Be Prepared with the PADI Rescue Diver Course

Why Spend your gap year diving?

Gap year’s should be about doing something meaningful, different, exciting and productive, perhaps picking up a qualification or new skills along the way. Spending your gap year diving on a gap year diving Course neatly ticks all of those boxes. Not to mention you will have the time of your life!

What do I have to consider when spending my gap year diving?

The first thing to consider is whether diving is for you? In order to gain the appropriate scuba diving qualifications you will have to put in substantial time and expense getting qualified. It would be better to know that you really want to go for it and that you are medically fit for a gap year diving course before starting. This can be easily accomplished by reviewing the padi medical form and or a visit to your local GP back home.

Perhaps consider going and doing a discover scuba dive locally to see if you are comfortable in the water. Diving is not hard to learn, and the Xtreme gap gap year diving course is taught in such a well structured manner, that failure rates are incredibly low. So then you should consider if you are a water baby or not. Do you like swimming and snorkeling, are you interested in nature programs especially under water documentaries? If the answer is yes, then you are going to be right at home on a gap year diving course on your Thailand Gap year.

The second consideration for spending your gap year diving is what level do you wish to qualify to and how much time do you want to spend diving? You could consider a very basic gap year diving courseto be the padi open water course. This is completed in 3.5 days and qualifies you to 18 metres. This is really only scratching the surface and a proper gap year diving courseshould as a minimum qualify you to advanced open water diver. This would enable you to descend to 30 meters and gives you a lot more knowledge about the issues around decompression sickness.

If you are serious about spending your gap year diving however, you should look at Diving in Thailand and enrolling in the koh tao divemaster program. This will take you through the first 2 scuba diving courses and then through to rescue diver. The PADI rescue diver course qualifies you to help distressed divers and mount search and rescue operations under water. Also addressed in the rescue diving course is the Emergency first response course, enabling you to react to emergencies in and out of the water. Next comes the big one the Divemaster course. If you are to seriously consider spending your gap year diving, then the divemaster course should be your first goal. Not only will this enable you to have unlimited scuba diving around the water of Koh Tao, but it will also train your dive leadership abilities: Leading open water divers, conducting dive briefings, mapping dive sites and learning about scuba diving in detail. The safety aspects, the physics even the commercial aspect of diving.

Because the gap year diving course offers you unlimited diving, you can choose when to dive and how many dives you want to under take a day. We know that on your gap year you will want time off to relax and play, so don’t worry, it really is up to you as to how much you want to devote to it, however most of the people on their gap year diving courserecognize that they have a once in a lifetime opportunity to dive every day and gain valuable scuba diving experience.

The actual course requirements of the gap year divemaster Scuba diving course states that you must complete a minimum of 60 dives (plus other criteria) to pass. This is not hard as you will have the opportunity to complete 4 dives per day, every day and on some nights a night dive also. You will have 12 weeks to do this. At Xtreme Gap some of the team (being qualified divemasters themselves) cringe when we see adverts for divemaster courses stating they can be completed in just a couple of weeks. Why? We cry! A couple of weeks does not build up your diving experience to a great level and seriously deprives you of your Divemaster in training right to dive as much as you can. Lets face it diving on your gap year you have the time!

So 12 weeks in and you are a fully qualified Divemaster having completed your gap year diving course. Then what?

The fun does not have to stop there. You have several choices. Take the xtreme gap program: Underwater videography Course Koh Tao, this will train you how to handle a camera and film subjects underwater over a 2 week underwater videography course.

Then a 4 week internship will follow where you will work with dive schools filming student and selling the videos for extra holiday money! Not bad. You may then choose to stay on and work in underwater videography.

You could look at another option. Combining the Divemaster course with the Technical diving course known and as the “Wreck hunter program”. This is an intensive course covering DSAT Deep diver and nitrox courses and will enable you to dive deeper, learn about decompression and diving on different gasses and pave the way for a lucrative career in technical scuba diving.

So there you go, a lot to think about when considering a gap year diving, if you need any help with make the correct choice, do not hesitate to contact us and we would be more than happy to offer advice.