PADI Advanced Open Water
The PADI Advanced Open Water course will expand your experience levels into actual diving circumstances.
Ever thought about diving on an awe inspiring ship wreck or learning how to take pictures of the things you see? Then this course is for you!
It takes the skills learnt in the PADI Open Water course, develops them and then moves you into new and exciting areas of scuba diving.
1. Course overview
The focus in this course is “thinking like a diver” where we move you from a novice diver into a more rounded experienced diver.
This certification will also qualify you to dive to an incredible maximum depth of 30m (if you’re under 15 years old, this will be 21m). This is so, so desirable for seeing much more – it really opens up the ocean to you.
You’ll get to complete 5 PADI Adventure Dives; Navigation, Deep, and 3 additional adventures of your choice.
You already need to be a PADI Open Water diver (or equivilent certification from another training agency), and you need to be at least 12 years old.
2. What you'll learn
This course is all about diving, and building your skills in the water so you can experience new adventures. It builds upon your existing knowledge learned in the Open Water course, allowing you to learn about the things that interest you most as a diver.
The only compulsary dives are the Navigation and Deep adventure dives. You get to pick 3 more from the list below.
For UK waters, we typically recommend Dry Suit, Wreck, and Digital Underwater Photographer – but the choice really is yours!
3. Equipment
Unlike our introductory courses, you’ll either need to provide your own scuba kit, or hire some from us for the duration of your course. If you want to look at purchasing your own, we’d be happy to help you also.
As a minimum, you’ll need a mask, snorkel, fins, buoyancy compensating jacket (BCD), scuba regulator, and the instrumentation to monitor your depth and air supply. You can hire cylinders from us, or bring your own in-test cylinders with you to be refilled at the dive site.
You’ll also need adequate exposure protection for the conditions you’ll be diving in (this could be a wetsuit or drysuit) to keep you comfortable on your dives. If you dive in a dry suit, you need to ensure you have the correct training for this too.
Some courses may require additional equipment, depending on the individual course requirements.
Any equipment you provide yourself must be in a serviced, well-maintained and safe condition. No exceptions!
4. Learning materials
We will send you PADI Advanced Open Water e-Learning materials, which will take you to the registration area of the PADI site. This teaches you the background information you need for your 5 chosen adventure dives, and allows you to study at your own pace.
You can complete this on pretty much any device with an internet connection.
Once you’ve completed this, you are ready for your dives with us!
5. Course options
In most cases, we prefer to take you away for a weekend of diving to earn your certification at Capernwray (in our opinion, the best inland dive site in the UK!).
As well as being an awesome social weekend with the team and other like-minded divers, you’ll get the best experience possible.
During the weekend, you also have the option of our ‘plus package’ to make your Advanced Open Water course even more exciting! You’ll not only gain your Advanced Open Water certification, but with an additional dive you’ll gain another certification in a specialty course.
The additional experience really is invaluable, giving you better awareness and skill in the water.
In addition to your Deep and Navigation dives, you can also pick three of the following adventure dives:
- Enriched Air
- Dry Suit
- Wreck Diver
- Night Diver
- Underwater Photographer
- Search and Recovery
- Underwater Naturalist
- Diver Propulsion Vehicle
- Boat Diver
- Drift Diver
- AWARE Fish Identification
- Underwater Naturalist
There is no other PADI speciality that will benefit your diving more. Scuba divers like to be neutrally buoyant so they neither sink nor float. It can be a tricky thing. Divers who’ve mastered the highest performance levels in buoyancy stand apart. You’ve seen them underwater. They glide effortlessly, use less air and ascend, descend or hover, almost as if by thought. They interact gently with aquatic life and affect their surroundings minimally.
As a PADI Dry Suit Diver you will stay warm, dry and be comfortable on all dives. Unlike a wetsuit, a dry suit seals you off from the outside water and that keeps you warm, even in very cold water. During your course you’ll not only cover the background knowledge related to dry suit diving, you’ll get plenty of practice in UK waters to put that theory into practice.
The PADI Digital Underwater Imaging course is one of the most popular diving specialties, the rise of digital underwater photography & videography has made it easier and more fun than ever. The fun part about this course is learning to capture images to share with your friends and family. It’s a great way to re-live the adventures you’ve had.
The PADI Enriched Air Diver course is by far our most popular PADI diver specialist course. It allows you to dive with enriched air blends of up to 40% oxygen, rather than just standard air.
With this you get more time underwater exploring and enjoying your dive. This happens because enriched air extends your no decompression limits. We highly recommend this speciality for warm water diving. If you’re going abroad and want to maximise your underwater adventure then this is the course for you.
Ready to start?
You can book and pay for your course with us online, either for yourself or someone else. We’ll send over any e-Learning content to your email, and we can then work with you on suitable dates and times for any practical sessions.
We have availability throughout the year, although if you have specific dates or a timeline in mind, please check with us first.
Your next adventure...
Once you complete the PADI Advanced Open Water course, you’ll most likely want to check out our PADI Rescue Diver certification course.
This course expands upon your experience level, expanding your sphere of awareness to encompass other divers.
Understand the prevention, recognition and the essential knowledge required to deal with most situations around and underwater. It’s a pivotal step in expanding your knowledge and experience, and often the most fun too.
The Stellar Crew
We have a very straightforward philosophy; we are totally committed to ensuring you – our customer – have the best, safest and most enjoyable experience possible. It’s as simple as that!
Here at Stellar, we all love to scuba dive, and we love to have fun doing it. We absolutely want you to feel the same way when you dive with us.
We can very proudly boast that we’re a PADI 5-star Instructor Development Centre. Put simply, this means we also train the trainers – so naturally we take our education of safe diving very seriously. You’re in safe hands, and you’ll have a lot of fun in the process too.