Just received PADI OW Certified on Radisson PG

[JanR]

My wife and I just completed our B2B on the PG. We used the first week to do the Open Water Certification in its entirety. A couple of observations:

 

--Dive Staff - Dominic (native Tahitian and head SCUBA fella') and Fred (our instructor) and all of the rest of the guys were fantastic. Instruction seemed to be thorough and we never felt that we were simply being part of a certification mill for them to simply get our $$. I'll warn that doing the entire certification in one week is a huge comitment in time. I would only recommend doing so if you understand you'll be sacrificing some other activites on-board or other excursions and/or are doing two weeks on the PG so that you can take in what you missed or simply relax. Also, understand that they will only do the certification if they have enough divers (we had 4 in our "class") They wouldn't have been able to run the course our second week because of too few students.

 

--Equipment - Still a novice diver, so I'm not qualified to make a comparison judgement. However, all of the necessary equipment is provided. Here's my skinny on the equipment.

o The regulators and octupuses are all Sherwood. As I'm now in the market for my own equipment, my experience (after only 7 dives) is pushing me to look at Sherwood as my primary consideration. Fellow divers who have hundreds of dives commented on being suprised that they (nor we) never experienced dry mouth with the Sherwood regulators used on board.

o The BCDs are either Sherwood or Mares. Through our pool and open water sessions, we cycled through both makes and several different styles (all vest-style BCDs, no back-inflated models). All worked fine and seemed to be well taken care of and maintained.

o Wetsuits. These were either Mares or Atlan shorties. I perfered the Atlan over the Mares as I seemed to get a better fit. Suits were faded, but were in good condition otherwise.

o Masks, fins, snorkels. Don't know the make or models of these, sorry. But there are several models of masks and snorkels provided. I didn't see any open-heel fins on-board. The masks, fins, and snorkels are the same ones issued to everyone on-board the first full day for snorkeling. The marina crew does a good job of making sure you get a proper fitting mask and fins, however.

o Tanks. Not sure of the model or manufacturer. However, the first week we were using the steel tanks. They had just received new aluminum tanks before the first week and we dove with them the second week.

 

--Dive Sites. We dove "Table Top" in Bora Bora twice as our 1st and 2nd OW dives then "Ledges" and "Shark Gallery" in Moorea as our 3rd and 4th OW dives for certification the first week. The next week we went out to Tapu in Bora Bora and redove "Ledges" and "Shark Gallery". If you saw a fish in "Finding Nemo", we saw it during these dives. In fact, Fred had to shoo the fish away several times because they were so thick we could not see his hand signals.

Key marquee sightings were multiple Moray Eel, dozens of Black-tip sharks, few handfuls of Lemon Sharks, a couple sea turtles, a Manta Ray, and 3 whales (although these were seen from the surface and we couldn't get close enough to dive with them before a couple of speedboats came up and chased them down deep.) For us, "Tapu" and "Ledges" were probably our favorite dives.

 

We just got our PADI cards in the mail today, I'm proud to read on the back the words "Paul Gauguin". It was a wonderful way to begin our SCUBA experience.

 

Jan