Sidemount started as a cave-diving response to passages too narrow for back-mounted doubles. Divers carried cylinders on their sides, one at a time if needed, threading through restrictions a back-mounted rig couldn't fit. The configuration has since spread to open-water tech diving for unrelated reasons: easier on the back when carrying gear to the water's edge, easier to monitor cylinder valves visually, more flexible for swapping or staging gas. The course covers the rigging, the trim adjustments, and the operational differences.
Gear assembly is half the course. A sidemount diver wears a specialised harness, bungees to hold the cylinder bottoms in trim, and a specific way of clipping the cylinder bolt-snaps to D-rings on the harness. The rest is in-water work. Trim is different from back-mount. Gas switches are different. Reaching valves on the cylinders requires a different motion. The course drills each adjustment until the configuration feels natural, since hesitation in a real technical dive is what creates problems.
Open to PADI Advanced Open Water Divers (or qualifying equivalent) aged 18 and up, with at least 30 logged dives. Enriched Air Diver certification is strongly recommended and may be required at the dive shop's discretion. Many candidates integrate Tec Sidemount with Tec 40, Tec 45 or Tec 50, since the configuration is functional on its own but most often used alongside other TecRec ratings. Ask the instructor about combined enrolment.
Children
A first taste of scuba for children aged 8 and older. They breathe underwater for the first time in shallow water, no deeper than 2 metres, with a PADI professional alongside the whole time. No exam. No certification at the end. It's a try-it experience, not a course.
Children
A scuba programme for children aged 8 and older. Sessions happen in a pool. Kids work through a sequence of AquaMissions that cover both core scuba skills and themed challenges like wreck diving, navigation, and underwater photography. Parental consent is required.