A couple days ago my buddy was taking a little extra time getting ready on the shore, and I casually lay back on the surface, quitely relaxing while he was making his final preparations. I was wearing my customary BP/W. I started thinking about this thread and how what I was casually and easily doing was supposedly impossible.
John, surely you don't mean to extrapolate your experience to conclude that, because it works for you (presumably in freshwater and perhaps with steel twins and a drysuit), it works for everyone? You're better than that.
Hello everyone
I am in the process of choosing a new (travel) BC, and the first consideration is jacket vs wing. I love the feeling of the wing from my little tech diving experience BUT I read in various places that one of the disadvantages of the wing is that you have to work to keep your head above the water at the surface as the wing is pushing you into an horizontal position head down.
I dive a BP&W more or less all the time except when I'm checking out extra gear that I keep around for other people etc.
Despite what some very experienced divers will tell you, there is a tendency for a BP&W to push the diver face-forward to a greater extent than with jacket BCs. Whether the effect is present or not, and is severity, depends on configuration.
The face-forward tendency is greatest in the ocean with a relatively buoyant cylinder at the end of a dive. Since many beginning divers find themselves making ocean dives with an AL80, and floating along while waiting for their turn to get on the boat, this is a common situation. With large steel doubles in freshwater, at the beginning of the dive, the distribution of weight and buoyancy does not tend to push the diver forward. Having the cylinder attached relatively low in the cam bands makes matters worse, as does carrying lead in front of the body rather than at the sides or back. A highly buoyant exposure suit will mitigate the effect somewhat.
So, yes,
in some configurations it will take more effort to keep your head above water. In some
plausible scenarios particularly for beginning divers this could become a serious problem particularly when trying to remain safe at the surface after an emergency especially for someone who has lost (or taken off) one or both fins. Be sure your weight is ditchable. Place your lead at your sides or back rather than in front of you. Be prepared to ditch your kit and be comfortable doing it. Have a snorkel on your mask even though it's not cool.
Once you are accustomed to the effect and comfortable compensating for it, and become more comfortable in the water with your gear generally, it matters a lot less.
So... imagine the dive is going wrong, you've dumped your weights and are getting to the surface half conscious or unconscious. Is that the case of with a wing you die cos' you arrive horizontally head down whereas with a jacket you have more chance of survival?
If you're unconscious or half conscious your only hope is immediate presence of capable rescue and it doesn't matter much what kind of BC you have.
The real problem is panic and task overload. If you arrive at the surface when everything is going wrong all at once, having to devote some effort and thought to keeping your head back and feet forward gives you one more thing to do.