PADI Open Water Diver Course Details

If you’ve always wondered what lies beneath the surface, now’s the time to find out. Start the journey of a lifetime with the PADI Open Water Diver course. It will change you forever.

In the PADI Open Water Diver course, your PADI Instructor takes you through the basics of learning how to scuba dive. You start in a pool or pool-like conditions and progress to the open water (ocean, lake, quarry, etc.) getting the background knowledge along the way.

Earning your PADI Open Water Diver certification is just the beginning. As a certified diver, fabulous dive destinations, exciting people, unparalleled adventure and uncommon tranquility await you. And, as you continue your adventure and gain experience through higher training levels, your opportunities expand. For more details on the PADI Open Water Diver course, Click here.

• Number of Dives: Five Confined Water Dives and Four Open Water Dives
  
• Knowledge Development: Five sessions
  
• Prerequisites: 10 for Junior Open Water Diver and 15 for Open Water Diver. Good health, reasonable fitness and comfort in the water.
  
• Materials You’ll Need: PADI Open Water Crew-Pak, PADI Open Water Video or DVD, Log Book.
  
• Equipment you’ll use during the course includes: mask, fins, snorkel, tank, regulator, buoyancy compensator, submersible pressure gauge and exposure protection as required by the local environment.
  

Becoming a diver opens a door to a whole new world. Open yours and step through.

For more information on becoming a PADI Open Water Diver, please contact your local PADI Dive Center or Resort or explore more course options below.

Learning to dive isn’t difficult, but like any activity worth doing, it requires some time and effort. While taking the PADI Open Water Diver course, you’ll enjoy three phases: Knowledge Development, Confined Water Dives and Open Water Dives

Schedules

The PADI Open Water Diver course is incredibly flexible and performance based, which means that your PADI Dive Center or Resort can offer the program on a wide variety of schedules, and paced according to how fast you progress. It’s possible to complete your confined and open water dives in as few as three or four days (provided you take care of reading the manual and watching the video ahead of time).

However, many people prefer a more leisurely schedule. Contact your local PADI Dive Center or Resort to find out the schedules or ask about a private or semiprivate course.

You complete Knowledge Development on your own, reading each of five sections of the PADI Open Water Diver Manual and watching the corresponding section of the PADI Open Water Diver Video (which also previews skills you’ll learn). If you like learning with a personal computer, you can also get the Open Water Diver Manual and Video together as a CD-ROM. You briefly review what you studied in each section with your instructor and take a short quiz to be sure you’re getting it. At the end of the course, you take an exam that makes sure you’ve got all the key concepts and ideas down.

2. Confined Water Dives – This is what it’s all about – diving. You develop basic scuba skills in a pool or in a body of water with pool-like conditions. Here you’ll learn everything from setting up your gear to how to easily get water out of your mask without surfacing. You’ll also practice some emergency skills, like sharing air – just in case. Plus, you may play some games, make new friends and have a great time.

There are five confined water dives, with each building upon the previous. Over the course of these five dives, you attain the skills you need to dive in open water.

3. Open Water Dives – After your confined water dives, you and the new friends you’ve made continue learning during four open water dives with your PADI Instructor at a dive site. This is where you have fun putting it all together and fully experience the underwater adventure – at the beginner level, of course. You may make these dives near where you live or at a more exotic destination on holiday.