What training do we need next

[Nwcid]

We just finished up our AOW with Bob last month. We both have between 50 and 60 dives at this point. One thing I would like to do is more "wreck" dives. Not so much going in but just seeing them. We did our first "deep" "wreck" dive yesterday and it was a lot of fun. We did this, http://www.lakediver.com/lake-pend-oreille.html and ended up hitting 112'.

The biggest thing we noticed was the lack of non-deco bottom time. We came up with lots of gas (over 1000 psi) with a total time of 39 minutes. I have heard the term "light-deco" many times but not sure exactly what that means. Is there really such a thing as "light-deco" or is that just a term people use for when they go past their no-deco time?

The other thing we would like to be able to do is get to some of the wrecks that are in the 130-150' depth range. I have been following the other current thread talking a bit about deeper diving.

So with those two goals what is the next set for us?

[spatman]

I would recommend taking a Rescue class before moving on to any tech level classes.

[selkie]

I would recommend taking a Rescue class before moving on to any tech level classes.

+1

[Nwcid]

We have done some "basic/intro" rescue stuff with our dive team. GF just has first aid/CPR card but I am a full time Paramedic in a busy system along with teaching EMS.

Rescue is something we do plan on doing for sure. The reason I posted up the questions the way I did is I keep reading "figure out your goal before buying gear or taking classes". In this case our goal would be to gain a bit more bottom time and/or be able to access some sites that are just outside of rec level diving. I was not sure if there was spot where we could do this without going full on tech.

[Dusty2]

You can do intro to tech which will give you the basics of deep diving and let you decide from there. With your level of medical training and experience rescue could be optional depending on the instructor.

[spatman]

You can do intro to tech which will give you the basics of deep diving and let you decide from there. With your level of medical training and experience rescue could be optional depending on the instructor.

Sorry, Dusty, but I disagree. Yes, CPR/first aid is part of Rescue, but not all. There are techniques for towing unconscious divers, toxing diver rescue, and other scuba related skills that are important and not included in any land based classes.

[selkie]

We have done some "basic/intro" rescue stuff with our dive team. GF just has first aid/CPR card but I am a full time Paramedic in a busy system along with teaching EMS.

Rescue is something we do plan on doing for sure. The reason I posted up the questions the way I did is I keep reading "figure out your goal before buying gear or taking classes". In this case our goal would be to gain a bit more bottom time and/or be able to access some sites that are just outside of rec level diving. I was not sure if there was spot where we could do this without going full on tech.

Rescue class is also very much about situational awareness to prevent the need for rescue as well as the rescue stuff.

Before class diver looks at site as "can I safely get in and out of the water in this place in this swell". After class the dive thinks "I can get in here okay but can I get my incapacitated buddy and I both out of the water here".

Take the rescue class.

[Joshua Smith]

Rescue isnt a prerequisite for any tech class that I'm aware of....but it should be.

[BlowBubbles]

As far as personal diver development I agree with the Rescue Diver first the Intro to Tech.

As far as gear purchases, I would talk to whomever you think you may be talking the Intro to Tech from. Equipment for tech can vary from on agency to another.

On a 100+ dive, 1000psi may or may not be alot. Deeper dives require more planning. Know your SAC rate and other stuff. Work on skills too. Fundies can be a bear,... I hear any way.

[eliseaboo]

I'm just going to throw this out there -- maybe you don't need any more training right now. Get out there, do some dives, have some fun...and the "next step" might just flow naturally from that. Rescue is of course a logical step along the path, but there's also lots of specialty courses out there that could be tons of fun for you, especially if you take them from the right person (because let's be honest, you can take something like Digital Underwater Photography from anyone, but wouldn't you rather take it from someone who takes photos you admire and is familiar with the cameras you would actually dive?)

