PADI Advanced Open Water Certification
The course enables students to participate in various underwater tasks that broaden both their awareness of the aquatic realm and their capabilities as divers. The course is designed to be simple and short, and to stress diving participation and skill development, more than theory. It consists of short classroom review sessions and five open-water dives.
The advanced course can be completed locally or while on one of our winter Caribbean dive trips. The instructional fee for the course is $195.00 (if done locally, or $150.00 if done on an MSD trip) and the cost for the required text "PADI Adventures in Diving Manual" is $49.95 - available at MSD. Although the manual contains many different sections pertaining to a multitude of advanced dive options, we choose to do only certain dives based on popularity and suitability for either our local or Caribbean trip environment. Students must read the chapters that correspond to the dives required for either of the two options below, and complete the knowledge reviews for each dive before the start of class. Equipment rental fees are not covered on any MSD continuing education course.
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Prerequisites
- Students must be 12 years of age by the beginning of the course
- Open Water Diver certification
Local -
Advanced Course
The course consists of short classroom review sessions and five open-water dives in which students are oriented to the following activities;
- Peak Performance Buoyancy
- Night Diving
- Deep Dive
- Underwater Navigation
- Search and Recovery
The Adventures class is offered on weekends out of our Brainerd facility only (once again because of our use of the Cuyuna Mines). We start on Friday night between 5 and 6 PM (based on available daylight). After a short classroom review session, we will be completing the peak performance buoyancy and night dives. Saturday morning at 9 AM we meet at the shop again where we do some more classroom activities and then we head out to complete the deep, underwater navigation, and search and recovery dives. While we usually complete everything by late Saturday afternoon, it is wise to keep Sunday available in case we run into any issues such as weather, etc. Please check our class schedule page for specific class starting dates.
Course Fee: $195.00; includes PADI's processing fee
Items Needed for Class: PADI Adventures in Diving Manual ($49.95) and all equipment including: compass, slate and dive light. For those students who have yet to own their equipment, rental is available. Make sure to reserve your equipment at least a week ahead of time.
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How to Sign Up: Call MSD Brainerd to sign up for one of our class dates - schedule available online on our Schedule page. The Advanced OW Manual need to be picked up (available in either location) no later than 2 weeks prior to class to ensure time to complete the corresponding sections and knowledge reviews.
MSD Trip -
Advanced Course
On a Caribbean dive trip many of the dives that we will be doing can easily be counted towards the advanced certification. We are doing the dives anyways, you might as well get credit for them.
Five dives are needed for the certification. The one required dive for the advanced certification is the underwater navigation dive. Because of the logistics involved with this dive (we need a flat bottom with no current and limited visibility), we usually have the advanced diver complete this back home in the summer, by joining in with a traditional class for just this dive.
Some of dives that we commonly do on the Caribbean dive trips to satisfy the other four dives would be:
- Boat
- Night
- Deep
and in some cases if the destination allows:
- Drift
- Wreck
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Course Fee: $150.00; includes four of the above dives, the local navigation dive, and PADI's processing fee
Items Needed for Class: PADI Adventures in Diving Manual ($49.95) and all equipment including: compass, slate and dive light. For those students who have yet to own their equipment, rental is available. Make sure to reserve your equipment at least a week ahead of time.
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How to Sign Up: Call MSD Brainerd to discuss training dives after you have signed up for an MSD trip. International rips usually occur January-March and trip information comes out typically late summer.
