Advanced Open Water is the continuation of the PADI Open Water Course. The course includes 5 Adventure Dives:
Deep Adventure (mandatory)
Navigation Adventure (mandatory)
+ 3 Adventures of your choice (depending on what is offered at your dive shop and available in the region).
Some of the most popular Adventures are Peak Performance Buoyancy (PPB), Night Diving, Drift Diving, Fish Id, Underwater Naturalist, and Wreck Diving, but there are so many more to choose from!
Because there are five dives in total, the course is generally completed in 2-3 days. The PADI Advanced Open Water course can be taken immediately after the Open Water course for those who want to perfect their skills right out of the gate, or it can be taken at any point in the future. Many divers find AOWD to be the most fun course because you get to sample so many different types of diving, and explore areas you might never have otherwise known about or been interested in.
Each Adventure dive corresponds to a PADI Specialty course, and counts as the first dive of the specialty. If you find yourself wanting to know more after one of your Adventures, ask us about completing the Specialty!
4 Benefits of Advanced Open Water Training
#01 Get Deep Training
Diving deeper than 60ft/18m is one of the most exciting parts of scuba diving, and where some of the best sites are found! But the benefits of deep diving also come with their own set of rules, safety procedures, and equipment. Learning how to safely partake in deep dives will open a whole new world of diving, allowing you to join in on Roatan’s various wreck dives, take the deep route at Hole in the Wall, and explore the deeper reefs along our wall dives.
With the Advanced course you will be allowed to dive until 100ft/30m.
#02 Mitigate Risks of Deep Diving/Diving Outside of Your Certification Level
PADI Open Water divers are certified to dive to 60ft (18m) or to the deepest depth reached during their course. Diving outside the limits of your training is risky. Divers can become complacent because they’ve never had an accident and therefore believe that there is no danger in pushing limits. But there are practical risks, too. If you do have an accident, you may not be eligible for coverage by your insurance provider. Worse, depending on the nature of the accident, you may encounter legal troubles or be ineligible for compensation or benefits because you were willingly diving outside of your certification limits.
During your Advanced Course you will learn more about deep diving and how to dive safely when you are deep.
Many people believe that they need more experience to start the Advanced Open Water, but this is not true. During the advanced course you will increase your knowledge, work in your skills and also you will have more time with your instructor that will help you to improve your performance as a diver.
#03 Get Navigation Training
Even divers with hundreds of dives can be missing or undervalue some of the basic safety dive skills. A good example of this is with underwater navigation. Most dives are guided (and in Roatan, ALL dives are guided as a part of Roatan Marine Park rules), so many Open Water divers never use an underwater compass again after their initial course.
But now imagine that you are on a dive and see that super rare fish you’re always trying to find. You follow it around for a minute or two until it finally darts off. When you look up, you’re disoriented and not sure which way you came from. The landscape is flat and there are no obvious landmarks to help you orient yourself. A diver with Navigation training and a compass will be far better prepared to reorient themselves and enjoy the rest of their dive.
#04 Get Access to the Best Sites in the World
While your PADI Open Water certification allows you to dive around the world, your Advanced certification gives you access to the most coveted and incredible sites and experiences across the globe. Destinations like Galapagos, Indonesia, the Red Sea, and here in Roatan, as just a few examples, have sites that are off-limits to Open Water divers. Tough conditions, currents, deep sites, or night dives make these sites incredible to dive! But it also means that divers need to be trained and prepared to handle whatever might come up. Luckily, these are all conditions that your Advanced course will prepare you for!
PADI Advanced Open Water Diver Course at Roatan Divers
Complete your AOWD course at Roatan Divers as a part of your next dive vacation! Our dive sites provide a complete range of conditions and topographies. This allows us to offer a very wide variety of Adventure dives as a part of the course, so you won’t be limited to specific Adventures “preselected” by your dive shop or instructor. Our full time instructors come from diverse backgrounds and have differing passions, so no matter what you’re interested in, you’ll find someone here ready to talk your ear off about it!
Roatan Divers is a PADI 5 Star IDC Center, meaning that we have proven excellence in teaching divers from their very first experiences all the way through their Divemaster and Instructor courses. Our Course Director, Fernanda Paiva, is an active presence in the dive shop. Our instructors always have access to ask questions and learn the most up-to-date techniques, allowing us to run our courses at the highest level of PADI standards.
As an added bonus, Roatan Divers has 4 dive boats. We run boats dedicated only to courses, and boats dedicated to fun divers. We know that different courses need different conditions, and having a fleet of dive boats means we can always accommodate the needs of each group without interfering with anyone’s plans.
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