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Open Water Diver class is your ticket to the underwater world! This is how you get certified to go diving for the rest of your life, anywhere in the world (in conditions like you get certified in or better).

Salem Scuba’s PADI Open Water Diver class is the entry point into the amazing sport of diving! After this class, you’ll be certified to dive to a depth of 60 feet deep, anywhere in the world – with conditions that will be equal or better than your certification location. Additionally, your Open Water Diver certification lasts for the rest of your life!

Salem Scuba teaches an Open Water Diver class every month of the year and twice a month during the summer. You can also expect to have more pool and open-water time training time than anyone else. You’ll have plenty of quality time with your PADI Instructor and PADI Divemasters. By the time you’re Open Water Diver certified, you’ll be in love with SCUBA and be ready to explore the remaining 70% of the world that was previously off-limits!

Your Salem Scuba’s PADI Open Water Diver class consists of five eLearning sections (each with its own knowledge review), that will begin your Open Water Diver knowledge development. After your eLearning is completed, the next step will be confined water training at the Kroc Center in Salem. You / your class will participate with two separate, four to five hour pool sessions. These two sessions will allow you quality time to get comfortable with the needed skills and techniques to safely explore the underwater world. Lastly, we spend a Friday, Saturday and partial Sunday up Hoodsport, Washington. This is where you will complete your Open Water Diver certification by completing four open water dives. (Can’t make our monthly class schedules work? Talk to us about private classes.)

Additionally, Salem Scuba, and it’s instructional staff, has developed one of the best open-water training systems around. So many shops will only provide the four, open water check-out dives required by PADI, and then send you on your way. However, we know that it’s the first dive, the one where you’re just swimming around, going wherever the impulse takes you and spending whatever amount of time YOU decide looking at the variety of marine life – those are the dives that turns students into lifelong divers! Because of this, on your open-water weekend, you’ll have the chance to get in more than just the four training dives. You could dive a night dive and experience the bioluminescence, or dive a wreck and/or a wall dive, but most importantly – dive on your own plan with your buddies! (Don’t worry, if you’re signing up solo, you’ll make buddies in the class for sure!) Honestly, from more students than we can count, we’ve heard that it’s the bonus dives where they really started seeing themselves diving more often, because it was on those bonus dives that they got to relax, follow their own heart and pace, and enjoyed diving the most. Your training dives will be a blast, no doubt! However, the bonus dives have been the highlight of many lives, over many years.

Now, let’s move on to the costs. At Salem Scuba, we prefer to provide all of your costs, right up front. So, here they are:

• Open Water Diver class cost: $600
• Lodging for the Open Water Certification Weekend: $200
• Each student will need their own: mask, snorkel, fins and boots. (We don’t rent masks and/or snorkels. Even with defog, many divers spit in their mask, and no one really wants to put that on their face…) The great news, is that we have Discounted Student Packages for all, some, or even just one of these required items. Our discounted TUSA Student Package: $350 (normally $463). Our discounted Sherwood/Genesis package: $275 (normally $384).
• You’ll need to have gas and food for your weekend in Washington. Of course, we recommend carpooling up and back with folks you meet in your class. It’ll make the trip easier, as well as share the load on gas!
• As an added bonus, you won’t have to pay for any air-fills for those bonus dives! If you do the absolute max, that’s three dives beyond the training four (seven dives on your first weekend), those three extra air fills would be $10 (or more) for each fill at the local dive shop near where we stay in Hoodsport, WA.

The Open Water Diver class price includes:

• PADI Open Water Diver online course ($246)
• All instruction for the confined water training (pool), and open-water (Hoodsport) weekend
• Air-fills for the training dives, plus the (max) three bonus dives
• Your scuba gear rental, excluding: mask, snorkel, boots and fins. (Ages 16 and below, we provide boots and fins.)
• Entry into Sund Rock – a local marine preserve located on private property, where you will have some top notch diving ($25).
• PADI eCertification processing fee. (We’ve never charged extra for this, but some shops tack on up to $50, $65, or more, to process your eCertification.)

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s dive in! CONTACT SALEM SCUBA, and start the journey of a lifetime now!

You can also sign-up for the academic portion of your class online, click the link: Salem Scuba, PADI Open Water Diver.

If you sign-up by using one of Salem Scuba, PADI Open Water Diver links, don’t forget to call us, 503-588-DIVE (3483), to confirm your space in the class. (Remember to let us know which month’s class you would like to join.)