to be: simple and pleasurable!

 

[TMHeimer]

Agree with the last 2 posts. Especially making those rocky entries/exits easier and longer walks shorter. I too am also perfectly happy in 15' if there is a possibility of finding a nice shell in good condition.

 

[chillyinCanada]

I still enjoy a sportier dive if the viz is good and the flora/fauna have turned out. It's going to be very very difficult to go back to Caribbean diving. Might only do it to keep from rusting (more).

 

[jlcnuke]

Is it just me, or there is no choice of "yes, most likely I will at some point"? Not as soon as possible, but at some point I'm sure I will do dives deeper than rec limits, and most likely some penetration dives too.

This is me as well. I'm looking forward to eventually having the skills and training to dive wrecks like the Oriskany for reasonable periods of time (and no, touching the deck and heading back up isn't what I call reasonable) etc. However, I think my core competencies need to be better ingrained before moving to such levels of diving. I'm working on them (through conscious practice, relaxing dives, as well as courses), but I don't feel that I'm competent enough to consider that training yet. Maybe next year... or the year after..