If you like wrecks, make it a point to dive them more with people who know about them. You might find out you're really into their history, and there are some non-PADI/NAUI/etc wreck-centered courses that might be available to you. Or maybe you decide you're really just into the life on them and you want to take some fish ID classes. Or maybe you just decide that looking at pretty things for 39 minutes is fun enough - there's no shame in that! But I think at 50 dives the realm of possibilities can seem huge, and there's no need to take another class just for the sake of training.

[Tom Nic]

Dive. A lot. As often as you can.

There are things that happen in your skill and comfort level simply by diving.

Classes can be awesome, and I will second rescue diver training, but in my opinion a bunch of dives with a variety of dive buddies will do much more for you than you might initially think.

[LCF]

I'm with everybody else about Rescue.

As far as bottom time goes, I assume you have Nitrox? That helps in the deeper recreational range, although it's not as useful below 100 feet.

I would normally recommend Fundies to somebody at your point in things, but I know you have been working with Bob, so I'd ask him whether he thought Fundies would offer you anything significant. I'm sure you've already been coached on trim, buoyancy, propulsion, and situational awareness to a degree that most people haven't.

If you want to look at staged decompression diving, and get into it slowly, I think the UTD sequence is a good one. (Of course I do, because it's what I did ) UTD T1 gives you 130 feet, 25/25, and O2 deco. It's really a very useful class, especially if you have specific targets you want to hit in that deepest recreational range. T2 goes on to use 21/35 and go to 150. I've actually never taken it, because it turns out I just don't do that much technical diving. Brian Wiederspan is the UTD instructor here, and he's very good.

GUE Tech 1 is a very good class if you are serious about tech diving, but it's expensive and it's a five day class, and we don't have a local instructor.

My husband did the NAUI equivalent of GUE T1 with Scott Christopher, and we have a lot of local tech divers who have trained with Scott. Scott's a great person to work with.

But before you sign up for a tech class, you might want to get yourself a set of doubles and start playing with them. Moving to doubles generally wreaks havoc on one's trim, and learning to balance and weight them takes a while. There's no point taking more training when you would have to do it in gear you weren't comfortable with.

[Nwcid]

We will be doing a Rescue class some time in the next year. I was just commenting that we have had some into to it and I have lots of background in EMS/fire/extrication/ect. I know they are not the same things that will be learned in a dive rescue though. We did 2 pool sessions in August with one of our team members that is a Rescue instructor. We did go over many of the basic skills like panic diver, un-concious diver on the surface and at depth, rescue breathing while removing gear and towing diver. I know this is far from the full class and choice of instructor will make a huge difference on the quality of the class.

We are on the east side of the state so the amount of fun diving here is limited. Even with that we were able to log over 50 in our first year. This year we are shooting for more since we have gear that we can dive with in the winter that should help. Finding a variety of dive buddies here is basically impossible. There are other people here that dive and I will leave it at that. We have been meeting and diving with others from the west side as often as we can. Right now we are planning to try and make it west of dive weekends every 4-6 weeks.

Again we keep reading about having goal before just buying stuff. On the train dive I would have really liked to spend about another 10 minutes at the site taking pics but our no-deco time ran out. I know we need more diving and plan on it but the question is what steps lead us to our goal? I don't plan on taking classes just to take classes. The goal is to be able to dive slightly deeper (~150') due to the location of many wrecks. The other goal is to have more bottom time at those sites. I do't expect this to happen tomorrow but also need to know what is required to get to that point.

On my FB is some pics and info about the dive we just did, http://www.facebook.com/john.nokes.965

[Nwcid]

I'm with everybody else about Rescue.

As far as bottom time goes, I assume you have Nitrox? That helps in the deeper recreational range, although it's not as useful below 100 feet.

We just dive air because we get free fills on the County Dive Team compressor. There is no Nitrox available here without a 4hr + round trip.

If you want to look at staged decompression diving, and get into it slowly, I think the UTD sequence is a good one. (Of course I do, because it's what I did ) UTD T1 gives you 130 feet, 25/25, and O2 deco. It's really a very useful class, especially if you have specific targets you want to hit in that deepest recreational range. T2 goes on to use 21/35 and go to 150. I've actually never taken it, because it turns out I just don't do that much technical diving. Brian Wiederspan is the UTD instructor here, and he's very good.

