open water training question

[Meister481]

PADI it was required up until a few years ago, now it's optional.

It's no longer optional. Padi has officially deleted it from the books as of Q4 last year if I'm not mistaken on the date. They still have the skill of exchanging gear while BB'ing for DM, but now they require you to call it exchanging gear while sharing a single second stage regulator.

I had 10 students in my last class, 3 of which did their OW dives with a decent frog kick. It's tough to teach a decent class around here, nobody wants to take the time to learn it properly.

[Daphne]

Yeah I remember doing it to in my NAUI open water in 1992. So much it stuck in my mind that when I started diving doubles I took them on and off in the pool for practice. Yeah that was graceful.

[Sludge]

Padi has officially deleted it from the books as of Q4 last year

Twenty-five years after NASDS did.

Their thinking was, everybody has an alternate regulator - there's no need to teach divers to breathe two people from one reg. In 1985.

[Meister481]

Twenty-five years after NASDS did.

Their thinking was, everybody has an alternate regulator - there's no need to teach divers to breathe two people from one reg. In 1985.

You're preaching to the choir, I'm trying to get crossed over to IANTD right now but the CD just had double bypass done so I'm dead in the water right now.

[RedDucati]

The more difficult your training is the better diver you become. Diving is life and death, not picking wild flowers. I have chosen instructors who will either make me competent for that level or refuse to pass me. In my opinion, the basic OW course does not create safe divers. That is how I started and I am glad I survived. I started training about 1993 when I was 13, or whatever the min age was. It was 7th grade and no one else in my family was a diver, but I had to do it. There was a class of 9 with a dive master and dive master in training that died (shortly after) where I got certified (total 11) because of stupid decisions of the instructor. He thought the compass run would be cool in 90 feet of water which is a night dive in that lake in low vis with single 80's. Someone ran low on air and it snowballed. No one questioned the teacher. They all died and my dive buddy was the one who helped the Sheriff do recovery. He was a dive master and retired Navy SEAL. I was lucky to meet him. In my opinion a lot of people do not have the mental strength for an emergency of any kind and should not be diving. Just try yelling "avalanche" on a ski resort slope sometime and see what happens. PADI and SSI should not certify people who should not dive. On a personal note, when I was in high school, I took the motorcycle safety class. During the test weekend I was sick as dog and couldn't pass. I had to go back the next weekend and repeat the test. To this day I still respect the instructor for failing me and I never tried to change his mind. Let me be the first to say I do not consider myself to be a "good" diver and nothing I say should be taken seriously. Get the right instructor, check references and be careful.

[diveconjeff]

I did not, in any of my rec classes. But, other than the intuitive "confidence building," what are the specific objectives for teaching a doff/don gear exercise?

Am I the only one that has ever had to remove all gear including the wet suit during a dive? I don't remember doing the doff/don drill in the 70's but I do recall seeing all my gear at the bottom, with a weight belt lying on the wetsuit. I then dove in the pool went to my gear and put it all on.

As for real world applications, I recall one time when a certain bodily function simply was not going to wait and I deemed it best not to be in my wetsuit during the event. Which leads into a funny story about getting chased by sea snakes...

[sandy]

This thread brings back memories. My initial certification course was through the YMCA in 1980. Part of our pool work (6 or 8 sessions at 4 or 3 hours each) was a ditch and don. Seems like we held our mask, fins, and weight belt in one hand and our tank/harness in the other and jumped in. We did not wear a wetsuit. I do not think we used a BC either probably because it was a horsecollar. The purpose was just to see how comfortable we were in the water.

We did a lot of buddy breathing for OOA situations since none of the regulators had an octo. We also did a blind diagonal swim from one corner of the pool to the other to show how easy it is to become disoriented in the water.

The last pool session was a harassment dive where the assistant instructors shadowed us in the water while removing our fins, mask, and regulator and turning off our air. Again, this was to make sure we could handle any emergencies in OW.

[sskasser]

Am I the only one that has ever had to remove all gear including the wet suit during a dive? ......

LOL, yeah, I did. I guess I should have warned him I forgot my swimsuit that day.

As for real world applications, I recall one time when a certain bodily function simply was not going to wait and I deemed it best not to be in my wetsuit during the event. Which leads into a funny story about getting chased by sea snakes...

Warhammer!

On a serious note, my OW and AOW and Rescue students do gear removal. They have fun with it and it increases their confidence in the water. And they learn not to let go of that right strap

[hans471]

My first training, early 1980's, was with NASDS and we did gear don and doff under water. I recall hooking my weight belt around my leg as this was in cold water in Ohio. We also learned buddy breathing. But, my instructor was more "old school" and may have put the buddy thing in there just to be sure we got the concept. The rational was, better to know and not need than need and not know. I agree. We all were equipped with back up regs of some sort. Back then ScubaPro had that one built into the inflator of the BCD if I recall. I remember some of the shop's gear had these and we had to learn how to use them. GUE would have never stood for all the differences in the gear setups! We thought it was good to see all the possibilities.

I had good instructors who were very experienced. They had traveled the world, some were wreck divers, etc. Later in my diving I saw the "90 day wonder instructors" that were working at some of the shops. Some of these people had never done anything but class and very basic open water diving. I had little respect for them as their students missed out on a lot of practical real world knowledge.