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- I'm a Fish!
Yesterday Sandra and I were doing some drills in doubles at the BHB, trying to leverage as much of Fundies into new tools for photography and video.
We had a friend of Sandra's show up, in a new sidemount system. I won't name her, we like her..but wow...what a CF!
Also, Jax or any other sidemount divers I know, I'd like your feedback on this, because I really doubt this girl was set up by an instructor that rerally knew sidemount well enough to teach this or configure her.....and the scary thing is the goal was to use this in cave, because her back was too uncomfortable with back mounted doubles.
We had a friend of Sandra's show up, in a new sidemount system. I won't name her, we like her..but wow...what a CF!
Also, Jax or any other sidemount divers I know, I'd like your feedback on this, because I really doubt this girl was set up by an instructor that rerally knew sidemount well enough to teach this or configure her.....and the scary thing is the goal was to use this in cave, because her back was too uncomfortable with back mounted doubles.
- First issue...This girl, we will call her SM'er, can not really tell which tank she is breathing off of. She tells me she has to periodically switch tanks, so that she maintains a good margin in each. As she showed me her difficulty in knowing which tank she was breathing from, I took an immediate dislike to the system AS SHE WAS DIVING IT. In fact, after about 2 hours in water, she was breathing off the wrong tank, and almost got to OOA in one. This is in 12 feet of water where little stress can occur..... I really don't want to imagine her task loaded in cave with this problem,
- Bungee on necklace reg was so tight it was uncomfortable for her. Whoever helped her set it up, did no favors here.
- When in horizontal position, the large clips she was using to attach the bottom ends of the 2 side mounted tanks, allowed the bottoms of the tanks to hang almost 8 to 10 inches below SMer's stomach. In other words, she would be dragging the tanks in the sand and silt at the BHB, any time she tried to get close to the bottom to see a nudibranch. In a cave where you might like a SM system for a restriction, I would have expected the tanks would be even with your body, and not hanging far below your stomach. The system she has would create a silt storm if she ever needed to be near the bottom--she told me it was not going to be a problem, she would stay far off the bottom in cave....Again, this is way off in thinking for cave. In fairness, this girl is a great Nudi hunter, but I don't see her as a cave diver. No way. But this gear is making a bad situation, even worse. The desire for cave appears linked to some boy-friend of hers.
- She claims that she is too short to wear a Halcyon backlate and harness, and that her "cave" instructor was unable to make this anything but painful for her. I had a hard time buying this, and had her sit next to Sandra on a bench. They were almost exactly the same height sitting, and SM'er has wider shoulders than Sandra....Now Bob Sherwood took a Sandra that was sure a Halcyon Harness could not fit her, and made it the most comfortable BC system she has ever worn. It took a few hours and some tweaking, but it was worth every second. I have a near certainty the same would occur with SM'er. However, SMer had some instructor that did not know how to properly configure a BP/harness at all, telling her it would never fit her, and then selling her on the Sidemount system....If that is not bad enough, I have a really hard time believing that her system is set up correctly.
- There is no possible way I with my diving background, know anything close to enough to help a diver rigged sidemount like SM'er, if we were on a 100 foot dive or deeper. Sure I could pass her my long hose, but we are supposed to be far more proactive than that... I had a hard time being able to see which tank she was breathing from, and all of the issues she was having with the tanks hanging badly, and a host of other minor problems, were unlike any problems we face with our DIR related gear..... The whole episode was humorous at the Blue Heron Bridge, but it scares me that she may enter a cave with this mis-configured and wrongly arrived at "solution".