Navigation Specialty on Koh Lanta

Taking the SSI Navigation Specialty course here on Koh Lanta strengthens your diving skills and increases your self-reliance, making every dive safer, more efficient, and more enjoyable.

Here are 6 reasons why you should take the Navigation Specialty course here on Koh Lanta:

1. Improved Dive Safety

Enhanced Orientation: Learning to navigate with a compass and natural landmarks ensures that you can always find your way back to the exit or boat. This reduces the chance of getting lost and surfacing far from your intended location.

Reduced Air Consumption: Efficient navigation prevents unnecessary detours, allowing you to save air by swimming more directly between key points.

Better Buoyancy Control: The course often emphasises navigating while maintaining proper buoyancy, which improves your overall diving skills and conserves energy.

2. Increased Confidence and Independence

Less Reliance on Guides: You’ll become less dependent on dive guides or buddies for orientation, allowing for more self-sufficient dives, especially in new or complex environments.

Reduced Stress: Understanding how to navigate underwater reduces anxiety and stress, particularly when visibility is poor or dive sites are unfamiliar.

3. Mastering the Use of Tools

Compass Navigation: You’ll develop proficiency with using a compass, learning skills like reciprocal headings and plotting multi-leg dive routes.

Natural Navigation: The course teaches you to use environmental cues like sunlight, currents, and underwater topography to complement your compass work.

Special Navigation Techniques: You'll practise techniques like counting kick cycles and using reference points for better accuracy during navigation.

4. Longer, More Enjoyable Dives

Maximised Dive Time: By knowing where you are and where you’re going, you can optimise your dive time, focusing on enjoying marine life rather than figuring out where to go.

Efficient Exploration: The skills learned allow you to explore dive sites more thoroughly and confidently, making your dives more productive and enjoyable.

5. Career Opportunities in Diving

Dive Leadership Roles: Proficient navigation skills are essential if you plan to lead dives, as you’ll be responsible for guiding others and ensuring safe, efficient routes underwater.

Professional Diver: The specialty is a prerequisite for the SSI Divemaster course. It also opens doors for more challenging dives, including technical or cave diving.

6. Applicability in Various Dive Conditions

Low Visibility Dives: Navigation skills become invaluable in environments with poor visibility (e.g., murky lakes, wreck dives, or night dives) where natural references are limited.

Complex Dive Sites: On large, intricate reefs or multi-level wrecks, understanding how to navigate prevents disorientation and enhances the dive experience.

Navigation Specialty Course Content

SSI Specialty Courses on Koh Lanta

The SSI Navigation Specialty course here on Koh Lanta consists of knowledge development, followed by 2 open water Navigation training dives.

Navigation Specialty: Knowledge Development

Firstly, you will need to register with SSI and affiliate to Dive & Relax.

Once your booking is confirmed, we can release the course materials. This means that you can complete the course theory and quizzes on the SSI App before you arrive on Koh Lanta.

You’ll learn all about:

• Navigating By Nature
• Why Use a Compass?
• How a Compass Works
• Selecting a Compass
• Types of Compass
• Caring for your Compass
• Using a Compass
• Travelling To and From Your Entry Point
• A Side Trip From The Dive Site
• General Orientation
• For Surface Orientation
• Returning to a Dive Site
• Limited Visibility
• Night Diving
• Deep Diving
• Beach Diving
• Currents
• Multiple Course Headings
• Dead Reckoning
• Compass Exploration
• Plotting a Body of Water

Navigation Specialty: Open Water Dives

The practical part of the Navigation Specialty course here on Koh Lanta consists of 2 dives in a single day, and is recommended near the beginning of your diving holiday, so that you gain the benefit in your later dives.

During the Navigation course dives on Koh Lanta, you'll cover:

• Natural and Reciprocal Navigation Surface Demonstration
• Dive Planning
• Pre-dive Check
• Buoyancy Check at the Surface in Deep Water
• Natural Navigation
• Determining Swim Speed
• Reciprocal Compass Course
• Combining Natural and Compass Navigation
• Multiple-heading Navigation Surface Demonstration
• Multiple-heading Compass Course
• Dead Reckoning Course
• Current Correction

You should have dived recently in order to take part in this course. If you have not dived for a while then you should do at least 1 day of Fun Diving to properly prepare yourself for the SSI Navigation Specialty course.

The best locations to teach the Navigation Specialty course are at Koh Haa, Koh Rok, Koh Bida, or Koh Phi Phi.

We prefer to teach SSI courses, what's the difference between SSI and PADI?

SSI Navigation Specialty Price

Perfect your Underwater Navigation on Koh Lanta

The price for the SSI Navigation Specialty course on Koh Lanta is ฿5,310 when booked online in advance (1 day, 2 dives).

• Open to all certified divers (SSI, PADI, BSAC, CMAS, etc.).
• Includes lunch and soft drinks on the boat.
• You should have proof of recent diving, or do 1 day Fun Diving before starting the Navigation Specialty course.
• Does not include Marine Park Diving Fee: Thai ฿240, Foreigner ฿600, per day.

See a complete list of all our Koh Lanta Diving Prices.

Scuba Courses Available on Koh Lanta

Learn to Dive on Koh Lanta

We teach a full range of SSI recreational scuba diving courses here on Koh Lanta, from the entry level Open Water Diver course all the way up to Diver Stress & Rescue, together with numerous specialty courses.

• Discover Scuba Diving
• Open Water Course
• Scuba Skills Refresher
• Enriched Air Nitrox
• Deep Diver Specialty
• Perfect Buoyancy Specialty
• Navigation Specialty
• Advanced Adventurer
• React Right - First Aid & CPR
• Diver Stress & Rescue
• Diving with Kids

Are you Fit to Dive?

Dive trips & Scuba Courses on Koh Lanta

Whilst scuba diving is a very safe activity, it is important to know that you are fit to dive and that you do not have any fitness or medical conditions that could increase your risk of an accident underwater.

• Download and read the Diver Medical Questionnaire.

If you answer 'yes' to any of the medical questions, please print the entire form and take to your family doctor who will assess your fitness to dive. Your doctor will complete page 3, which we must see before you can start diving.

Find out more with the UK based Diving Diseases Research Centre.