PADI Open Water Referral Course

PADI Open Water Referral Certification Course 

This course is exclusively for PADI Students who have initiated their certification training with another PADI Dive Center. **If you began with SSI, NAUI or another agency, this is NOT the option for you.** The PADI Open Water Referral Course is a one OR two-day course designed for the student who has already completed their academic and pool training at home or another location WITH a PADI DIVE CENTER.

This course hinges on the previous PADI Dive Center completing a basic set of scuba skills with you according to PADI Standards for us to complete the Open Water Dives ONLY of the PADI Open Water Certification Course.  Sometimes referrals may only need 1 ocean dive to complete their certification.  Most common is for referrals to need all 4 open water dives.  The final cost and schedule is 100% dependent on verification of completed training.  If the referring shop did not complete the referral training in full there may be additional time and additional fees for us to complete your training to PADI standards. For most referrals, this course will consist of the four open water dives needed to complete your certification over the period of two consecutive half days of in water training.

You will be required to provide 3 documents to us before we can finalize and confirm the duration and the pricing, so make sure to get this from your current training instructor/shop to avoid any delays:

1. Copy of Student Record Folder (this outlines the training that has been completed thus far
2. Original Medical Questionnaire and waiver if needed
3. eLearning Scores (if you did the Knowledge Development via eLearning, you’ll provide us with your score sheet)

Your Dives:

The PADI Open Water Certification Course is conducted at our SHORE location, NOT on a boat in the unpredictable open ocean waters.  The entire purpose of this course is to help you become a certified diver.  Our shore location is in more of a protected cove, allowing much more conducive conditions to the successful completion of the certification.  Once you are certified, you would be welcome to join us for any “FUN DIVES” from our boat or twilight night dive.  But for the purposes of accomplishing your certification in the fastest and easiest way possible, all training dives will be from our SHORE location.

With most referrals needing all 4 open water dives, your schedule will be two half days typically beginning at 12:30pm each day lasting for approximately 4 hours.  The first day of the training may sometimes be joining an existing Certification Course and the exact timing may be moved earlier or pushed back depending on their schedule of the day.  Our reservations team will be in touch with you the day of should a change in time be necessary.  (At most we typically only move the start time by 1 hour or so.  So please do not plan any other activities on this day from 11am – 6pm just to be safe)

Each dive will have a specific set of skills that must be accomplished successfully per PADI standards.  These are the same skills that you would have been trained on in the pool for your confined water dives, we are just putting them into practice now in the ocean.  Once the skills for that dive have been successfully completed, you’ll spend the remaining time of your tank on an actual dive in the ocean face to face with turtles and other marine life learning how to perfect your buoyancy and putting into practice the skills you’ve just accomplished. Per PADI standards, each dive does need to be at a minimum depth of 20’ for approximately 15-20 min.  Your instructor will ensure the minimum standards are met for each dive and will conduct additional dive time if conditions and the training allows. Important to understand:  Training dives are for the successful completion of the certification course and may not always allow for additional diving time depending on the circumstances of the day.

Making Reservations:

Please use the LIVE calendar of availability to select your FIRST DAY of diving. The second day will be the very next day and our reservations team will schedule that for you, so you don’t need to make 2 reservations.

Select the number of dives needed to complete your certification (Typically 4) and complete the required information.

Once we receive your reservation, our reservations team will verify that the date is available logistically to accommodate a referral and will send you a confirmation for the 2nd day as well.  Should your selected first day pose a problem with our schedule, we will call you to discuss.