Do you plan your rec (not tech) dives?

[Tessunderwater]

Mine definitely involve a plan, how much planning just depends on the dive. Even the one solo dive I did there was a plan.


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[boulderjohn]

I would like to take a moment and compare what is described above as a rec dive done without a plan with the kind of sophisticated planning typically done with one kind of tech diving--cave diving. Let's see if we can highlight the difference.

Rec dive without a plan: The diver dives in the intended direction until either the pressure gauge indicates it is time to head for the surface or the computer indicates the diver has gotten close to the NDL for that dive. The diver usually does a safety stop at a prescribed depth for a prescribed amount of time.

Typical Well-planned cave dive: The diver dives in the intended direction until either the pressure gauge indicates it is time to return to the cave entrance. Nearing the entrance, the computer indicates if the diver needs to do a decompression stop for a specific amount of time or simply a safety stop at a prescribed depth for a prescribed amount of time.

I hope everyone can see the significance of the difference between the two.

 

[aceupmysleeve777]

I picked the second to last option. For local dives we do a real basic plan of the direction we'll dive, and a reconfirm of turn around due to air, nodeco, or being cold.

 

[Ste Wart]

It depends on the dive.

Shallow Photography I'll go until I get bored or the SD card is getting full.

30m wreck dive I'll put more consideration into the dive.

 

[TSandM]

boulderjohn, that's a little disingenous. You know that the diver doing the cave dive has planned his gas by looking at the depth contour of the cave, has a pretty shrewd idea of how long the dive is going to last, and has also planned what the deco is going to be before he gets in the water. It's a bit more than swim until you hit your gas limits and turn around and do what the computer tells you to do for a safety stop, don't you think?

EVERY dive I do involved at least a brief discussion about what the hard deck is (depth beyond which we are not going to go), what the basic dive profile is planned to be, and what the agreed-upon dive time is. Not every dive follows the plan . . . but if there is a deviation, it has to be run past and agreed upon by all the team members. So if you go down to your hard deck and ten feet lower, there's some feature somebody desperately wants to photograph, you turn around and ask the team, "Can we go there? Everybody okay with it?" And everybody knows that the gas reserves have now changed, so how long you can stay there is different, both from deco and from a gas standpoint. The plan is flexible, but not nonexistent; it sets parameters and expectations, and deviations have to be comfortable for all parties involved. If we get in the water and the viz is utterly fabulous, and we get to the agreed dive time, I just ask the rest of the team, "Are you cold? Okay to stay a little longer?" and see what folks say. If they're chilled or low on gas or bored or tired or whatever, they may say, "No, let's go home." And that's cool.

It seems like some folks think that having a plan means diving in lockstep, never looking up, and never changing if the ocean offers up a surprise. Not at all!

 

[boulderjohn]

boulderjohn, that's a little disingenous. You know that the diver doing the cave dive has planned his gas by looking at the depth contour of the cave, has a pretty shrewd idea of how long the dive is going to last, and has also planned what the deco is going to be before he gets in the water. It's a bit more than swim until you hit your gas limits and turn around and do what the computer tells you to do for a safety stop, don't you think?

I would say that on all the "unplanned" recreational dives, the divers also know the expected depth of the dive. If they have been diving for a while, they also have a pretty fair idea how long it will last. They also know how long their deco (safety stop) will be. My point is not that planned. My point is that there is a lot more planning in those "unplanned" dives than some people are willing to admit.

And on a cave dive, I will admit that I usually only have a rough idea ahead of time how much deco I am going to do at the end of a dive. All of my cave training and subsequent cave diving was done agencies and with people who do not believe computers are the spawn of the Devil. On every cave dive I have ever done in which there was a possibility of doing deco, we came to the end of the dive, looked at our computers, signaled to each other how much deco was called for, and we did what it called for. For some people, that sounds like something terrible, but I will admit to doing it, and I will further admit that I have done that with some extremely famous cave divers.

 

[Phil_C]

I would have to say that it depends on what sort of a dive I'm doing. If it is a straight forward fun dive for me and a dive buddy or small group of the people I regularly dive with, then we normally plan depth, expected max time, which we can predict quite accurately from our knowledge of our air consumption, and we will plan and discuss where we are going and who will lead/guide. Briefing will be just that, brief and will most likely be done in buddy pairs.

Because we dive together regularly I would have to confess we would not normally talk through things like lost diver routines, dive aborts, problems and so on, because we don't change these procedures and we regularly practice them together anyway.

