PADI Vs. the rest

djk1000

Thought I'd try and get a lively discussion going here. I think most people agree that clubs and other organisations (CMAS, NUAI etc.) think that PADI isn't in the same league, what does everyone think?
I'm a PADI diver and I think that if PADI wasn't around I wouldn't have had that first dive on holidays in a resort and I wouldn't have started diving. I'll agree that PADI divers may not be the best trained but I know some people that joined a club, spent months in a pool, got bored and left! In my opinion PADI is the most beginner friendly and inclusive organisation. I've never felt out of control on a dive, I know the dive tables, I know the gear, I learned not to panic, what more do you need for scuba?

TacT

nothing - I did a level 1 PADI course for 8 weeks with dalkey scuba-divers when I was 18. While on holidays in France I bumped into a french club governed by the FFESSM (federation francaise des etudes de sports sous-marin) and had to do all the level 1 crap for them again to show them I could dive and knew my stuff with regards equipment, setting it up, signs etc.

There are a whole load of jokes going around about PADI and how crap the whole thing is in comparison to their courses in France and elsewhere but after spending 3 and a half weeks diving with them I don't see the difference but maybe I'm not aware of it because I haven't done any higher level of training..

I was meant to do their level 2 then go straight on to do level 4 at les iles du glenans around easter but due to a rotten tooth when I did several exercises bringing someone up from 23metres my right ear went on the same side so I couldn't go on

Down with P.A.D.I

Smiler

I've been diving for a few years now but I was out of it for 8 years and only went back this year to my origianl CFT club.

PADI was always classed as a bit of a joke amongst the divers in my club and I knew no better.
That was untill I went on a PADI Open Water course last week in Scubadive West (a few friends were going & I thought it would be a good review as well as a bit of a holiday:D ) and I have to say it was pretty good.

The main difference I found is that the PADI courses are more skill based. I learned a lot of stuff that I never learned with CFT. Like getting properly weighting and the fin pivot exercise to get nuetral.

All really good stuff. The training wasn't that amazing though, not to much detail. But from an organisation that wants people to dive for fun I can see why they might of skimmed over the risks to diving.

I remember in my club a lot of the lectures were refered to as "right so more sh1te that can kil ya"

I have to say though very worthwhile.

Mick L

Originally posted by Smiler

I remember in my club a lot of the lectures were refered to as "right so more sh1te that can kil ya"

Yeah I remember those days, our instructor would start off of listing various types of injuries or ways to kill yourself, with the odd list of medical terms for each thrown in for good measure. We were certainly under no illusions that we could kill ourselves diving if we weren't careful. AND believe it or not this was a PADI OW course. Another thing that I've found is that the instructors play a bigger part in producing safe knowledgable divers than the training agency. Take SDW for example. If they were PADI, CFT, BSAC, TDI, IANTD or any of the others I think they'd still be good instructors IMO.

But for the purposes of this thread I'll restate some issues I found with PADI training which have to do with the syllabus:

1) Reel Work isn't covered
2) SMB deployment isn't covered
3) Deco procedures aren't covered (for example, if you do happen to go into deco don't shoot to the surface, etc.)

For me, PADI got me into diving and thought me what I needed to progress further.

Smiler

Yeah I have to agree with ya, the lads in SDW do go that little
bit further and it does make all the difference.

I can remember being 16 years old, sitting in a CFT lecture being told about the different ways a burst lung can kill ya. There was about 6 or 7 of 'em. Now that's detail:p


But to be honest with ya, what makes a good diver in my humble opinion is someone who:

1) Looks after their buddy
2) Realizes that they always have something new to learn
3) Follows safety procedures - no matter how annoying they are
4) Chills out and enjoys themselves

Doesn't matter who you learned with. No one knows it all.

Peace

2) Realizes that they always have something new to learn
3) Follows safety procedures - no matter how annoying they are

pfffft....

Smiler

??????????

What's a pffft?

Evil Phil

Originally posted by Smiler
??????????

What's a pffft?

I believe he's scoffing at your comments.


/me gets some popcorn ...

Peace

I believe he's scoffing at your comments.

Top marks for phil!

Smiler

Ah right.

Well each to their own.

But personally I do believe that no one knows it all about diving
(ie local info etc) and the thing about the safety checks was a joke

Some people eh?

Couldn't even think of anything constructive

Duh

Peace

Ok,

I should really have qualified my pffft back there however i only had time to type one word and that was the most politically correct word i could think of.

Let me just explain myself:
1) Looks after their buddy
- I'm nobodies mammy. I'm not on a dive to look after somone. I'll of course end a dive if i see HPNS/O2 tox/Narcosis symptoms in a buddy. However, i am looking after no.1 down there as apart from space/the centre of the planet, this is the most inhospitable environment that we as human beings can enter and realistically expect to survive.

