Own gear for a better experience!
So you’ve finished your open water certification, and maybe even some more advanced certs. Congratulations! Now you’re excited and a real scuba diver, and part of being a ‘real’ scuba diver is having gear. How do you know which scuba gear to buy first?. There’s a good chance that you can’t afford to buy all of the gear you need at once, but, you can probably afford to buy one thing now, and another thing later, and so on until you’ll eventually have it all. Putting aside the fins, mask, and snorkel that you may already have has a keen snorkeler what’s next.
First piece of gear you should get: dive computer. Many dive shops and tour operators require you to have a dive computer nowadays, and while some of those shops rent them, others do not. Even if you do rent one, you’re still not going to be familiar with it or how it works. It’s for these reasons: increasingly required, not always available for rent, and a fantastic learning tool that we highly recommend at least a simple dive computer as your first purchase.
Second piece of gear you should consider: wetsuit. Main reason is is fit and comfort. What if they don’t have your size? What if they don’t have the thickness you want? What if the style of suit just doesn’t fit your body type comfortably? You’re going to be wearing that wetsuit a lot, so you want it to be as comfortable as it can be, and you need it to fit correctly or it’s pretty worthless for warmth. You can achieve these things by buying your own suit, maybe even having them tailored for. So, if you’re at all concerned about comfort and having a suit that fits you like a glove, this is a very good reason to buy your own. If you buy a suit, at least you know the only person who peed in it is you….
