How would you prepare a new OW diver for 80' and drift dives?

[Matt S.]

(Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I wasn't able to find a good existing thread. I think the search terms are too generic.)

My wife and I are new PADI OW divers, with only 9 dives logged. We are diving about once a week right now, and in May we are going on vacation in Mexico. There the dive operator does some dives in the 80-100 fsw range. I assume we won't be ready to go to 100 by then, but 80 seems like it may a reasonable compromise. As another complication, the dives are all or mostly drift dives, which we have never done before.

("Why do you even want to go that deep?" you ask. Well, I assume there's some stuff to see or the dive op wouldn't take a boat out there. I am not interested in going deep just for its own sake. All in all I would rather stay shallow to maximize BT, but I also don't want to miss any great sights.)

We are diving with Tank-Ha which has a good rep here at SB, but I am assuming that a divemaster won't be there holding my hand the whole time.

We can probably get some drift dives in at home with the LDS before we go, but aside from nailing gas management and "practicing not screwing up" I am not sure what else I should do to prepare for going deeper.

Is PADI's AOW class going to really be helpful here? As I recall they only have one or two deep dives in the curriculum. They also have a drift dive session, but I'm not sure that will be more valuable than a club drift dive with the LDS.

I'm open to nitrox training, but we are such air hogs that approaching NDL is not going to be a problem so I don't know that it will be a benefit at 80 fsw. And FWIW I have no plans to go anywhere near overheads or mandatory deco at any time in the hobby.

So, how would you advise that we prepare ourselves?

 

[jeckyll]

...

So, how would you advise that we prepare ourselves?

I want to start with "Is you Last Will & Testament up to date?"

You say you are air hogs. You have no experience diving deep (in case it's not obvious, the combination of air-hog, deep and no experience is not a good combo).

I think you need to ask yourself "Are there dives with no current in the 40 - 50 fsw range". Get some experience. Have some fun. Enjoy being underwater and having your air last more than 10 minutes. Work out your skill. Get out and learn to _dive_. (I know you have a OW card, but that's not really diving).

Have fun in a way that you can feel comfortable.

 

[TSandM]

Matt, if you haven't done so, PM NWGratefulDiver for his gas management workbook. Figuring out how much gas you need to do dives at your proposed depths is a very useful skill. If you are drift diving at 80 feet, how long can you anticiipate being able to stay down there? If you get distracted by the manta ray and glance at your bottom timer and it says 30 minutes dive time, what does that mean in terms of gas? How much gas will it take to get you and your wife to the surface sharing air, if one of you runs out at 80 fsw? These are very good things to know, and Bob's workbook tells you how to figure them out.

Bandito charters does some drift dives locally. I recommend going out with them or somebody similar and doing a drift dive or two before your trip, simply because the experience of being taken along by the water movement is a strange one at first. I, at least, found it unnerving.

I hope you and your wife are routinely practicing emergency procedures like air-sharing. The biggest issue with deeper dives is that the surface, which is the best option for most everything at 20 feet, is not always the best decision when you're at 80 feet. A CESA is not nearly as good as an organized air-sharing ascent, for example. If your tank comes out of the cambands at 80 feet, will you be able to fix that calmly? (BTW, that happened to me, except it was at 100 fsw.)

If you want any help with any of this, including practicing emergency procedures, PM me and I'm more than happy to do what I can.

 

[FoSheZZie23]

Well Matt, I know some people on here are going to tell you, you need AOW or deep diver cert or drift diver cert. But my personal opinion is more advanced certs are just little plastic cards. I only have an open water cert one of these days im going to get nitrox just for fun but I do deep dives and drift dives wreck dives, night dives, and if there was a cave around here i would cave dive also.

My first drift dive was actually the back wall of Molokini in Maui. It was a drift dive that we had a max depth of 95ft i think. If you are comfortable diving to 100ft, i personally dont see the "drift" part being any issue. Its not like the drift will take you away faster than you can swim (if it does you shouldnt be in the water).

Now after 9 dives i know i wasnt confortable enough yet to go to 100ft. Probably around the #20 is when i did my first dive to 100ft. I also did this with a much more experianced diver and we both had pony bottles.

If you want to prepare yourself and your wife, you should dive as much as you can first off, and secondly slowly progress deeper and deeper. Its a different kind of diving at 100ft than it is at "the open water limits" 60ft. You need to be more consious of everything that is going on around you, which you should be during any dive, but there is less margin for air at 100 vs 60.

I would recommend you go diving with someone who is experianced with deep dives and drift dives and they will beable to tell you anything you need to know if they are willing.

