So my quest to earn my open water certificate a started in 2018. I signed up with an instructor that owned a local dive shop in North Las Vegas on the recommendation of a friend. After countless times of this instructor flaking on scheduled sessions that I took time off of work to attend, I finally ended up having to file a dispute with my bank to recover my money from the guy.
Fast forward to 2019. I began searching for a new instructor and came across an ad for Scuba Phil on Groupon. They price seemed reasonable, so I signed up.
So I explained the situation to him as to what happed with the previous instructor and explained that I was still in possession of my PADI dive packet that the previous instructor had ordered for me. Well it turned out that the previous instructor tried to sell me a dive book that was like 4 or 5 years out of date.
Great catch there Scuba Phil!
So then he and I discussed the classroom work and because I never got the dive folder that said I had already completed the classroom work meant that I needed to re take the full course. I had no problem with that what so ever!
Now I am in the HVAC field and if you live in Las Vegas, you know how busy my industry is during the Summer time when it is ideal to learn how to dive.
By the time that I finished my book work and was ready for my confined sessions it was now August.
We had a larger class that weekend than Phil liked to have and a few students were having issues so we fell behind and we ran out of time.
So I needed to go back and finish when we could both coordinate our schedules....
Well that didn't happen until the end of December for me to finish my confined skills.
At this point I wanted to get this done. I had over the last few months been acquiring my own kit.
I asked PhIl if we could get the Open Water skills out of the way as soon as possible. Which was this past weekend. Well The water in January is about 50 degrees.
Phil was like are you sure you want to attempt this in cold water like that. I said I'm getting this done, I will bare through it. He said "Alright man, if you want to give it a shot, we will do it".
So this weekend we met up at the lake so I could prove that I had the ability to learn/be taught.
The air temp was about 70 so dry it was no nice and warm. The water was about 50. I jumped in once I had my wetsuit on to cool off and the water felt great.
As we began the first lake session, I quickly found that my fancy dive mask had issues. Luckily I had a spare Sam's club special with me as a back up.
On the second day I had issues descending due to my error. I forget to put 10 pounds worth of weight to my BC.
Phil was patient and we got it worked out. He didn't yell at me once or call me an idiot like I would expect.
Phil is a good guy. Very patient and understanding I give him !
Money well spent I in my opinion.
He was able to pick up where the guy from North Las Vegas dropped the ball and turn my negative experience into a positive one!
Craig L