The Advanced Open Water Course is the next step in learning to do recreational diving. Upon completion of this course one is trained to go to the limits of recreational diving as well as getting introduced to a few diving specialties. Advanced Open Water is really 5 mini courses that are bundled into one. There are 2 required courses and the student can choose any three from 16 electives that PADI offers. The two required courses are deep diving and navigation. Doing these certifies you to dive down to 130 feet or 40 meters and the other teaches more advanced navigation techniques to help you find your way if you get lost. We then did wreck diving, underwater imaging, and search and recovery as our electives. This time around we also decided to try out the eLearning option.
Doing eLearning in short was about the same as doing the traditional style of learning. The exception here was that our books were on our iPads in a special eLearning app instead of hard copy. Different sections of video were also more neatly lined up with their corresponding sections in the reading. So instead of reading for an hour followed up with an hour-long video, we read a couple pages worth of reading and then watched a 3 minute or so video that went with it. I am not sure if it was because we had less material to go over or if we were going through it more efficiently, but instead of studying for 8 hours a day for a week we studied more like an average of 4 hours a day for a week. For us I believe it was a better choice as we saved a little bit of money and avoided wasting some of our instructor’s time.
The time for our dives came, the first of which was a deep dive to 90 feet. This dive was on a wreck called the Mercedes, a 197-foot freighter that had washed ashore in 1985 and later sunk to create an artificial reef. This was our deep dive, so our focus was on the phenomenon of deep-water diving. We were watching things like color change, for example at a depth of 90 feet I recorded that a square printed on my dive slate that would be red at the surface had become brown at the bottom. We also compared our buddy’s depth gauge with our own to see how all dive computers are different and not necessarily accurate. And while we were not diving deep enough for it to take effect, we were also paying attention for gas narcosis. Gas narcosis is a condition that typically occurs with divers going below about 100 feet, the symptoms generally present themselves similar to drunkenness. While it may seem silly it can be dangerous as a diver loses proper judgement. This is easily alleviated by ascending a little bit until the effects are gone. No one is immune to it, but experience does help. This dive went fairly smooth, we did have a strong current at the bottom that made the ascent tricky but was manageable. We were down there for 17 minutes.
Our next dive was much shallower at 35 feet along a reef called Willie’s Way. This is a reef just a couple miles off shore from Fort Lauderdale. We had a good strong current again thanks to the Gulf Stream. This dive we practiced some of our compass navigation skills. We measured our fin kicks for a certain distance and we did some navigation patterns. One pattern was out and back, and then we had to do a square pattern. Doing the out and back with a compass was fairly easy. Then we had to do the square pattern. We managed to do it despite the heavy current, but I am not sure it was a very good square. The dive itself was uneventful but after we surfaced and got back on the boat we saw dolphins. The boat picked up the remaining divers and then we went and chased down the dolphins so that we could swim with them. That was an awesome experience.
This is the point where we started getting into our electives for this course. The first one we did was the wreck dive. For the wreck we went to a place called Hog’s Heaven in about 70 feet of water. Hog’s Heaven was a 180-foot barge carrying concrete dredge pipe. There are several smaller barges around and there is also a sunken lighthouse that is lovingly referred to as the “Jungle Gym.” This dive we went to 61 feet for 15 minutes. However, we did not get to explore the wreck as much as we wanted to on this dive because of a heavy north bound current known as the gulf stream. I would say it was at full strength that day. On the bright side we did complete all of our performance requirements for this dive as the place near the mooring line was filled with various hazards we had to pay attention for. Swimming in the strong current only made that more exciting as when one tries to avoid one hazard they start to run into another.
An important piece of wreck diving is maintaining situational awareness so that one does not harm or entangle themselves nor do they accidentally damage the wreck. Our instructor saw that we were struggling and decided we should ascend as the conditions that day really sucked. We had made our full ascent and got to the boat. I was on the ladder when suddenly there was an emergency as another diver had surfaced and was in complete panic, so much so that I the captain [SL1] had jumped off to grab them. This diver for some reason that I do not know, began to panic at about 30 feet during her ascent, regulator out, and went straight to the surface. Now in our Open Water training we learned how to do a Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent from about 30 feet. This diver did not do that. They got out of the water safely though with help from the boat crew. They broke the first rule of diving, Don’t Panic. They had to be put on Emergency Oxygen which meant they had to go to the hospital and unfortunately for us meant the end of our dive trip, we only made the one dive that day instead of two.
The next day we did our Underwater Imaging Dive which is one of the most technical dives, but also incredibly fun. We had a strong current again and it was the first dive which meant we were going to a wreck. Because we had a strong current again that day, the captain decided we were going to do a wreck trek. [SL2] We got to go see 3 wrecks in a row with minimal effort as the current carried us along on a beautiful tour of the wrecks. We also brought a special underwater camera with us. This dive we went down to 70 feet about and were down there for 20 minutes. The first wreck we visited was the Jay Scutti, a 100-foot harbor tugboat that was seized by US Customs for being naughty and later sunk to create an artificial reef. From there we let the current take us to the Tracy, a former drug trafficking boat that met the same fate as the Jay Scutti. The Tracy is a very fun dive as the wreck has a large canopy section that makes for a great swim through. This swim through is awesome because it is generally filled with large schools of fish that just swim around you. One could describe at like being in an aquarium.