GUE Tech 1 is a very good class if you are serious about tech diving, but it's expensive and it's a five day class, and we don't have a local instructor.

My husband did the NAUI equivalent of GUE T1 with Scott Christopher, and we have a lot of local tech divers who have trained with Scott. Scott's a great person to work with.

I will look into those. We are surely not ready for the full on classes yet based on current level, time, cost, ect. It might be what we end up needing to meet the goals we have so will just take more time to get there.

But before you sign up for a tech class, you might want to get yourself a set of doubles and start playing with them. Moving to doubles generally wreaks havoc on one's trim, and learning to balance and weight them takes a while. There's no point taking more training when you would have to do it in gear you weren't comfortable with.

That is more needed information for sure. I know I can support doubles but Beth will have to go to side mount because of her back.

[Mateo1147]

You're at the edge of a very steep and costly precipice. I am looking over that same ledge right now and trying to decide on the right path based on my end goal. I am getting the itch to see more things and wrecks are on that list.

On our dive Saturday we could have doubled our bottom time at 110' using 32%. So a basic nitrox class can do wonders for your bottom time even as deep as 130'. That being said, your access to nitrox is a real problem. But with that piece of training your dives in the sound will last longer and presumably be more fun.

[lavachickie]

NWCID, congrats on your accomplishments -- you're well on your way to a great long time in diving, for sure. It's great to see people get the basic training, go out and USE it, then get some more training, and continue to look ahead to where they want to go.

Lots of great advice here, and a few different viewpoints which is even better. All are right -- your task is finding what's right for YOU.

My two cents: Take nitrox NOW and get that option into play even if not all the time. Next, go for rescue as soon as you wish. Choose an instructor who will interject some real stress into the exercises. It's one thing for someone to be half-heartedly slapping the water as the "paniced diver" and quite another for that person to REALLY be acting as a paniced diver and trying to climb you like a tree. You'll learn a heck of a lot more from the latter.

Then hold a bit (maybe 3 months?) and keep diving.

As for the next step, given your potential interest in tech, you might really enjoy and benefit from a move over towards the tech side, into what I refer to as "tech flavored rec." Something like UTD's Essentials course. You'll get to fine tune your excellent basic skills while getting exposure to a different group of people, some different philosophies, etc. I'd consider that a half-step, that would be similar to LCF's suggestion of doing GUE Fundamentals which would probably be a more full step in that direction. (I did not take the UTD Essentials, but looked into it greatly including talking w/ instructors and students, and it's a great opportunity, in my opinion.)

Also, create little "projects", goals and tasks for your dive. Little games if you will. (Respecting the environment of course.) That might mean scouring an area at X feet for rocks, collecting them, taking them to Y feet and constructing something, etc. Use your imagination. Just add another level of things to think about, keep track of, and coordinate.

Amy

[Joshua Smith]

I'll just mention here that another path into tech diving is the advanced nitrox and deco procedures class taught through TDI and IANTD. There are quite a few instructor choices for this class.

[lavachickie]

NWCID, congrats on your accomplishments -- you're well on your way to a great long time in diving, for sure. It's great to see people get the basic training, go out and USE it, then get some more training, and continue to look ahead to where they want to go.

Lots of great advice here, and a few different viewpoints which is even better. All are right -- your task is finding what's right for YOU.

My two cents: Take nitrox NOW and get that option into play even if not all the time. Next, go for rescue as soon as you wish. Choose an instructor who will interject some real stress into the exercises. It's one thing for someone to be half-heartedly slapping the water as the "paniced diver" and quite another for that person to REALLY be acting as a paniced diver and trying to climb you like a tree. You'll learn a heck of a lot more from the latter.

Then hold a bit (maybe 3 months?) and keep diving.