2) Realizes that they always have something new to learn
- Maybe/maybe not. At some point...i'm going to know it all. Thats just a fact of life.


3) Follows safety procedures - no matter how annoying they are
- I'm presuming you are refering to the ole chestnuts like buddy checks/give the OK signal after rolling off the boat/surface with 50bar. I'm talkin the standard PADI guidlines here....so lets look at these:

Buddy check: Do your own buddy check properly and get your kit squared away before the dive and this isn't really necessary. Hoses should be routed correctly and otco's/stage regs should be in the right place. You shouldn't need someone to point these things out.

Give the OK signal after rolling off the boat: An article in this months Diver pointed out that what if there is a strong current and you are tying to group together when you have reached the bottom. The last thing you need is someone waving about telling everyone you're ok when what you need is a speedy descent! Also, everyone should be aware that most diver relate emergencies happen at the surface. So get off the surface, smartly, or you're looking for it! My technical instructor hit us with the line "More good men have been lost in the splash zone than anywhere else" so i'm inclined not to hang about.

The 50 bar chestnut: I used to adhere to this however upon further reflection, conversations with other divers and some maths calcualtions the i have decided to ignore this rule. The objective is to finish the diove with enough air in you tank to get you and(or!!) you buddy to the surface. I dive twin 12's so if i surface with 50 bar in my tank it would be the same as someone surfacing with 100bar in a single 12ltr. Like Diver sai - you don't get extra credit for this air back at the filling station. I've surfaced from dives with 25 bar in a single 12ltr....and my head didn't explode when i did it. I'm not saying surface with 1 bar but lets not be going nuts here folks.
50bar @ 12ltr = 600lts of air. So lets look at SAC of 25 ltrs per minute and that leaves us with 24 minutes of surace consumtion still sitting in the tank. That ofcourse gets cut in half if you spend you time at 10mtrs, but we're still looking at 12mins of hanging on a shot line ... and if you can't get you're life together and get out of the water in that time frame then maybe ....etc etc

There are lots more safety procedures in the PADI syllablus, some i agree with wholeheartedly (for the life of me i can't think of an example right now) and some i think are complete sh1te. I'm just giving my views on a select few above.

4) Chills out and enjoys themselves
Yeah sure, good call.

Smiler

Fair enough. The 50 bar thing is really more of a guideline anyway. Just incase you had to spend more time in deco then you realized whatever.

I would be big into looking after the person I am buddied with though. Maybe it's because I'm in a club and I know the people I dive with very well and I just think that if your both looking out for each other then a extra "layer" of safety is there. As well as having a laugh

Of course No 1 does come first.

The buddy check. I agree that a good buddy check starts with you making sure your own gear is working fine and in good nick
But I also like to know if someones octopus/air2 is working (incase I feckin need it ) and how to release their buckles or weight belt. Where their knife is located is also handy., Especially if I was diving with a stranger like in a lot of the PADI centres

At the start of the reply you said that "this is the most inhospitable environment that we as human beings can enter and realistically expect to survive."

Surely doing these checks increases your chances of surviving if anything goes wrong.

Can you really afford to skip the buddy check?

For the sake of a minute. Do it man

TacT

/me fires off an e-mail to a few frogs to get some PADI jokes

Evil Phil

PADI Irishman, PADI Englishman and PADI Scotsman ...


Anyway, I think buddy checks are important for 2 reasons:

A) Its always good to have a second opinion to catch that one time you may forget something. That been said always assume the person you're checking knows what they're doing. Its their equipment they know it better than you do.

As has been said, if something goes wrong with you or you're buddy you know where everything is. I think this is the most important reason.

Peace

Ok,

so during the buddy check who knows when you're demo'ing you nice kit that the other guy isn't trying to hold down a bucket load of barf since he's hung over from the 12 pints + 4 Whiskeys he had the night before....also going through his mind is the fit bird (after 7 pints) that he nearly convinced to come back to his room.

I dive with the same buddy every dive and we dive the same kit config. We're both able to admin our own gear.

Hey....some people like pepsi, some people like coca cola.

Smiler

So what if your diving with someone new. Would you do a buddy check then?

Peace

If it was requested by the other lad/gal then sure...it would be a quick one though so you'd better pay attention, i'm not doing this again!

Smiler

Ahhemm

4) Chills out and enjoys themselves
"Yeah sure, good call"

Divings not a race

I suppose your right though man........ Coke & Pepsi

Peace

Divings not a race

I'm not too sure what you mean here...i presume you're refering to my quick buddy check....the only reason it would be quick is that i'm not thoroughly convinced its necessary....

i would be a cursory/token buddy check.

Coke & Pepsi bro, Coke & Pepsi.:cool:

The Clown Man

Not necessary until you realise at 30m that your barometer is borked, you can't squeeze another breath out of your tank and you find that your buddies air2 is broken and he's got this thing about seeing a guy suffocate and decides he's going to hang the fu<k onto his air and get the flock out of there.