When we were done with the Tracy, we followed the current north to the Merci Jesus, a 90-foot-long wreck that yet again, was seized by US Customs for possessing drugs. Nice little wreck with some great swim throughs, but we couldn’t stay long as I was low on air, about 1000 psi, which was our planned ascent pressure. I made the ascent, safety stop at 15 feet, waited 3 minutes then went to the top, and there was no boat. I reached the end of the line where I was told to wait and hold on to the line. Our instructor inflated his Delayed Surface Marker Buoy to signal the boat our location. After waiting a while and watching my pressure drop to 200 psi (really bad), the dive master got down there and told me to let go of the line, I finished my ascent and got back to the boat safely. Now, this was not ideal, and I screwed up in this situation.
A diver should absolutely never use their reserve pressure. That stuff is there for emergencies, and for only the most serious of emergencies as well. A more appropriate course of action would have to signal my brother that I was out of air and needed to surface, inflate a safety sausage and wait for the boat to come pick us up. However, one should also recognize what I did right, namely I did not panic. While for me this was a very scary situation I kept calm. If things got really bad I would have surfaced anyways, I just should have done it sooner. Also, for those that would be concerned about being dragged away by the current and the boat forgetting about us, the shore was at most 2 miles away, we could have swum that way if we needed to. To those reading this, please do not repeat my dumb mistake.
The next dive I did not come close to trying to kill myself. This was our search and recovery dive. We went over to Oakland Ridges, we dove down to about 35 feet and were there for maybe 30 to 45 minutes. In my log book my instructor had me count it at the full hour allotted for that dive. For this dive conditions were not great, we had 15 feet of visibility and a strong north bound current. The dive was split into two parts, the search, and then the recovery. To begin our instructor tossed in a small green pelican case with about 25 pounds of weight in it. When our instructor got back on the boat where we were waiting he told us about how he lost his box and we tried to deduce where he lost and the appropriate search pattern to find the box. We started with a U search pattern where we swam back and forth across the current as it carried us down stream. That didn’t work so we reworked our plan and did an expanding square.
The expanding square pattern is essentially a square spiral. This pattern was really hard to do correctly because the strong current would skew our pattern north. I figured if we spiraled the opposite direction with our expanding square we would have found it. Unfortunately, time was running short at that point and our instructor called us back and showed us where the box was. We then moved on to the next part of the dive, recovery of the box. For this we had to tie a bowline to the lift bag with one line, two half hitches with another line to the handle on the box, and then a sheet bend to join the two lines. Tying lines underwater is very different from doing it on land. Part of the difficulty comes from either the lines fraying or from them floating around as you float around. My brother and I both managed it though.
To get the 25-pound box off the bottom we inflated the lift bag with our octos, alternate air source regulators buddies use when they run out of air. The goal when filling the lift bag is to get it so that it is neutrally buoyant. With the lift bag provided it was accomplished with a couple of puffs of air from my octo. I then had to carry it up alongside me up to the surface. This was easy as the box was made weightless from the lift bag. With this dive Stuart and I could have done better with searching for the box by listening more carefully to what our instructor said when he “lost” the box.
Completing the Advanced Open Water Course for me has been an absolute blast. I think Stuart enjoyed it as well. SCUBA diving is very fun but can also at times be incredibly dangerous sport. There are several things involved with SCUBA diving where if you mess up, you could die. But that is risk that must be accepted and can be mitigated through appropriate training and using good gear. Most dive accidents occur because a diver gets stupid or panics. All of which can be mitigated through training. When SCUBA diving is done right, it can be a very rewarding experience.
There is nothing like going underwater that first time and taking your first breath underwater. I got to do things such as swim through a wreck filled with hundreds of fish. Wreck Dives are some of the most fun as most sit 70 feet below the surface, but visibility is only 30 feet or less. You pull yourself down the mooring line and a large shape comes into view, and it is an old ship with its own story. I have also found useful skills with SCUBA diving such as Search and Recovery. Search and Recovery can be an amazing skill as well when you or a fellow diver loses their favorite pair of sun glasses or expensive equipment to the drink.
So now that Stuart and I have completed the Advanced Open Water Course, what comes next? The next most obvious step would be to do Rescue Diver. Rescue Diver is a very challenging course that is exactly what it sounds like, learn how to save other divers, namely your buddy. However, we first need to complete Emergency First Responder training which includes First Aid and CPR. But what about what comes after that? Currently our goal is to make it to Master Scuba Diver, but to do that we need to do a lot of dives and continue training in the specialty courses.