Zero to Hero in Six Days?

It’s Possible, but Definitely Not for Everybody: For the average person, a week off from work works out to eight days (two weekends and week in between). Now factor in a day at each end for travel and you are left with six days for diving.

Unfortunately, if your goal is to get your full Cave Diver certification within that time frame, you are pretty much screwed. (Or, you used to be.)

The minimum time frame to go from no overhead training to full Cave Diver with organizations like the NSS-CDS has always been seven days — that’s assuming you do the Cavern and Basic Cave phase in just three days.

And that’s probably a good thing. The average person needs at least eight full days to really do this training justice — and benefits greatly from breaking it down into at least two segments, and possibly getting some experiential diving in between.

This traditional approach to Cave Diver training also assumes some factors that are not always present.

• It assumes students may have little or no prior Tech Diver training or experience, or time spent diving anything other than recreational dive equipment.

• It also assumes that a substantial portion of those eight days will be spent in the classroom, covering material that could easily be mastered ahead of time through self study.

Are these factors always an issue? I used to think so. Last year, however, I had an experience that changed my mind.

I was working with a student from the Reno, Nevada, area. He was an accomplished tech diver, with qualifications through Trimix — and a lot of real-world tech diving experience in some very cold water.

His goal, on his first trip here to Florida, was to try to get through the traditional Cavern and Basic Cave Diver courses. As I knew little about him, I said, “Theoretically, we can do that in four days — but let’s allow six…just in case. We’ll take it one day at a time and see how it goes.”

At that time, I’d just finished the first draft of the self-study materials that all my students now use. This seemed a good opportunity to try them out.

As is usually the case with these materials, as the student worked through them, we spent time on the phone and exchanged a lot of e-mails, clarifying one point or another. By the time he was done, the student had spent the equivalent of a full day in the classroom mastering all of the academics for full Cave Diver certification.

All he had to do upon arriving here in Florida was take the written test, do the land drills and get in the water. By the end of the first day (the only one that went past 6:00 in the evening), we had made four cavern dives and spent over 100 minutes in the water.

Dive times on training dives at the Cavern and Basic level are restricted by gas and decompression. Therefore, where on a normal day at the Apprentice or Cave Diver level, you might do two 50-minute dives, at the Cavern and Basic level you can easily do four 25-minute (or longer) dives and not be in a rush. This was how our second day went.

I’d said going in that “We’d see how things went.” Well, obviously, they were going exceedingly well.

For the next four days, we did two 50-minute (or longer) dives at the full Cave Diver level. By the end of six days:

• We had made the 16 required cavern and cave dives.

• We had accrued over 600 minutes of bottom time.

• We had done all of the required skills…repeatedly.

Technically, we had not met all of the requirements for NSS-CDS Cave Diver certification — only because we had accomplished this in six days, not seven. Ironically, we had met all of the requirements for PADI Tec Cave Diver, which are more stringent, but specify only minimum number of dives and minutes of bottom time.

So my student went away with a (fully earned) PADI Tec Cave Diver card. I suppose he could have qualified for CDS certification, if you wanted to count all the time doing self study, and all of the phone and e-mail conversations as the equivalent of the full day many of my fellow instructors still spend in the classroom.

We’ve all seen those infomercials where, by buying into some get-rich-quick scheme, “real people” claim to be making “thousands of dollars every month, from home.” Then, at the end of the commercial, you see the small-print disclaimer: Results not typical.

That is certainly the case here. My student was able to accomplish what he did here only because of his extensive prior tech diver training and experience. (Which, by itself, does not qualify you to cave dive — but makes a big difference learning how.)

I’ve always said I would never do an eight-day, non-stop Cavern-through-full-Cave-Diver course. It’s too much, for both the student and the instructor. Given the same set of circumstances, however, I will do the six-day “Zero to Hero” course described here.

There are some limitations, though:

• First, students have to meet the prerequisites for PADI Tec Cave, which include training through the PADI Tec Deep Diver level, or its equivalent from another agency.

• Second, students need to have logged at least 25 dives in full tech-diver gear, including doubles and deco or stage bottles.

• Third, students need to make the time to complete at least eight hours of self study before the course begins. (Okay, all of my students do this now anyway.)

• Finally, students need to understand there is no guarantee of completing all of the necessary requirements in six days — to the instructor’s satisfaction.

If students need to come back, they need to come back.

As I said going in, this is not a program for the average student. If you live within reasonable driving distance of north-central Florida, it is to your benefit to break training down into at least two four-day segments.

If you are flying in from out of the area, your time is limited, and you have the prerequisite tech diver training and experience, this may be a viable option. It’s at least worth discussing.