Your complete dive store: not just the greatest variety of boat dives: courses, gear and trips!
Grey Nurse Charters - Boat diving, Dive Newcastle, Dive Swansea, Dive Nelson Bay, Dive Port Stephens, Learn to Dive with Padi Dive Courses, Wreck Diving, Shark Diving, Dive Broughton Island, Scuba Diving Gear & Dive Travel
Learn to Dive with a PADI Open Water Course
Small groups, 3 day course, not hidden costs, all gear included
About the Course
The PADI Open Water course is the World's most recognised entry level dive course. Over 900000 divers get their PADI Open Water Certification every year.
There are 3 parts to the PADI Open Water course:
elearning - all the theory you'll need to understand the diving equipment and practices you'll need and effects of being underwater.
Pool session - all the basic skills and emergency training you need to be comfortable underwater.
4 x Open Water Dives - starting your underwater experience and complete your course with 4 dives practising the skills you learnt in the pool and enjoying the underwater environment.
Click on the photo to register for PADI eLearning
You'll need to include the location of your course as Australia and affiliate with Grey Nurse Charters. This will take you about 8-10 hours complete at your own rate
The Pool Session
Grey Nurse Charters uses Lambton Aquatic Centre as our preferred training facility. The session starts in shallow water in the Olympic pool but as the students develop skills and confidence we move firstly to the deep end before completing the course in the 5.5 metre deep Diving pool - there is no training facility for SCUBA diving around Newcastle better than this pool. (If Lambton is unavailable our alternative is Mayfield Pool which has a deep section of 3.3 metres which is still better than any other pool).
At the pool we'll cover all the diving skills and emergency skills you'll need to start diving including gear assembly and pre-dive checks; out-of-air emergency drills including alternate air ascent, controlled emergency swimming ascent and weight drop ascent; and dive skills mask clearing, regulator exchanging, finning, removing and replacing gear underwater and buoyancy and trim control.
There is nowhere better than the 5.5 metre diving pool to master buoyancy control before open water dives.
Open Water Dives
The PADI Open Water Course include 4 open water dives. We do the dives over 2 days so dives aren't rushed; sure you'll practise skills but with small groups you'll have plenty of time to enjoy the dive and reinforce the main skills of diving - buoyancy control, trim, finning and monitoring air consumption - what all good divers do while they are seeing stuff!
The sites we visit depend on tide times, weather and other conditions but generally include at Nelson Bay - Little Beach or Pipeline sites for Dives 1 & 2 and often Fly Point Marine Reserve for dives 3 & 4.
When tide times or other reasons such as the holiday crowds make Nelson Bay sites unsuitable we often move to Swansea Bridge another popular local site that amazes students with its prolific fish life.
Optional Boat Dives
To offer our students more out of their courses we offer a double boat dive as an alternative for the last two dives. This allows students to experience the dive sites only boats can offer while still under the care of an instructor. They learn skills such as backward rolls as well as descending and ascending an anchor line.
We discount our boat dives for students doing courses with us. We generally take students to Moon Island off Swansea or Broughton Island from Port Stephens.