If not it might be a good idea to take the AOW class, they do teach you alot. The only reason i didnt take it is because i had a dive buddy that taught me more than that class ever could.

Safe Diving!!!!

 

[lamont]

To go to 100 fsw safely you need to know:

- gas planning
- effects of narcosis on you
- OOA drills at depth
- responses to emergencies
- being able to get off the bottom immediately after an emergency

The last item there is actually under appreciated and one of the hardest ones because it means being able to make effective decisions underwater. I didn't have a clue about it until I had about 125 dives under my belt and had an instructor show me how bad I was at it...

Are you comfortable enough to deal with your wife kicking your mask off at 80 fsw and losing it down a wall and having to make an ascent blind?

At 9 dives you just shouldn't be in so much of a hurry to get into the 80-100 fsw range...

 

[fmw625]

Matt,

I'm not as experiaced as Jeckyll, heck not even close, I only have OW card. I have dove drift dives in Cozumel that were to the 85 foot level with no problems. My first Cozumel drift dive is dive #8 in my log book. I only go thru swim thrus that i can see out of or the other side. My suggestion would be to dive as much as possible between now and then. Work on boyuancy control, trim, and sac rate. Get a drift dive that is shallower if you can. You might also want to find out if you get narced at that depth, so maybe a deep dive with a DM or instructor from your LDS would be good. There are ways to demonstrate what effects it has on you. It would be a good idea to let the DM know your experiance level before the dive. Drift diving is great fun. Just hang in the water column and let the current do all the work. I know of many OW divers who have made drift dives in Cozumel as their first dives out of certification and loved every minute. Relax have fun. Remember to listen to the little voice and thumb any dive no matter what that you are uncomfortable with. Never do trust me dives, listen to pre dive briefing and ask questions. On my first dive I told the DM that i had never went thru a swim thru he briefed us about. H said no problem, you and your buddy can swim over reef and join on the group on the other side. My buddy and I did make the swim thru and it was great. Just to let you know, I know an instructor who won't do swim thrus or any thing else with any kind of overhead obstruction.

 

[fppf]

Only having 9 dives under your belt I would not even think about it.
If your doing a drift you will most likely need to make a free descent and ascent. You may have a float line as a guide, but thats all it is. Then you will need to hang a safety stop without an anchore line. Add that to the fact you will use 4 times more gas at 100 feet than on the surface. Your BC will have a lot more gas in it, which you need to add as you desend and vent as you ascend. To top it off you will be Narced.

 

[Goose75]

If you have plans of going on to take the Rescue class (which I think is the best class offered) or DM you'll need AOW anyway, so that is a good choice. Plus it will expose you to a deep dive under a supervised role. Find a good instructor and ask them to tailor the class to help you for your trip. The other option is the deep cert. Personally I never took deep but it can be a great class with the right instructor.

Both certs will be usefull in the future if you travel to some of the locations that require a cert to go on the boat to deeper sites. I've not run into this in the carribean but I've seen it in Africa and Israel - I'm told the same happens in Florida.

That said, I'll mention that 100ft is not any more interesting than 40. In fact shallower is much better for reef dives since your bottom time is high, your nitrogen uptake is much slower and the colours are better. However, every new diver I know gets into blue water and ends up deeper than intended so I think a supervised exposure to going deeper is not a bad idea. AOW or deep will do that for you.

Happy diving.

 

[Matt S.]

I should have made it more clear that I'm not seeing 80-100 as a reasonable goal for 2 months from now, but I am hoping that 60-80 is. And what I'm hearing is "eh, maybe, probably not." And if we aren't ready, which sounds likely, we will just stay at 60. The DM isn't going to drag me down.

Lynne, we have done Bob's seminar, I think we did it immediately after OW class and before going out on our first "real" dive. I need to study the material again though. We have not been practicing skills... I know we should, it's just so easy to say, "ooh look at that fish, we'll do a mask drill next time for sure!"

 

[mxracer19]

No one is going to force you to stay above 80 feet. I'll admit that on my sixth dive we headed straight for 85 feet in the quarry. It was kindof dark and cold, I was using a new BC, and I had rental regs. I was within my comfort level, but not gonna lie, 85 feet isn't a good place to work out the bugs. Why bother? I should've really stayed a bit shallower because it would have kept me a bit safer, even though in my case the one thing I REALLY wanted to see was at 80ffw (and I am now 2 years wiser). My point is that by all means, take advice from this board (however sparingly), stay within your comfort zone, practice before you head out and your chances for success will most likely favor the living realm. You're the only one who will really know if you're ready to go deeper.

Now you have to worry about your wife

Take it easy
-Matt