Seriously though, I'll take all the extra safety precautions I can get. Why the hell not. Fu<k Pride. :ninja:

djk1000

If you've been diving for longer/have more qualifications, chances are that the finger of blame will point in your direction if something happens to your buddy. plus Clown Man had a point, checking your buddies gear is for your benefit as much as your buddies. Think about it, your buddy is carrying your backup gear, you'd be nuts to dive without checking your own gear, ergo you should really be buddy checking for your own piece of mind.

Mick L

On my last dive holiday I spent a week in Scapa Flow and to be honest I didn't do any buddy checks. I knew my gear and was competent enough to jump into the water without forgetting any gear or forgetting to turn my air on.

However, i dive with the same buddy all the time and our gear is pretty much the same config. I know my gear and I also know his gear. I trust that he is also competent enough to gear up correctly. I check everything on myself that a buddy would by going through the same steps each dive. If you get a drill like this in your mind you don't need to worry about forgetting things. Only when I am happy that I have myself squared away ready to go will I start to look around the boat for signs of potential problems (I don't walk around sticking my nose in, I just keep an eye out).

This is what works for myself and my buddy.

So what if your diving with someone new. Would you do a buddy check then?

Personally, Yes I would, and have done so. If that buddy was not happy getting in the water without doing a buddy check every time then that's fine with me and I'll oblige them. If however I feel they're competent divers and don't feel the need to do a buddy check then I'm happy enough to check my own gear and dive.

Not necessary until you realise at 30m that your barometer is borked, you can't squeeze another breath out of your tank and you find that your buddies air2 is broken and he's got this thing about seeing a guy suffocate and decides he's going to hang the fu<k onto his air and get the flock out of there.

If your gear doesn't work at the surface it won't work at 30m, so check your own gear. As I've said above, I trust my regular buddy to check his own gear. As for gear failing during a dive and a buddy not giving you air because he's an asshole, I don't think a buddy check will catch that.

If you've been diving for longer/have more qualifications, chances are that the finger of blame will point in your direction if something happens to your buddy.

I don't think that's the case at all.

Firstly) Buddys aren't children that need to be minded, they are there for you to go to if you have a problem. Every diver should be able to look him/her self first, otherwise they'll never be able to help anyone else.

Secondly) I've never expected a buddy to take responsibility for my life when I dive and I don't take responsibility for theirs.

AL][EN

Not sure about the rest but i trained with PADI in a dive center in dublin. im up to Advanced Open water at the mo and moving onto Rescue diver pretty soon.

i cant say anything about the other org's as ive never seen them or used them here in ireland but i will say this, PADI are very good its very thorough and proper training however its really expensive more so than the other org's too damn expensive but there you go!

Mick L

I've trainined with PADI and IANTD and they're both expensive. IANTD gives you more bang for your buck though since you're getting into more advanced stuff. I'm not sure what the costs are for agencies other than PADI for starting out. I know that if you start with a club in college you can save a LOT of money, but I assume they're subbed by the college as a society or something??

But lets not kid ourselves here, it's not just the training that's expensive. Holidays and especially gear are hefty investments.

Smiler

For my club it's €420 a year.
But for that you get a pool session once a week the use of the 2 ribs and all your bottle fillls.

But it's pricey. Luckly they do it by Direct debt so it's not so bad.

AL][EN

you said it!! when i was living in dublin i was in a dive club (well it was where i got trained and there was a board with people looking for diving) and the place hired out diving equipment and it wasnt that expensive, when your abroad if you dont have your own gear (which i dont) it can get a bit hefty in the wallet area

TacT

not that expensive at all depending who your diving with, the club I was with in Brittany was charging me 17E per dive.

All equipment included with your air fill for the dive.

I have my own snorkel gear, they supplied the rest.

17E gets you

free boat ride
dive
air fill
scuba gear (if you didn't have your mask etc, they provided you with it also, although the wetsuit may not be a great fit)

No annual club subscription.

I was going to get my level 2 diver for 240E

10 dives, all air fills, all the gear and the theory lectures.

Nothing comes cheap in Ireland :eek:

djk1000

I think a lot of dive schools/clubs in Ireland will tell you that prices here are higher because of liability insurance and instructors cost of living. Ilike to think that because I pay more I can sue them for more if something goes wrong.:D

Mick L

17 yoyos for a boat dive with gear!! That's pretty damn cheap. Next you'll be telling us the dive sites were good as well.

I saw a program a while ago about diving the beaches of Normandy. There are a few tanks and landing craft just off the shore in shallow water. Sounds like some cheap diving, once you're there of course.

Peace

Mick,

I found some link to a charter which does the Normandy sites....but as far as i know it was tri mix diving. There might be some shallower sites though.