OP
Qnape
Contributor
In my case, that standard was reality for me. I was going through OW training with my 14 year old daughter. I knew that I had to have better skills than any other new diver - my daughter would be my buddy; I could not necessarily depend on her assistance in an emergency due to her age and the size difference, and I had to be ready to provide assistance to her without hesitation.
I understand that many of you feel that we are not yet qualified to rate our instructor - we have only a total of 45 dives under our belts, but I am as pleased as possible with his tutelage, and as I have said elsewhere on this board he has gone WAAY out of his way to stay in contact with us, answer questions and give us advice. As I later learned, he stretched the PADI standards (meaning we did more repetitions of skills, or took skills to a greater length than strictly required, and taught skills considered optional) and we met each of his objectives for us. He accompanied us and another family of his students on a weekend of practice dives a month after we earned our OW cards, just to "show us a few things".
I pushed my daughter and I to excel. During our certification dives, we were sent down first to each platform or station, because our instructor knew we had the skills down cold, and would calmly do what he needed us to do and set an example for the rest of the divers. We "fast-tracked" the course to use his words, only insofar as we mastered the skills required as soon as they were thrown at us leaving time for repetition and some additional skills not required but useful. We were hovering calmly mid-water with two pool sessions left to go. We intentionally took the longer, slower path, I would not have taken a 2 day wonder weekend course if it was free.
That said, I wanted more. I was taking my daughter to dive in Cozumel for a week, and I wanted us to be more than just able to meet the demands of the dives, I wanted us to be confident, and as prepared as we could be. Coming home without my daughter was not an option; I wanted to take every precaution I could think of and get as much training as I could get.
I looked at the "Advanced" course, and knew it for what it was / is - a way to get more experience, more time in the water, and some preparation for the kinds of dives that we might be expected to do in Cozumel regardless of our new diver status. I pushed our instructor to be permitted to take the course despite his feeling that we should wait, and he relented after we did another 6 dives on our own. Here in New Jersey a new OW diver does not have many opportunities to dive; we were not qualified for wreck diving off of the coast due to depth and the need for wreck training.
All this was thought out in advance of that first OW class - I was certified in August last year and was here reading Scubaboard by July. Our Cozumel trip was planned for February specifically to allow PLENTY of time for OW, practice dives, and AOW, then more practice, before Cozumel. That "little voice" was there the whole time, saying "what else can I do to make us even more ready?".
The additional experience, the additional time in the water and introduction to deep and night diving had real value to us when we went to Cozumel this past February. As I mentioned in the thread starter here (split from the Cayman death thread), we hired a private DM for the entire week, although we were told after two days we did not need it do to our good bouyancy and other skills. We learned even more from that DM, and while I sucked air like it was going out of style that week, by the end of the week my consumption had improved dramatically. My daughter is a fish and came back from every dive with half a tank!
We have since spent a wonderful week in Utila, and if I believe our DM and the divers we met there, are about as comfortable and confident in the water as any new divers they have ever met. None of it was accidental. At the same time, I KNOW there is much more to learn. I am here, and I try to be involved in discussions. We continue to dive, with a trip to Belize coming up for August, a dive at the EPCOT tank in November, and another trip planned for Cozumel in February. We plan to take rescue next year. We are NOT advanced divers, but we are confident in our skills, and ready to learn more. Was I wrong to seek the additional training and experience before taking my daughter to dive with an operator in Cozumel who might have taken us to a 95' wall dive despite our OW status unless I specifically objected (this did NOT happen - the dive op I carefully chose was conservative and very safety conscious - and we will use them again next year!)?
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