Another Tradition Broken

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A typical PADI Open Water course holds four dives over the course of two days. Or...two dives per day. But in typical GirlDiver fashion, we've asked WHY??


Oh, we're not talking about breaking standards and completing all four dives in one day...that would wear US out. We've looked at the comfort level of students doing surface intervals in sub-fifty degree temperatures in wetsuits and decided...it's just not fun.


And I'm at the point with GirlDiver that "if it's not fun, we're not doing it."


I certainly can't take the winter off and refuse to instruct would be divers wanting the GirlDiver experience...so there MUST be an easier way.


Enter the "dive a day" program. We're going to test out holding one dive per day over the course of two weekends. This way divers arrive in a dry wetsuit, do one dive, then strip the cold wetsuit off and exchange it for warm clothing. Rain, sleet, hail or snow...you'll not get in our way this year.

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Getting Certified On Vacation

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We've entered the chillier parts of the year, when the thought of entering the Puget Sound may not be the most entertaining thing you can think of on the weekend.

(Fact: The Puget Sound stays relatively close to the same temperature year round...it's the surface interval between dives that chills you...)


However, thousands of people still NEED to get certified in order to visit the reef below on their mid-winter escapes. What's the answer?


PADI (and other certification agencies as well) offers "Tropical Referral" diving courses. In these courses, you do your classroom and pool work at home with your local instructor, then they give you a referral form and a contact in your vacation destination to complete the Open Water portion of the certification. Basically, you learn what you need to before you go...then you take your "test" in the warm water.


This is an ideal way to become certified if you don't like the cold. As an instructor, I'm not going to lie. I'm a girl first...scuba diver second. I don't like cold. While I teach year round here, I'm not going to tell you I smile when scraping ice off the windshield to head to a dive. My winter dives are usually later in the day to give the earth the maximum amount of warm up time available.


At GirlDiver, we LOVE Tropical Referrals...and someday hope to have a network of travel agents and wedding planners to enable us to do exclusively Referral and class based courses from November through February. However, this year, we're still growing that program, so we'll be at the waters edge at least two weekends per month.


In a tent, with a heater. Dreaming of palm trees.

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