So had a busy weekend finished my OW check off then completed my Enriched Air course. I think I'm hooked already! Going back next month for Advanced OW the Palm Beach. I think the hardest part of all this is finding people to dive with. How do you guys find dive buddies?
I did my AOW right after my OW and that was a major mistake. I am athletic and confident and been snorkeling my entire life however there is a bit of a comfort level and muscle memory gained in the first 25 dives.
You do not have any of that if you jump straight into your AOW where they take you to 100 feet deep on the deep dive, do narcosis tests, dosearch and recovery where you have to search the ocean bottom for hidden objects, etc.
There are ALL kinds of AOW dives they can do with you and the reason I would say WAIT till after about 25 dives to do your AOW is that on your 5th thru 10th dives or longer for many people you are still familiarizing yourself with the most basic concepts like perfecting equalizing ears which gets much easier after a couple dozen dives, you are perfecting your boyancy, you are possibly going from rental gear to owned gear OR different rental gear than you used initially....etc etc
You dont want to be the one person in AOW that cant get down due to not equalizing or the person bouncing off the ocean floor alot while searching for items ....
Some people say take the AOW right after OW and if its a dive operation they make more money having you take more courses. If its just friends they may want you to be able to do more advanced dives quicker to be able to buddy up with them. People may say AOW is just a second part of OW and you need more training.
None of that in my experience matters. You will more fully enjoy the experience of AOW and truthfully you will remember much more of AOW if you dont have to worry about equalization, boyancy, equipment unfamiliarity, and MOST IMPORTANT ...Situational Awareness. after your 4 OW dives you are still in the small envelope of just paying attention to yourself staying alive under water. it takes time to expand your situational awareness to seeing your partner and noticing issues with their diving or their equipment....and then it expands further to encompass more things like using less air .... after about 50 dives I only use about 1/3 the air I used as a new diver.
Unless you have a big scuba trip upcoming where there may be deep dives our difficult situations my recommendation is to wait till after about 25 dives to do your AOW.
I did not wait and I regret it. In fact I literally almost died because I was new. I did my deep dive in monterey in dark cold water and had a reg i borrowed that was dialed all the way in. It gave minimal air. Ok for shallow water but at 90 feet under heavy exertion swimming hard to catch up to others I had a CO2 hit and blacked out. Luckily i was only unconscious for a few seconds and i woke up sucking water in. My partner was brand new too and right in front of me staring at me. He had no idea what was going on and was looking at me with my regulator hanging down beside my body and not knowing what to do. In his defense he was new OW too and was a bit narced at between 90 and 100 ft in low viz pea soup.
If i had waited till about dive 25 to do my AOW i would have known about the dial on the mouthpiece and would have twisted it all the way out for max airflow in deep water.
there are a million things that can go wrong on deep dives and you have to do that on AOW. I recommend again not doing this until you are completely familiar with all facets of diving. What you dont know in scuba can kill you. And your instructor in AOW will assume you know what you are doing as it is an ADVANCED course not for beginners.