Is advanced open water worth it?

[RonFrank]

I could *swear* the LDS told me that one could do Rescue without AOW if one had logged 20 dives...

Ohh well, guess I'm wrong based on PADI's course description. I HATE that when it happens

I'm doing AOW in any event, and will plan on rescue next winter when I'm bored.. and have not been able to dive for a while.

Ron

RonFrank: According to PADI, if you don't have your AOW you can work on it as you begin Rescue: "You can enroll in the Rescue Diver Course as a certified Open Water Diver and participate in the Rescue Diver knowledge development and rescue training sessions, in confined water only, while working on your Advanced Open Water Diver certification".

So yes, you need AOW to finish Rescue.

 

[FatCat]

AOW is an intro course, nothing more. At least if you take the course with the agencies that propose AOW as a separate course.

If you take the PADI style course, you'll get an intro on some specialty areas and at least you'll learn the basics of compass navigation. If you're wise, you'll choose your elective dives from a practical point of view and choose them with your local dive conditions in mind.

There are some AOWD qualifications on the market that make my skin crawl. There are agencies that will issue an AOW cert even if the diver in question has never seen a compass up close or has never dived deeper than the OW maximum. A good instructor will try to push for deep and navigation, but still.

AOW is one of my pet peeves. Why electives? It makes no sense. AOW could be the perfect course to teach deep(er) diving, navigation skills and to fine-tune buoyancy and finning. Deploying an SMB should become a mandatory skill in AOW.

Anyhow, since the format is designed to introduce new skills it makes perfect sense to take the course not too long after OW certification. You can teach yourself, but taking the course makes the learning curve less steep.

If you've already mastered all those skills on your own, then it doesn't make any real sense to take the course other than to get the card and move on to the next level. If you don't want to do the AOW and still take a rescue course, you can take an SSI Stress & Rescue course. With SSI it's a separate course in which you can enroll straight out of OWD (not recommended though).

And let's be straight about something: each and every diver should get to a rescue level at some point. For some this can take a few months, for others it can take a few years before they're ready, but how can you become a reliable buddy if you've never trained rescue skills?

As for the log book: it proves absolutely nothing. The dive ops people you show it to weren't there when you logged the dives, so they have to take the veracity of a log on faith (this is not, I repeat: NOT a slight to anyone). On the other hand, the same goes for a c-card, but a c-card is better for CYA.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think the problem with AOW is the name. Completing it does not make one an advanced diver, and it does not take an advanced diver to complete it. Recognizing that, PADI has tried to market it as "Adventures in Diving," but without much success that I can see. The course might better be called "Open Water Level II" or something like that.

I agree with those who say it should be taken early in your diving career. I took it very soon after OW. I was lucky enough to be in a class of one, and the instructor did an excellent job in my estimation. And so a new open water diver got to spend a bunch of time quality time with an instructor. My skill level leaped forward far faster than it would have if I had just continued to dive.

One reason for that is that, as a new diver, I had a tendency to watch the other divers on the boat and try to imitate what I saw from them. With no experience, I could not tell who the right people were for imitating. One thing that an early AOW gave me was a better sense of who the boneheads were. By just learning from experience, I could have picked up a bunch of bad habits by following bad leads.

 

[fldiverfreak]

thanks for the input!

 

[voop]

In PADI, I consider the "advanced" course to *be* the Rescue Diver course. The intermediate step between OW and RD is called "adventures in diving" -- and is, imnsho, an excellent way for new divers to get experience in different kinds of diving under the close watch of a (hopefully) qualified instructor.

What's in a name, really? Not a whole lot. I always instill in my students the importance of getting to the Rescue Diver course, since there's where the skills really needed to dive "on their own" are (should be) taught.

 

[pipedope]

Way back in the OLD days........

Well, at least when I got my PADI AOW in 1981 it was like getting all of the current PADI specialities except nitrox and drysuit. They didn't do drysuit and nitrox back then.

My course was 12 weeks of classroom and pool work each thursday and diving each saturday morning. We had a great instructor who was really into training divers.

It was WAY more than worth it, it was a bargain.

As the course is today it is up to the student and instructor to make it 'worth it'.

 

[jbisjim]

If I remember right before NAUI had advanced open water it was called Open Water II. Same type of class just different Name.

SDI / TDI requires 4 specialties and i think 25 dives to obtain an advanced card. i.e. Nitrox, Night& low vis, Dry suit ect. Each of those specialties has dive requirments. Personally I think that is the better way to go about it. At least by the time they hit their advanced card they have more that 8-10 dives under their belt.

 

[FatCat]

SDI / TDI requires 4 specialties and i think 25 dives to obtain an advanced card. i.e. Nitrox, Night& low vis, Dry suit ect. Each of those specialties has dive requirments. Personally I think that is the better way to go about it. At least by the time they hit their advanced card they have more that 8-10 dives under their belt.

SSI has a comparable system: 4 specialties and 24 dives. While there is nothing wrong with the filosophy behind it, it still has very serious flaws. I don't know how it is with SDI/TDI, but with SSI it's possible to get your advanced card without doing deep and navigation dives. It's all a matter of choosing the right (or rather wrong) specialties.

While an instructor can try to steer the student in the right direction, it's still up to the student to choose what specialties to take.

So I'm still advocating a fixed curriculum for AOW (or OWD 'the sequel', OWD II or whatever you want to call it). We'd be giving better training by abandoning deep and navigation as specialties and by incorporating the training as a whole in an advanced class. Add some specific skills like deploying SMB's to that and Robert's your father's brother (or your mother's)...

 

[Kennedydive]

I took a nitrox course but due to the dive shop I took it from closing down I was unable to get my C-Card. I've been doing dives over 200 feet using trimix for the last two years. This last summer the boat captain informed several of us that because we don't have that piece of plastic that if something goes wrong experience wont protect him from liability suits. Waivers aren't worth the paper they are signed on so I now can not dive the wrecks I so enjoy diving. I have to go back and get three Nitrox courses and two Helium courses at around a cost of $3000cnd. I may learn something from these courses but am not going to hold my breath. (#1 rule in diving).
Take the course before and enjoy it. It is a fun course and probably a toss up between it and Rescue for the most enjoyable.
We pay $200cnd for an AOW.

 

[jbisjim]

While an instructor can try to steer the student in the right direction, it's still up to the student to choose what specialties to take.

Agreed..

We steer our students into Deep, Night/Low Vis, Nitrox, and Drysuit because that is what is needed to dive locally year around and after that they can qualify for an advanced cert.