However if I am guiding a group, which I quite often do these days, then I will plan in detail, and we will then brief the plan very fully, including going through buddy protocols, what is expected of buddies, dive emergencies, lost diver and return to boat procedures. We will always do the planning and briefing on the shore, and record it on a whiteboard which is on the wall of the kitting up area before we board the RHIB. The planning will also be included in the briefing which will also cover depth, time, profile, currents and what people can expect to see.

Regards - P

 

[rjack321]

And on a cave dive, I will admit that I usually only have a rough idea ahead of time how much deco I am going to do at the end of a dive. All of my cave training and subsequent cave diving was done agencies and with people who do not believe computers are the spawn of the Devil. On every cave dive I have ever done in which there was a possibility of doing deco, we came to the end of the dive, looked at our computers, signaled to each other how much deco was called for, and we did what it called for. For some people, that sounds like something terrible, but I will admit to doing it, and I will further admit that I have done that with some extremely famous cave divers.

You bring deco gas on every dive? How much? What mix(es)? This may work diving the mainlines at lazy-ville Ginnie or JB where an AL40 of O2 covers virtually any reasonable dive plan. Or most of MX where it can be a little challenging to get into deco at all. But this does not work in most other places, or even right in FL at Eagle's Nest for instance.

Recreationally I typically plan max depth, runtime, and "that way for 20mins then back over thataway" kind of directions.

 

[drrich2]

I think this thread shows all dives are planned; the questions are how much they're planned, and how much they should be for particular types of dive.

In Bonaire, I dive much as some of you described; walk in, drop to maybe 40 feet, head northward (if no current) parallel to shore, hit a turn PSI (maybe 1600 - 1800), head up to 20-30 feet, & head back. If I see something neat, like a huge spiny lobster, deeper, I zoom down & get some photos. If I run low on air a bit early, I can get shallower heading back, or go up top near shore & surface swim.

I don't need to tightly structure a dive like that, especially since I've done a lot of them. I'm on nitrox & never get anywhere near an NDL, have no deco obligation and can (slowly) ascend whenever I wish in most cases.

Even on charter boat trips in the Caribbean, where I & the group follow a dive guide, I am responsible to monitor my depth & gas supply & communicate the latter to the guide intermittently, and keep an eye out for my buddy. The dive briefing tends to give a rough idea of depth and time for the dive. Conditions are high viz., low current warm water.

Now, I was born in Pensacola, Fl. Let's say I decide to dive the Oriskany someday. That's another story. I'm a big guy, fair on air consumption but not real good, have AOW & Deep cert.s and have been deep, but I could be looking at a dive to 120 - 130 feet, where gas consumption will be rapid & NDL time short, far from the surface.

Time to break out the training I got in the SDI Solo Diver course; estimating my gas consumption, the times for different stages of the dive, about how much air (or nitrox) I should need, and figuring on a healthy reservoir. Now, since I've got a nitrox. cert., time to see if I can rent a big tank (say, 120 or 130 steel) with a custom nitrox mix (EAN 128, perhaps?) that'll let me get that deep, but stay down longer than air. And the 'turn point' of the dive is more important because I can't just ascend 30 feet to the surface within a minute! And on a dive like this, rather than 'wander around ogling whatever part of the reef time allows,' I may have a premeditated plan to swim around looking at a specified part of the ship.

Similarly, a plan to dive a North Carolina wreck to see numbers of sand tiger sharks at around 120 feet would differ from diving 'The Cliff' at Bonaire.

I can only imagine what planning a deep tech. dive with multiple gasses & stage bottles & staged decompression with redundancy and adequate gas supplies for self & buddy entails.

Richard.

 

[chrpai]

In Bonaire, I dive much as some of you described; walk in, drop to maybe 40 feet, head northward (if no current) parallel to shore, hit a turn PSI (maybe 1600 - 1800), head up to 20-30 feet, & head back. If I see something neat, like a huge spiny lobster, deeper, I zoom down & get some photos. If I run low on air a bit early, I can get shallower heading back, or go up top near shore & surface swim.

That sounds a lot like a typical Lake Travis dive. Drop down to 40-100 feet looking for optimal vis. Head in one direction until turn pressure, note the time and ascend to about half the depth for the half of the return trip and half of that depth for the remainder. Then burn off the rest (200psi is a nice place to stop) in the shallows near the exit point.