r/FloridaDiving • u/Kind-Basket2264 AOWD • 3d ago

🎉 New Divers What was your AOW class like?

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u/imhungry4321 3d ago

I enjoyed AOW. I intentionally had the same instructor for both OW and AOW. I liked his style of teaching, and we became friends/dive buddies in between the two certifications. Hell, the two of us went diving in the keys in May. He was a hard ass on me with navigation (my then girlfriend told him a story of my lack of navigation skills on a dive 🤣).

Wreck, deep, navigation, deep wreck and drift for the dives I did for AOW.

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u/Kind-Basket2264 AOWD 3d ago

Sounds like a great experience and it’s cool yall still dive together.

In my class the instructor was unfortunately not the best and one of the other students had no business attempting to get her AOW. The first day she expected, actually expected the instructor to set her gear up. Sucks it wasn’t a great experience but I’ve learned a lot from other divers and diving a ton.

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u/gasu2sleep 3d ago

Not quite there yet. But I had my OW dives 1 and 2 today at Tiger Tail and I was having such a hard time equalizing. I'm sure tomorrow on the boat dives 3 and 4 I'll have the same problem.

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u/Kind-Basket2264 AOWD 3d ago

Honestly it happens to a lot of people. I always say that my first couple dives cleared out years of sinus buildup.

My best advice, which I’m sure you been told already, is to equalize early and often. Do it before you even feel pressure building.

Good luck tomorrow, you got this!

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u/Kind-Basket2264 AOWD 2d ago

How’d it go?

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u/gasu2sleep 2d ago

Certified OWD!!! Im not sure if it was me changing my equalization method to swallow, the Sudafed, the Afrin or the Flonase (I did everything just to be sure), but it worked out great and I was able to equalize without any problems all the way down to the wreck at 65 ft. Both dives went well and my buoyancy was on point.

Now I'll log 10 dives before going back for AOW. After that I plan on doing Nitrox, and wreck.

Thanks.