Diving without releasable weight

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

If you prefer the smaller pockets for whatever reason, that weight is still releasable too - just open it up and pull out the weight - just might be a little trickier for someone else to figure it out, especially in an urgent situation.

My most frequent diving is with an HP100 in a 5 mm wetsuit, I wear zero added weight, so I don't have too much input on actual instances of dropping weight.
 
Yes, but you didn't address the cost (negligible) vs benefit (potentially rather nice) of having some ditchable weight if S really HTF. While S isn't supposed to HTF (and doesn't for most of us), it does happen sometimes.

For someone who definitely shouldn't surface directly during some part of the dive, the cost/benefit ratio of having ditchable weight will of course be different. If I were owing a significant amount of deco, I'd probably put more emphasis on being able to stay at depth. However, I never owe significant deco, so I put more priority on being able to float high on the surface if SHTF. It could make life a little less uncomfortable if the conditions turned a bit sporty.

Should have mentioned... strictly rec / no deco diving only here.
 
In OW it's taught as the action of last resort. In other words the SHHTF in such a major way that you're better off bent or unconscious on the surface than unresponsive underwater.

The four scenarios depicted in the POW manual are:
1 - low on air - normal ascent
2 - OOA but buddy close - AAS
3 - OOA and no buddy but within reach of surface - CESA
4 - OOA, no buddy, too deep - release weights and hope for the best

As with others, I've found enough lead to suggest they can have a habit of ditching of their own accord. Once found a 10kg weightbelt inside a double decker bus at 25m. No idea how that happened, although I'm hoping in was there as a prop for a search and recovery course..
 
I've assisted with rescue classes for the organization that employed me as a DM.
The current crop of student-divers don't use weight belts. All they know is internal weights.
During briefings I always pointed out that I was wearing a weight belt.
In spite of that, at least once every class during unconscious diver scenarios,
a rescue student would try to take off my BCD before dropping my weight belt first.

If that happened in a real rescue... well, it would be bad.

K.

Very good points. I was in a Rescue class with 3 other divers. They were all skilled divers, however none of them were familiar with setups other than their own. I was the only one with a BP/W setup. I wore a weight belt with a 1 lb weight on each hip just for simulation reasons, had discussed this in private with instructor in advance. All of the divers who simulated a rescue on me were unaware that what I was wearing was a weight belt, several spent time looking for releasable weight pockets, several couldn't figure out that I had a crotch strap on or how harness was threaded through it, and all were unfamiliar with shorter backup second on a necklace - in a real rescue I think one of them would have choked me to death removing my gear. :eek:

The instructor used my setup as a way to show the importance of knowing the gear configuration of those that you are diving with, something that I think a lot of people gloss over.
 
My wife had her drysuit neck seal completely separate from her suit once. The loss of buoyancy from that, especially because she was in an older fleece type undergarment that saturated easy, was extreme. She had to drop her lead at the surface because her BC had some reserve buoyancy but not enough to counter the loss of 10-15 or whatever pounds of lift even a vented drysuit provided. As you can imagine with only her head out of the water and no functional neck seal water pressure completely vented and flooded the suit (and it was crazy cold)

If you only have 5lbs of lead total having little or none be ditchable isn't great but isn't the end of the world.
When you have 20+ lbs of lead you really to have a decent amount of that be ditchable (half-ish would be good)
 
My wife had her drysuit neck seal completely separate from her suit once. The loss of buoyancy from that, especially because she was in an older fleece type undergarment that saturated easy, was extreme. She had to drop her lead at the surface because her BC had some reserve buoyancy but not enough to counter the loss of 10-15 or whatever pounds of lift even a vented drysuit provided.

Can I ask how the neck seal separated? I am shopping for drysuits right now and considering several with the SI-tech quick neck system as an option. Wondering how solid this system (or similar) locks the seal in.
 
Very good points. I was in a Rescue class with 3 other divers. They were all skilled divers, however none of them were familiar with setups other than their own. I was the only one with a BP/W setup. I wore a weight belt with a 1 lb weight on each hip just for simulation reasons, had discussed this in private with instructor in advance. All of the divers who simulated a rescue on me were unaware that what I was wearing was a weight belt, several spent time looking for releasable weight pockets, several couldn't figure out that I had a crotch strap on or how harness was threaded through it, and all were unfamiliar with shorter backup second on a necklace - in a real rescue I think one of them would have choked me to death removing my gear. :eek:

The instructor used my setup as a way to show the importance of knowing the gear configuration of those that you are diving with, something that I think a lot of people gloss over.

My rescue 'buddy' had a scubapro BC which had integrated weights that required releasing the plastic buckle to dump versus just yanking a pocket out with an easy to grab handle.
 
Can I ask how the neck seal separated? I am shopping for drysuits right now and considering several with the SI-tech quick neck system as an option. Wondering how solid this system (or similar) locks the seal in.
This was in 1998-ish. Waaaay before removable ring type seals.
She was very good at keeping the seals away from ozone & UV and in perfect condition with silicon - but the glue was old and crusty and eventually peeled away.
 
With regards to releasing weights underwater, I cannot fathom (pardon the pun) any situation where dropping someone's weights below the surface would be anything but dangerous; the concern being a rapid surface ascent resulting in serious decompression problems.

Two items worth mentioning - you do not say where you are located.

1) For those of us that dive cold water it may mean diving in a 7 mill suit. That is a lot of buoyancy - if you get tangled in a line you may need to doff your BCD in order to find and cut the line. In this case it is difficult but not impossible to take off the BCD to untangle or cut the line and remain neutral. You will be floating above your BCD where your weights are nicely tucked in the BCD. The more shallow you are the more unstable you become due to compression of the suit. If you are in warm water with a 3 mill or less this may not be an issue for you.

2) I wear a mako rubber belt whenever I dive up north. The weight belt allows me to take off my BP+W or BCD and I remain stable with "ditch-able" weights. I have much more flexibility in case of the SHTF...

YMMV :)
 
Two items worth mentioning - you do not say where you are located.

1) For those of us that dive cold water it may mean diving in a 7 mill suit. That is a lot of buoyancy - if you get tangled in a line you may need to doff your BCD in order to find and cut the line. In this case it is difficult but not impossible to take off the BCD to untangle or cut the line and remain neutral. You will be floating above your BCD where your weights are nicely tucked in the BCD. The more shallow you are the more unstable you become due to compression of the suit. If you are in warm water with a 3 mill or less this may not be an issue for you.

2) I wear a mako rubber belt whenever I dive up north. The weight belt allows me to take off my BP+W or BCD and I remain stable with "ditch-able" weights. I have much more flexibility in case of the SHTF...

YMMV :)
I did the same when I dove a drysuit.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom