William Welbourn
Utila divemaster internship or Roatan ...

When deciding where in the Bay Islands to do your divemaster internship, you should carefully weigh the pros and cons of both Utila and Roatan. In this post, I hope to help you decide which island may be the best fit for you.

Utila divemaster internship or Roatan divemaster internship?

Looking for flights to and from Roatan - Skiplag!

If you don’t know what skiplagging is, its picking a cheap flight to an airport that through or close to where you want to go to. I do it often and rarely pay more than $250 for a one way flight from from Roatan to either Miami, Dallas, Atlanta or Houston.

So if you are interested in trying it, the best airports right now to search for a flight from Roatan are MSP, SLC and DTW.

Getting to Roatan is harder, there is a good deal from LAX to RTB going through Guatemala city right now for $225 one way (I found it on skiplagged.com). There are other options for less than $300 one way from many of the new york airports and Atlanta.

Here is what you search should look like:



Here is a nice piece about the DM internship from a couple of our recent interns.

"The way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure."


– William Feather


GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR DIVEMASTER INTERNSHIP


by Paul “Law” McKenna #449483 and Rob “Order” Duttchen #448540


The Dive Master (DM) certification is the first rung of the PADI Professional ladder. In scuba diving, it is the point when you move from being a recreational diver to being a dive professional. Like any endeavour in life, where you train and how you approach your training will make the difference between becoming a true professional and merely obtaining a certification.


Attitude


"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." – Henry Ford.


Come to your DM internship with a desire to learn! There are many skills, techniques and tricks that will make you successful in the DM role. To maximize your learning during your internship, you must approach every day, every task, and every opportunity with a desire to grow. Ask yourself, what can I learn from this?


Daily tasks like checking equipment, mopping the shop floor, emptying the garbage, operating the compressor station, and hauling tanks are not likely going to challenge your intellect. But these tasks are teaching you the grind of the day to day life as a dive professional. You are learning what working in the dive industry is. If this is what you're hoping to do, embrace every task. A positive attitude, coupled with an understanding of why you're doing this work, will go a long way to making even the most mundane task have meaning.


Preparation


"Chance favours the prepared mind" – Louis Pasteur.


No one will make you come for DM training, having pre-read the DM course manual, watched the PADI DM video, having sought out online or YouTube resources. How, or what, you do to prepare is totally up to you. Ask yourself this. What kind of DM would I want to dive with, and what kind of DM do I want to be?


Purchasing your PADI DM Crew Pack will allow you to pre-read the course material you will apply during your internship. You can highlight the answers to your knowledge reviews and condense the course material into study notes that you can use to prepare for the two exams on the DM course. The online resources by PADI Multi-Platinum Course Director Will Welbourn https://goprocaribbean.com/divetheory will provide you with a solid foundation to tackle your DM exams. Will's courses instruct the material and foster a solid understanding of the subject matter required as a dive professional.


By arriving for your DM course prepared, you will reduce academic stress through familiarity with the course material. Preparation assists not only in completing your knowledge reviews during the course but by allowing you mental bandwidth to learn and process all of the intangible practical skills you are taught daily during your internship. Is it possible to come in without preparation? Absolutely, but remember you are becoming a professional; prepare like a professional! You may not be able to pre-learn everything, but everything you pre-learn will help you be the best you can be.


Teamwork


"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each individual member is the team." - Phil Jackson.


Achieving your DM certification is an individual achievement, but you won't be doing it alone! Almost every component of the DM internship requires you to operate effectively as part of a team. From being a dive buddy to being the last one out of the water at the end of a dive, your individual role is one part of the larger operation.


When you are tired after a long afternoon of diving, it's the team that will be there to help you unload the boat. When you can't quite master a skill in the skills circuit, it will be a teammate who comes alongside to help you hone the elusive element. At first, you will be the beneficiary of the teamwork. As you find your footing in the program, you will move between helper and helpee. As your time as DMT draws to a close, you will pay forward to new DMTs the helping hands that made you successful. You are working toward an individual goal, but you cannot achieve that goal without the team.


Be Proactive


"If you want to know your place in this world: you find your path by walking it.”

– Maya Angelou.


As a PADI Professional, you are a leader. Good leaders seize the initiative. It may be acceptable for a dive customer to look around at what needs to be done, knowing someone else will do it. As a DM, your job is to assess what needs to happen and make it happen. Learn the routine, daily jobs and expectations and proactively work to complete them; without being asked.


Look at the training calendar for the day, is there equipment you can get ready to facilitate the training? How many people are scheduled for the boat? Can you pull the required tanks? Do tanks need to be filled? Exercise initiative, fill the tanks, load the boat and be the one who makes things happen, rather than the one waiting to be told what to do.


Enjoy Yourself


"While accomplishing your dreams, don't forget to enjoy life too."

– Unknown


Our DM course ranged in age from 18 – 66, from high school educated, to a legal degree, from Europe, North America, and Central America. We were all there with singleness of purpose, coalesced around a community that we built together. Nothing mattered, not our background, education, race, religion or gender. We were there to dive, enjoy the tropical weather in Roatan, socialize, study, grow, and develop as budding dive professionals.


Along the way, we had laughs, frustrations, challenges, victories and the occasional defeat. In it all, and through it all, we had FUN. We laughed at inside jokes that emerged from the day's activities. We laughed to celebrate the success of finding the boat on a dive lead or at the failure of not finding it! We laughed at Molson, the Coconut Tree Pug, as we navigated around him, perched at the top of the stairs obstructing us as we carried the SCUBA tanks back from the boat. We celebrated together with a sense of accomplishment after completing the equipment exchange test. We made memories of people, places, and things that come along once in a lifetime. Don't be so focused on the destination that you forget to look around and enjoy the ride.


Dive Your Dream


"True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction and recognition." – Fredrick Herzberg.


The learning you take from your Divemaster course, coupled with the memories, will stay with you for a lifetime. You will feel a sense of pride and accomplishment as you join the ranks of the PADI community of dive professionals. Treasure the experience, work hard and apply yourself, and your time in DM training will be a highlight of a life well-lived. Good luck and good diving

How to prepare for your PADI Instructor Development Course

The PADI instructor development course can either be a hugely fun and rewarding learning experience or it can be a very stressful one. Which of the two experiences you will have depends entirely on your preparation level and the length of the IDC course you choose.

This blog post is mainly aimed at discussing preparation for the IDC. However, step one of the preparation is choosing the right course. If the course is not spread over at least 14 days, it's going to be stressful, so choose wisely.

Now for what you can do in the weeks or months before the course to ensure you get the most out of it.

Doing your IDC immediately after your DM is the best thing. Your knowledge will be fresh and your dive skills practiced. Regardless of whether you are doing the IDC immediately after you complete your DM or years after you have done your DM, here is some simple advice to help you start preparing.

Dive theory

First and most importantly dive theory. Over 75% of people who fail the PADI Instructor exam fail the dive theory written exams. This always surprises me because it is the single easiest thing to prepare for using independent learning materials before you even start your instructor development course.

You should arrive at your IDC expecting to sit a practice dive theory exam on day one. You should also arrive expecting to pass that exam. The candidates I teach who appear stressed throughout the course are the ones that did not study dive theory before the course started. There are plenty of websites and tutorial videos on YouTube that will help you arrive fully prepared. During the IDC itself, you want to be able to spend the evenings doing the homework that has been assigned that day. This will include classroom, confined water, and open water teaching presentations. If you do not spend time on these, you will perform badly the next day. If you have to study dive theory at night as well as doing your homework, you will not have the time needed to prepare, you will be tired and stressed and your overall performance the next day will reflect that.

Many people think that the dive theory will be taught as part of the IDC, and in most cases, it will be. However, dive theory sections are made optional in my IDC. They are always the last session if the day. This allows those that have studied in advance to spend their evenings on more important things, like getting a good meal, doing their homework and getting a good night’s rest. Maybe even doing a relaxing night dive.

So the most important thing you need to do to prepare for your instructor development course is do practice dive theory quizzes. If you do ALL the practice quizzes on my website and can get 100% easily, you are looking good!

Dive Skills

To become a PADI Divemaster, you would have had to demonstrate 24 basic scuba skills. By demonstrating I mean perform them so that a student diver who has never attempted the skill themselves could easily replicate what you have done.

Get your instructor manual out and look at the list of 24 skills. (Its in the DM part of your maual).

Think about each skill and how you would verbally describe the steps involved in performing the skill. Then once you have a list of steps, think about how you will exaggerate those steps when you are performing them in the demonstration. It’s a great idea to watch videos of people demonstrating the skills to get ideas.

Try to actually practice them in the four weeks before the IDC start date if at all possible.

Instructor Manual Familiarization

Your PADI instructor manual actually has a section at the beginning on to use it. If you have read it yet; now would be a good time!

The instructor manual is obviously broken down into an instructor guide for all the PADI courses and programs, amongst a few other things. Each section regardless of what course or program it is addressing has the same basic layout.  

Look through the manual and try to get more familiar with the layout. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as a starting point. Think about how you would anser each of these questions in just one sentence!

What do I find in Section 1 of the Instructor manual for any given PADI course?

What do I find in Section 2 of the Instructor manual for any given PADI course?

What do I find in Section 3 of the Instructor manual for any given PADI course?

What do I find in Section 4 of the Instructor manual for any given PADI course?

What is in the General Standards and Procedures, Training Standards section?

What is in the General Standards and Procedures, Paperwork section?

What is in the General Standards and Procedures, Key Standards section?

What is in the Professional membership guide?

PADI Course Familiarization

The final and possibly hardest thing to do is try to assist on one Open Water, one Advanced and one recue course as close to your IDC start date as possible. The more familiar you are with the courses and how experienced instructors teach them, the easier your IDC will be.

What to expect at the PADI instructor exam (IE)

The PADI instructor exam or IE is usually spread over 2days. In some locations which have a large number of candidates it can turn into a marathon extending over three days.

The IE is split into 4 components:

1.      Written Exams

2.      Classroom presentation

3.      Confined water teaching

4.      Open water teaching

The best card to use when traveling, i just found it!

I recently got a  Revolut card and its pretty amazing.

You download the app and set up an account, then you get a visa card sent to you through the post. Why is it so amazing?

There are a few reasons:

1) The exchange rate you get using it abroad is better than anyone else, exchange rates similar to the ones you find on XE.com. 

2) No foreign transaction fees in ATMs or normal spending

3) The best thing is that you can use the app and your phone to freeze and unfreeze the card protecting you from card cloning, it also uses your phone location to only allow transactions in the same country you are in.

4) You can use it like a bank account and make transfers to people in any country with no fees

It costs nothing to get and you can easily load money onto it from any other card or bank account you have using the app. If you are traveling abroad, don't go without a Revolut card. 

Bay Islands IDC

The Bay Islands is one of the most popular areas in the world to become a dive instructor. Why?

The cost of living in the Bay Islands is low. Roatan and Utila both have plenty of options for both accommodation and food that suit people on a budget. Roatan is a much larger island, that is far easier to get to, as a result it also hace plenty of more luxurious options as well. This sometimes give Roatan the reputation of being more expensive. It isn't, it just had a wider range of accommodation and restaurant options.

Most people visiting the Bay Islands will choose one of the direct flights to Roatan International Airport from Dallas, Miami, Houston, Montreal, Toronto, Atlanta or Grand Cayman. There are also flight to mainland San Pedro which tend to be cheaper, but require an internal connection, either by air or bus and boat.

The water conditions are just perfect for learning to dive, or learning to teach scuba diving through the PADI IDC. The water is warm, clear and calm. The reef is healthy an stunning dive sites are a matter of minutes boat ride from the shore.

If you are thinking of becoming a scuba instructor, look no further than the Bay Islands of Honduras for your IDC.

A load of new practice physics questions have been published!

I have created a quiz you can take over and over, you would probably have to take it at least 8 times before you will have seen all the questions as it randomly selects 20 questions out of a bank of over 100 questions each time you take it! So play it over and over!

Many of the questions i have not yet covered in my notes on the website. I will eventually have study notes and practice videos to cover all these questions.