Solo with no BCD?

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Sometimes skills just don't cut it, and you need a BC.

I've done some solo diving internationally, as side trips, when I did not have my own gear

When all you can rent is a 7mm wetsuit and an AL80 tank, no amount of "skill" is compensate for all that lead that you have to wear.
 
Sometimes skills just don't cut it, and you need a BC.

I've done some solo diving internationally, as side trips, when I did not have my own gear

When all you can rent is a 7mm wetsuit and an AL80 tank, no amount of "skill" is compensate for all that lead that you have to wear.
Well, I’d have to disagree. In the 1970s I dove Clear Lake, Oregon (39 degrees F & 150 foot visibility), down to about 40 feet, made a butterfly knot in the anchor line (a loop that can be quickly removed), and took off my weight belt. I hooked it to the line, then continued to dive below 45 feet in perfectly neutral buoyancy. Before surfacing, I swam back to the anchor line, put my weights back on, removed the butterfly loop, and surfaced.

SeaRat
 
@John C. Ratliff and @Doc Harry,

I first learned about drop weights when I took my cavern and basic cave course in 1988. Several Pb weights tied together with a clip added. Dive down sufficiently deep (for your wet suit to compress), and then un-clip the bundle of weights from your kit, clip it to the permanent line, and continue your dive.

Pro: Basic cave means no "circuits" and no "jumps", so you always have to return via the route you entered. (So, you will always come back to retrieve your weights for the ascent.) Meanwhile, you don't have to dive carrying all that "extra" weight.

Con: You've got to be very careful that your planned route through the cave does not ascend too much! (Right?)

I don't think I would ever use drop weights for recreational diving in open water. Recreational diving means you can safely ascend directly to the surface in the case of an emergency. So, if you left your drop weights way over there, but you need to ascend right now from over here, you could have a problem.

rx7diver
 
Well, I’d have to disagree. In the 1970s I dove Clear Lake, Oregon (39 degrees F & 150 foot visibility), down to about 40 feet, made a butterfly knot in the anchor line (a loop that can be quickly removed), and took off my weight belt. I hooked it to the line, then continued to dive below 45 feet in perfectly neutral buoyancy. Before surfacing, I swam back to the anchor line, put my weights back on, removed the butterfly loop, and surfaced.

SeaRat
Agreed, a lot of things can be overcome with skills, training, and/or redundancy.

I certainly understand being adamant that new divers shouldn't do certain things, like dive solo.
@John C. Ratliff and @Doc Harry,

I first learned about drop weights when I took my cavern and basic cave course in 1988. Several Pb weights tied together with a clip added. Dive down sufficiently deep (for your wet suit to compress), and then un-clip the bundle of weights from your kit, clip it to the permanent line, and continue your dive.

Pro: Basic cave means no "circuits" and no "jumps", so you always have to return via the route you entered. (So, you will always come back to retrieve your weights for the ascent.) Meanwhile, you don't have to dive carrying all that "extra" weight.

Con: You've got to be very careful that your planned route through the cave does not ascend too much! (Right?)

I don't think I would ever use drop weights for recreational diving in open water. Recreational diving means you can safely ascend directly to the surface in the case of an emergency. So, if you left your drop weights way over there, but you need to ascend right now from over here, you could have a problem.

rx7diver

I never heard of drop-weights (versus "dropping weights"), but that makes sense. I might be inclined to carry a rolled-up mesh bag I could stuff rocks into for redundancy. In some of my super-early dives, I was either underweighted, or unable to dump all air from my BCD, and I picked up rocks off the bottom a few times to aid in my safety-stop.
 
I never heard of drop-weights (versus "dropping weights"), but that makes sense. I might be inclined to carry a rolled-up mesh bag I could stuff rocks into for redundancy. In some of my super-early dives, I was either underweighted, or unable to dump all air from my BCD, and I picked up rocks off the bottom a few times to aid in my safety-stop.

Yes, "drop weights" (without the hyphen) are discussed in my cavern textbook (Zumrick Jr., J.L., J.J. Prosser, and H.V. Grey, 1988. NSS Cavern Diving Manual. Brandford FL: NSS-CDS) and my cave diving textbook (Prosser, J, and H.V. Grey, eds, 1992. NSS Cave Diving Manual - An Overview. Brandford FL: NSS-CDS). Not a new concept.

rx7diver
 
Okay, I'm going to quote a part of my article in NAUI News, July 1973:
...There are a number of ways of maintaining neutral buoyancy. In tropical waters where no exposure suit is needed the diver's lungs provide a fine buoyancy regulating device. However, where exposure suits must be used, other techniques are needed. Experienced divers who know their buoyancy at various depths can weight themselves for depth of the dive, but it must be planned and executed at that depth for optimal conditions. Even so, as the diver goes to greater depths, an unfavorable weight imbalance between the shallow waters and deeper depths becomes very evident. The diver is either too heavy at depth or too buoyant in the shallows. Under these conditions he can, like the dirigibles of old, simply remove the weights; or water can be displaced to attain buoyant control.

The removal technique is simple, but requires a fixed point of return upon ascent or a line to the surface. The weight belt can be placed at a known location on the bottom or clamped on a loop in the descending line at a depth of forty feet or so. At this depth the wet suit has lost most of its buoyancy and removing the weight belt will not initiate an ascent. From there the divers can swim unencumbered and precisely neutral in the water until it is time to ascend. THen all that is needed is to swim back, put on the weight belt, and surface. Bottom time should take into account time spent with the weight belt in observance of the no-decompression limit...
This was published some 15 years before NSS Cavern Diving Manual, in 1988, and I'm wondering whether my article publishing this technique was the first ever reference to reference it?

SeaRat
 
We did this diving twin 63s, no BC < 18m, Fenzy [horse collar BC with it's own small cylinder] > 18m up till about 1987 or so.
Making sure you came back to where you placed your weight belt certainly improved you underwater navigation skills.
 
I'm a bit young for this :wink:

I remember reading my dad's BSAC scuba manual when we lived in Singapore in 1968/9. Alas and annoyingly I don't have that manual, but loved reading it as a child (burst lung sounds great!) and always wanted to join him on the scuba trips. I remember it was a wire-bound manual.

My point is that manuals did actually exist in those days, certainly for BSAC, so would really expect other agencies to have written similar. Some people should have those hanging around nowadays.

Would love to find a copy of that manual.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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