If you’re ready to take the plunge, open the door to unparalleled adventures beneath the waves, and add scuba diving to your life skills this is where it starts.
Get your scuba diving certification with the PADI Open Water Diver course – the world’s most popular and widely recognised scuba course. A PADI® certification card is your passport to explore the world below the surface, and is proof that you’ve successfully completed all the training requirements to allow you to dive, either independently or with any dive centre anywhere in the world to a maximum of 18 meters depth.
Scuba diving requires specific knowledge, skills training, and practice, and you’ll acquire this in three parts. You’ll learn the theoretical part by yourself and at your own pace, using PADI eLearning on a computer or mobile device. This makes it easy to fit scuba lessons into the busiest schedule, and you can complete it on the beach, or even at home before coming on vacation (time commitment: 5-10 hours).
Next comes the skills training, where you’ll be taught all about the equipment and how to use it, and how to perform a range of skills that will enable you to dive and to solve any issues that you may face underwater, over the course of 5 sessions in shallow and controlled water conditions. Following this, you’ll be ready to put all your knowledge and skills into practice in 4 open water dives, taking you to different dive sites and to progressively deeper depths.
As highly trained PADI instructors, we always ensure that students are comfortable and have mastered every skill before moving on, so that everyone we teach is fully prepared to dive safely and self-sufficiently. As such, there is no set time scale for completion of the course, though you should allow around 4 days to do it.
As all PADI instructors should be trained in the same system and to the same high standards, it is also possible to complete the skills training part in a pool at a dive centre back home before leaving, and the instructor will sign a referral form verifying that all the skills have been taught so that you can complete the final 4 open water dives in two days of diving in the beautiful blue sea around Skiathos.