DIVE DIVE DIVE (PADI Advanced Open Water Diving)

Member Name: huddro

Product:	PADI Advanced Open Water Diving
Date:	13/08/01 (1196 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Confidence, Experience

Disadvantages: None

Looking for adventure I dived (excuse the pun) into Sport Diver magazine and Diver Monthly to see where I could go to practise my new found diving skills. Imagine my disappointment on finding the wreck of my choice was 8 metres deeper than I was qualified to dive. Not a very happy bunny but all that changed when I discovered that I could complete an Advanced Open Water Course and then dive to see my wreck!

The PADI Advanced Open Water course is designed to further enhance your diving skills to allow you to dive deeper and in a variety of scenarios by providing you with the theory and practical experience necessary. The only requirement for completing this course is that you have achieved the PADI Open Water qualification or equivalent.

Dive Types

The course itself is made up of five dives, two of which are compulsory dives and three of which you can pick from a number of different specialities. Each speciality dive is part of a course in itself and your dive for the advanced qualification counts as the first of the four dives that make up that speciality course.

The compulsory dives are: Deep Dive, and Underwater Navigation

The list for the optional dives is as follows:

Altitude Diver
For diving in lakes above 1000 feet

Drift Diver
For utilising currents to pull you along

Dry Suit Diver
Does what it says on the can…

Multilevel Diver
For planning dives that will encompass time at different depths

Underwater Naturalist
Introduces the underwater ecosystem

Underwater Photography
Guess what you learn here

AWARE Fish Identification
How to identify and report fish species as part of the PADI global commitment nature preservation

Boat Diver
Takes you through the differing procedures when using boat based diving

Dive Propulsion Vehicle
You learn to use those hand held James bond style mini submarines
>
Night Diver
Will give the chance to experience the totally different feeling encountered when diving at night

Underwater Videograher
Make movies of your dive

And then there are the three we completed:

Peak Performance buoyancy
Search and Recovery
Wreck Diver

We were somewhat limited in our choice of optional dives by the dive site we were attending, as Stoney Cove (a purpose built inland dive site and totally separate op) does not have currents to allow drift dives nor the exotic varieties of fish to allow AWARE fish Identification so you need to check with your Dive School for the dives on offer.

The Course

After completing our required reading from the supplied Adventures in Diving book and logging the answers to the questions set in the knowledge reviews we were ready for our dives.

We completed our course over one weekend starting with three dives on the Saturday and two on the Sunday. Although after taking four hours to drive to Stoney Cove (normally a journey of half that time) on Saturday there was some urgency to get all our gear on and get in the water

Saturday Dive 1: Peak Performance Buoyancy
Entering the water for this 40minute dive we start by ensuring we are correctly weighted to assist descent. We then descend and practise maintaining neutral buoyancy (remaining weightless so as to be able to hang suspended in the water). We complete a number of exercises then have all sorts of fun hanging upside down performing head over heels without touching ground well you get the idea. We spent a lot of time just hanging around!!! Oh god sorry for the puns.

Saturday Dive 2: Underwater Navigation
This dives teaches you how to use a compass and navigate underwater. Why do you want to navigate I hear you ask, well the sea is an awfully big place and imagine diving from a boat, swimming for an hour, then popping up anywhere….the odds on being back
at the boat are remote.

So navigation teaches you a number of tricks for finding your way back to your point of entry from using a compass to navigate a square, to counting your kick cycles to calculate how far you have travelled, to using landmarks (I was going to put bottom marks there but sounded a little rude!) on the bottom to follow a path.

It obviously worked as we then managed to swim off and after about 20 minutes arrive back at our exit point.

Saturday Dive 3: Search and Recovery
Be near water long enough and you are going to drop something in it, and as we know, what with currents, uneven bottoms, (no rude comments) and different bottom types, (look stop it I am talking about rock silt or sand) the odds on the object being directly below where we dropped it are remote. So this dive taught us how to find stuff, and it is really cool.

