I am in the process of setting up a lesson plan for my advanced course now. I have already settled on 10 dives as the required number. 2 deep, 2 uw nav, 2 search and recovery, 2 night/low vis, and 2 buoyancy where we will work on trim, weighting, and populsion. I will not offer stuff like fish ID, photography, boat etc as seperate dives, If we do some of the dives from a boat I'm not going to charge extra to tell someone how to do something they should have and do cover in my ow class. These core courses are the ones I can cert in now. Once I get the outlines done and paperwork sent in I'll offer drysuit and wreck. But these will not be done inside the AOW. Now some of the AOW dives may be done on a wreck site but there will be no penetration and the skills may be done on the wreck site as opposed to another site. I plan to also include a minimum of 8 hours of classroom. This will be spent going over gas planning, navigational techniques, further discussion of deco procedures beyond what is covered in OW ( we teach deco procedures for emergencies in YMCA), and more indepth equipment discussion. In the buoyancy class we will also do SMB deployment. While there will be 2 specific dives for uw nav we will be practicing nav skills on all dives. I'm also looking at the feasibility of requiring a couple pre class dives to assess skills, determine SAC rate and just judge the students comfort level. I have not set a price yet but it will not be one of those 150 dollar one weekend 5 dive courses. There are guidelines for AOW in the YMCA manual but we are allowed to expand on them and require more. If I run into the situation where someone with years of experience comes to me and wants and advanced card just to dive some particular sites then I may go by the minimum guidelines AFTER determining that this would not compromise their safety. Face it there are people who've beeen diving for years and un all kinds of conditions but just never bothered getting an advanced card. If someone like Dr Bill who has an LA county cert and verifiable experience came to me to get an advanced card because on operator requires it I'm not going to make him do the whole thing I've outlined even though I feel it's a good course. But if someone wants to do a quickie so they can go to Fla and do the Grove I'm not going to feel comfortable issuing a card if I feel doing so would put them at risk. I'd rather let them go somewhere else and have it be on someone else's head. I'll try my best to get them to take my course but I can't force someone who is determined to rush through this to take the class from me. I'm hoping this will be a worthwhile endeavor. I became a Y instructor because I want to do what is in the best interest of the student and keep them as safe as possible. I welcome feedback on this. I'd especially like Walter's, NW Grateful's, and Thal's input as well as that of other I'm gonna rush em through instructors.