As for the next step, given your potential interest in tech, you might really enjoy and benefit from a move over towards the tech side, into what I refer to as "tech flavored rec." Something like UTD's Essentials course. You'll get to fine tune your excellent basic skills while getting exposure to a different group of people, some different philosophies, etc. I'd consider that a half-step, that would be similar to LCF's suggestion of doing GUE Fundamentals which would probably be a more full step in that direction. (I did not take the UTD Essentials, but looked into it greatly including talking w/ instructors and students, and it's a great opportunity, in my opinion.)

Also, create little "projects", goals and tasks for your dive. Little games if you will. (Respecting the environment of course.) That might mean scouring an area at X feet for rocks, collecting them, taking them to Y feet and constructing something, etc. Use your imagination. That's a really stupid simple example. Just add another level of things to think about, keep track of, and coordinate w/ your fellow divers.

Amy

[Jeff Pack]

I'll just mention here that another path into tech diving is the advanced nitrox and deco procedures class taught through TDI and IANTD. There are quite a few instructor choices for this class.

Having just gone through them, I can tell you unless you are one hell of diver at 50 dives, you've got alot of skills to practice ahead of time to prepare for those classes. I figure I have a good couple of months of practice to prepare for my skills test. These are not "you pay your money and get a card" classes.

But if you are going to take those, take the advanced trimix along with them. Feel free to ping me on what skills etc you'll need prepare for, as I kinda wish I'd known ahead of time myself.

[cofford]

Having seen you and your wife dive in Bob's AOW class, you both dive at a high level for the amout of experience you have. I would recommend holding off on additional classes at the moment and just diving for a while. Get a copy of Oxyhacker's book and start blending up your own nitrox, as you'll get a big improvement in no-deco time for dives in the 100-110' range. Keep in mind that diving below 130 or so around here (or maybe even 120) really should be done with trimix. I personally use trimix and doubles for anything deeper than 110'. Wrecks at 150' definitely need trimix, along with a bottle of nitrox for decompression. This adds a lot of complexity and gear to the dive. Spend some time in the 100-110' range on nitrox and build your experience.

[Nwcid]

Thanks for the complement.

I had semi thought about doing Nitrox here and read about it a little bit. Looks like I need to do more reading into and checking on cost.

Looking at the PADI RDP it shows on Air we could do a 16 min bottom time at 110'. If were were using EAN 32 we could have done 25 min. That is a pretty decent difference in bottom time.

According to the PADI tables 32% should only be used down to 110' and 36% only down to 90'.

We will surly be doing as much diving as we can. I know this does not happen overnight but we would like to be on the right path to doing.

[Blow-N-Bubbles]

[quote="eliseaboo"]I'm just going to throw this out there -- maybe you don't need any more training right now. Get out there, do some dives, have some fun...and the "next step" might just flow naturally from that. "

+2 Take some time to digest what you have learned, further develop the basic skills and have fun.

[CaptnJack]

Well if you can't even get ordinary 32% then any kind of actual "deco" is probably not gonna happen. Since you might want helium in bottom gas, and either EAN50, EAN80, or 100% oxygen AKA "something" other than air for actual accelerated deco.

I'd just go diving at this point, until you are bored with what you have to do at NDL air depths.

[kdupreez]

+1 on going out and doing some diving.. the more variable places and people you dive with will exponentially increase your experience.

[Nwcid]

I agree with all the posted comments. The question was not what do we do right now. The question was what steps to get to our goal. Again there have been lots of good and helpful comments in here but none that have really answered the question.

When people have a goal they usually look for the path to get there so they can plan ahead. This lets you know what to expect, the time frame, the cost, the equipment, ect. Yes we all need and want to dive more that is why we dive. The path to our goal is different then someone who wants to instruct or to do caves or 600' rebreather dives.

This is true in anything in life. Want a specific profession there is a path to get there, people dont say just work a lot then later figure it out. Usually you work the job you have now while working on things to get you toward you profession. Want to build your dream home it does not happen over night but you make a plan how to make it happen.