Our instructor swam off and deposited a little blue rubber duck attached to 30 pounds of weight and we had to find it and bring it to the surface. Using our theory knowledge we commenced a circular sweep pattern and on the third sweep located the object.

As it was too heavy to lift ourselves we had to attach a lift bag, inflate it and float the object to the surface. I am no good at knots on the surface try tying them 7 metres down in cold water!

This has to be the most satisfying dive of the day. It was such a good feeling finding an object the size of a mobile phone in an area of about 100 square feet.

So at the end of day one we packed up the gear and headed home tired but quietly satisfied and looking forward to the next day, and the “Big One”.

Sunday Dive 1: Deep Dive (The Big One)
Following the Open Water qualification I was authorised to dive to 18 metres but I wanted more. The Advanced Qualification allows diving to a maximum depth of 30 metres and this was it.

Stoney Cove has a maximum depth of 36 metres so we had
to be careful to stay within the laid down recreational dive limit of 30 metres. As Stoney was a quarry there are a number of shelves that drop off to the next depth, but the big advantage is that the old road for the lorries to get to the bottom is still there so we decided to follow this slope down to our required depth.

The other big issue to keep in mind is an effect called Nitrogen Narcosis. I will not go into a full explanation of the gases that make up air but suffice to say at a depth of around 24 metres some divers suffer narcosis caused by the narcotic effect of breathing the nitrogen component of air at greater than normal pressures leading to loss of judgment and motor skills.

To assess this we had a simple task: on the surface we were given a number in hand signals, we repeated this number then added one and gave the total as a hand signal. This we would do on the bottom and see the reaction time difference!

Descending down the road we passed 6 metres, no problem, water temperature still ok visibility still about 5 metres. At 20 metres the water is really cold, my hands started to hurt and visibility was only 3 metres. 29 metres, our final stop the water was freezing my fingers were going numb and I could only see about a metre. Still I managed to give the hand signals and watch as one of the guys obviously suffering narcosis took about 45 seconds to add 7 and 1 to make 8.

Turning we began our ascent stopping and remaining neutrally buoyant at 5 metres for 3 minutes to allow any nitrogen build up to in our bodies to dispel to a level where we could safely surface.

What a feeling! Diving that deep is totally amazing and I cannot wait to dive in clear waters with lots of wildlife and good visibility to enjoy the full effect.

Sunday Dive 2: Wreck Dive
After a good surface interval to ensure our nitrogen levels are safe we plan our final dive of the course. We are to descend to 20 metres to expl
ore the wreck of a tugboat sunk specifically for this purpose.

We descend from the marker buoy using the line as our guide to drop us directly onto the stern. Descending to 26 metres we enjoy the view of fish swimming through the propeller before we make our way to the bows.

Popping up over the bow we can put our heads into the old wheelhouse and watch the bubbles caused by our exhalations ripple on the underside of the roof as the pressure creates a surface 20 metres down.

Moving back to the stern we peer into hatches and watch the escaping bubbles from qualified divers inside the wreck. Alas the instructors insurance does not allow unqualified divers to enter the wreck so we have to make do with swimming round and over it.

Time as usual flies past and 37 minutes later we are again ascending to complete our safety stop and exit the water.

Qualified

I am now an Advanced Open Water diver and can dive to 30 metres with a buddy of equivalent or higher qualification. If I want to take an adventure course specialising in say wreck diving I have already completed the first of my required dives to complete that certification.

Information

Once again I completed this course with the guys at Scuba Zone, thanks go to Barry and Sam for another excellent weekend of diving. Their web site is shown below.

The course itself cost approximately 200 pounds and includes all training materials, and equipment, except mask fins and snorkel.

Stoney Cove is rated as the best inland European dive site and well worth a visit. It costs 9 pounds to dive for a day there.


I hope this had given you a taste for the options available to you in diving. There are so many courses to choose from that there is something to suit everyone.

www.scuba-zone.co.uk

Stoney Cove, Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire, LE9 4DW
Tel: 01455 273089

www.padi.com

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