Nailer99
Contributor
Not to mention the huge advantages in NDLs brought on by wearing a Nitrox blending station on your back. The deciding moment for me was a dive with a buddy of mine last February- he was on a CCR, I was on OC- double 98's, no stage bottle, breathing air. We went to a local dive site that's very current sensitive, and can't be dived unless the tides are right- one of my favorite dives, partly because I can't dive it as much as I would like to! we worked our way down to ~120 fsw, and spent about 15 minutes there before working our way back up- anyway, by the time we were back in the shallows, I'd stupidly racked up 20 minutes of deco- I had plenty of gas to do it with, but I hadn't brought any 02 to accellerate it with, and it was COLD- Puget Sound in February, and we'd been down for 80 minutes at this point. Comparing our deco obligations, my buddy showed me that he was clear to surface- he'd never even hit deco! Did I mention that I had to pee really badly, and hadn't hooked up my pee valve, or invested in dry gloves at that point? My buddy was a trooper, and hung out with me at the 15 foot stop for the full 20 minutes......when I finally got back to the truck, after a full hour and forty-two minutes underwater, my hands were useless clubs of meat....it took me forever just to remove my fins, and getting the truck unlocked and removing my gear took an eternity. After that dive, I did the following things:
1- bought drygloves
2- started saving for a rebreather
3-started reading everything I could get my hands on about closed-circuit diving.
I just finished my training on the COPIS Megalodon, and did my second dive since class today- at the same dive site I mentioned above, with the same buddy. My review of the class can be found
HERE.
I'm a new convert to the dark side, but I love it. I agree that it's not for everyone, but in the tech diving arena, there is simply no better way- CCRs are the future, period.
1- bought drygloves
2- started saving for a rebreather
3-started reading everything I could get my hands on about closed-circuit diving.
I just finished my training on the COPIS Megalodon, and did my second dive since class today- at the same dive site I mentioned above, with the same buddy. My review of the class can be found
HERE.
I'm a new convert to the dark side, but I love it. I agree that it's not for everyone, but in the tech diving arena, there is simply no better way- CCRs are the future, period.