I'm going to do my Advanced Open Water

[Adobo]

Wow, that's great, at <15 dives you must be a natural.

Personally, I recently found out my buoyancy was terrible, measured by my ability to hover and adjust depth in the water column while motionless. Unfortunately the PADI PPB class I took taught "moving buoyancy" which is far easier and less useful than static or hovering buoyancy.

Moving bouyancy? LOL. Does that mean that you have to swim around when you do your safety stop at 15 ft.?

Glad to see you're around, John. I thought maybe something happenned to you.

 

[vondo]

Hi People, this is my first post.....so be gentle.

Anyway, looking at doing the Advanced Open Water Padi course (I qualified in Open Water last year) and was wondering what advice anyone might give on which Adventure dives I should do.

I know Deep and Navigation are compulsory. I was going to do Wreck and probably Peak Performance but wasn't 100 % sure.

Also for my last one i was going to do Multi-Level, but some one said that was almost a pointless dive. They recommended Night and said how thrilling that was.

So if anyone could give me some advice (or experiences of these dives) I would much appreciate it...

Thanks in advance

I have to make the same in a few months. It would help me if those who have done this could quickly describe what's learned in class and what's learned in the water. In PADI AOW, will I get the book for everything so that if it is something you can learn from the book, I can learn on my own?

So far I've seen these things mentioned as good candidates

Search and Rescue
Peak Perf. Bouyancy
Wreck
Night
Drift
Dry-suit

I had been thinking of doing PPB, Wreck, and Night. I've done both Wreck and Night dives, but figured maybe I would learn new skills or something. But I saw at least one remark here that those are just regular dives.

Dry-suit is not my cup of tea, I like warm waters (at least at the moment) and I doubt they will teach that in the tropics anyhow.

Thanks

 

[*Floater*]

Do the night dive for sure.

Ask the instructor about the what s/he recommends for the other 2 electives. If s/he simply teaches the minumum requirements in the book, then a particular dive may not be particularly informative. Also, things will depend on what type of sites and equipment are available at your location.

Ask what each option would encompass with your particular dive shop and base your decision on that. Also, ask that they take you to interesting sites for the dives so you'll have a fun time to boot.

 

[forestfish]

I am going out on a liveaboard, and don't feel comfortable diving GBR as my first REAL dive alone. So Hubby and I decided to do the AOW as a way to get some additional training, and have a guide.

Dives will be: Nav, Night, Deep, Photo, and Naturalist.

Any comments?

 

[Randy43068]

Don't waste you rmoney on the Advanced. Take a GUE Fundamentals class. You'll learn a thousand times more about diving!

Hi People, this is my first post.....so be gentle.

Anyway, looking at doing the Advanced Open Water Padi course (I qualified in Open Water last year) and was wondering what advice anyone might give on which Adventure dives I should do.

I know Deep and Navigation are compulsory. I was going to do Wreck and probably Peak Performance but wasn't 100 % sure.

Also for my last one i was going to do Multi-Level, but some one said that was almost a pointless dive. They recommended Night and said how thrilling that was.

So if anyone could give me some advice (or experiences of these dives) I would much appreciate it...

Thanks in advance

 

[cleung]

A night dive is always fun and a good dive experience. I did my first night dive during my Advance course since I thought that I should have an instructor showing me the rope for my first night dive. It was great and now I try to do one night dive on every vacation diving trip I go to.

 

[*Floater*]

I am going out on a liveaboard, and don't feel comfortable diving GBR as my first REAL dive alone. So Hubby and I decided to do the AOW as a way to get some additional training, and have a guide.

Dives will be: Nav, Night, Deep, Photo, and Naturalist.

Any comments?

If you want to have some fun dives with the instructor, then those are probably good choices. If you want to learn skills that will improve your diving ability, then photo and naturalist probably won't help.

I'd ask the instructor about his recommendations. For example, if s/he's not a photographer, then s/he will just teach that specialty straight from the book and you'll learn only as much as you would have learned from just reading the chapter on it and playing around with your camera.

 

[asaara]

Wow, that's great, at <15 dives you must be a natural.

Personally, I recently found out my buoyancy was terrible, measured by my ability to hover and adjust depth in the water column while motionless. At the same Essentials class with Adobo, actually.

Unfortunately the PADI PPB class had previously I taken taught "moving buoyancy" which is far easier and less useful than static or hovering buoyancy.

As I've probably mentioned before, I've seen OW classes where people picked up good buoyancy control almost immediately - statistically, it's more likely that it was instructor skill and appropriate weighting than getting a group of 4-6 people at random who all happened to just know how to control their buoyancy pretty much automatically...

But of course, you're not going to get them crash landing in a solid, locked-down-ain't-going-nowhere-til-you-inflate-that-BCD PADI-kneel for practicing skills at 20', even if they've never done a safety stop while holding onto anything, simply because they've never had to...

 

[asaara]

Hi People, this is my first post.....so be gentle.

Anyway, looking at doing the Advanced Open Water Padi course (I qualified in Open Water last year) and was wondering what advice anyone might give on which Adventure dives I should do.

I know Deep and Navigation are compulsory. I was going to do Wreck and probably Peak Performance but wasn't 100 % sure.

Also for my last one i was going to do Multi-Level, but some one said that was almost a pointless dive. They recommended Night and said how thrilling that was.

So if anyone could give me some advice (or experiences of these dives) I would much appreciate it...

I didn't do my AOW through PADI, and so didn't get to choose my combo of dives, but we did deep, wreck (the wreck dive was deep as well, and the deep dive involved a wreck, but we didn't get to penetrate that - if you don't have shallow wrecks, that's probably what you'll get, assuming they don't try and cheat you out of a dive by combining the two), navigation, night, what must have been some sort of naturalist dive where I brought along a camera, and a general skills dive was the last one we did, so they wouldn't let you out if you didn't have your buoyancy/CESA/swimming mask removal/etc. under control, so six dives instead of five.

 

[Adobo]

As I've probably mentioned before, I've seen OW classes where people picked up good buoyancy control almost immediately - statistically, it's more likely that it was instructor skill and appropriate weighting than getting a group of 4-6 people at random who all happened to just know how to control their buoyancy pretty much automatically...

But of course, you're not going to get them crash landing in a solid, locked-down-ain't-going-nowhere-til-you-inflate-that-BCD PADI-kneel for practicing skills at 20', even if they've never done a safety stop while holding onto anything, simply because they've never had to...

It would be easy for me to say that I got bouyancy figured out on my first time out in the ocean. After all, I was able to maintain my depth as we swam around the reef in Kona. I had a pretty good ability to ascend and descend to follow the underwater terrain (if terrain is appropriate description for underwater features). I also had good ability to start from the bottom and inflate (orally and using back gas inflation) to a level where I would begin to ascend of the bottom. Yeah, I got all that...

The bouyancy control that StSomewhere is referring to is something entirely different. What he is referring to is to establishing and maintaining neutral while remaining motionless in a trimmed out position. And holding this position for a lenghty period of time while surge is moving you back and forth in the water column. A video of what this position looks like is available here (http://www.divetekadventures.com/Videos/VideoGUESdrill.htm). Notice that these guys are so proficient that they perform an OOA drill without ascending or descending.

If there are instructors out there who are able to consistently get new divers to something close to this level of proficiency after 6 pool sessions and 4 open water dives, it would be good to point them out so that we can refer them to those seeking good open water instruction. Heck, I probably would even redo open water for that.