Just ordered my FATHOM!

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That's very cool. Do you configure it in a DIR-style? Or with sidemounted bailout?

Just sidemounting 50s or 85s. In saltwater rec diving, al 80 or 40 slung like a stage. I actually find sidemounting the bottles with the rebreather easier than regular sm since I don't have to worry about inflators coming off of the bottles like sm.
I'm interested in setting it up with lola valves like Ken has posted. He and the instructor in mexico I'm friends with have both been doing it for boat diving. I just want to do it to give it a try and see if I like it. One trip to the water and clear sides may be nice. Though with 50s it's like not having bottles at all.
 
Just sidemounting 50s or 85s. In saltwater rec diving, al 80 or 40 slung like a stage. I actually find sidemounting the bottles with the rebreather easier than regular sm since I don't have to worry about inflators coming off of the bottles like sm.
I'm interested in setting it up with lola valves like Ken has posted. He and the instructor in mexico I'm friends with have both been doing it for boat diving. I just want to do it to give it a try and see if I like it. One trip to the water and clear sides may be nice. Though with 50s it's like not having bottles at all.

50's with a little O2 bottle either slapped on the back, or mounted like an inflation bottle is awesome for shallow, short penetration dives. I like it more on my SF2 than my Pelagian, because I can mount it on like an inflation bottle and don't worry about any interference with the BMCL's. It's an awesome package. Like diving with a set of twins, but with 10 hours of gas. The Pelagian I run it on the back like the GUE JJ. Anything else just gets slung and sidemounted like normal.
 
Yes. It's a POS. I hate it. It's totally ruined OC diving for me. I went and did a 2 hour dive in Ginnie on OC. I had to worry about how much gas I had in my stages and backgas, I had to hear all of the noise of our exhaling, I got cold after a while, my mouth got dry. And the most annoying of all was I realized that I always listen to my wing dump valve to judge how much I've dumped. Never used to be a problem. Spent 8 months on the fathom and can hear it beautfiully. When back on OC I couldn't hear it at all, making dumping gas not super accurate. So my buoyancy on OC sucked too. Stupid fathom.

In reality, I've got about 30-40 hours on the unit now and I love it. It's simple and problem free and the needle valve is a dream. I think with the meg conversions available soon, there will be alot more people adopting it.

I have to echo this. Damn Fathom got me in a pickle this past weekend. Myself and a buddy decided to do a LONG dive at Peacock to build some time. Well it was a 5hr dive, all swimming. We went from P1 to OG and then from OG to Cisteen line, wishbone circuit and then back out P1. Approx 10K feet swimming. It allowed me to safely swim well past the capabilities of my legs. When we climbed out at P1 I literally feel forward on the deck as my legs were not able to immediately hold my weight. It was rather comical to the other team floating in the basin.

Actually, it is an incredible unit and with about 30hrs on it now, I could not be more happy. I SM my bailout also and am using HP100s with 18/45 mix.. Dream to dive..
 
I have to echo this. Damn Fathom got me in a pickle this past weekend. Myself and a buddy decided to do a LONG dive at Peacock to build some time. Well it was a 5hr dive, all swimming. We went from P1 to OG and then from OG to Cisteen line, wishbone circuit and then back out P1. Approx 10K feet swimming. It allowed me to safely swim well past the capabilities of my legs. When we climbed out at P1 I literally feel forward on the deck as my legs were not able to immediately hold my weight. It was rather comical to the other team floating in the basin.

Actually, it is an incredible unit and with about 30hrs on it now, I could not be more happy. I SM my bailout also and am using HP100s with 18/45 mix.. Dream to dive..

We've been limiting our dives to under 3 hours because we drive up from Tampa for the day to dive and have to get home to let our dogs out. Sad that my dive time has been stifled by dogs. We've been wanting to do the grand traverse via peanut side, then back via Olsen with some stops on the way. Being tired and hungry always seems to dupe that plan.
 
We've been limiting our dives to under 3 hours because we drive up from Tampa for the day to dive and have to get home to let our dogs out. Sad that my dive time has been stifled by dogs. We've been wanting to do the grand traverse via peanut side, then back via Olsen with some stops on the way. Being tired and hungry always seems to dupe that plan.

Brother, it is like a damn marathon. I seriously got about 300' from P1 on the way back and I was not sure if my legs were going to allow me to continue kicking. Mine and my buddies "kick" went to total spastic, please Lord get me there, kicking style. If there was so much as a rock the size of a bowling ball I was attempting a pull and glide.
 
We've been limiting our dives to under 3 hours because we drive up from Tampa for the day to dive and have to get home to let our dogs out. Sad that my dive time has been stifled by dogs. We've been wanting to do the grand traverse via peanut side, then back via Olsen with some stops on the way. Being tired and hungry always seems to dupe that plan.

I'm a dog guy too and have been known to cut a few dives to less than 7 hours so I could either let the dogs out or take the wife out for dinner.

@Doby45 put a power gel in your wetnotes.
 
Brother, it is like a damn marathon. I seriously got about 300' from P1 on the way back and I was not sure if my legs were going to allow me to continue kicking. Mine and my buddies "kick" went to total spastic, please Lord get me there, kicking style. If there was so much as a rock the size of a bowling ball I was attempting a pull and glide.

I suspect that means you overdid it, lol. I've even had to rethink my undergarents and hood because I'm getting cold on the longer dives in the 3 hour range. Tough problems to have.

I'm a dog guy too and have been known to cut a few dives to less than 7 hours so I could either let the dogs out or take the wife out for dinner.

@Doby45 put a power gel in your wetnotes.

If we didn't drive 2-3 hours on dive days we'd definitely be going much longer. Being busy and my wife trying to finish up her master's we haven't had much time to take a few days off to just stay in high springs. Hopefully soon we'll have a little more free time to start pushing the dive times.
 
Well, well, well, long time no see.

Needless to say the last two years have been rather crazy. Between, COVID, my companies bankruptcy, not sure what was going on with the world, diving took a back seat. Two years ago (almost to the date) I left diving with approx 60hrs on my Fathom. Man, I felt comfy in my rig. I was safe and sharp and was doing 5+hr dives in the ole Fassom. The ability to do 5+hr and the actual "ability" were two different things. In the beginning of this thread I had built up to that point and was good with leaving the joys of natures O2 and had grown accustom to spending hour upon hour in an environment that did not want me to be there.

Fast forward two years and the Fathom was still capable of providing that safety and comfy, but was I?

I headed down to Cave Country with the thoughts of days by gone coming back and me chuckling and grinning through my loop with my buddies on 20-30min of deco. Lets say, things did not go as planned.

Lets start this story by going to that Saturday suiting up at Ginnie, getting ready to go back under the water. I had built my unit the night before, gone through my checklists and felt like I always did. Getting ready at the water, I did my pre-dive checks, did my pre-breathe and was feeling anxious but confident. O2 is go, PPo2 was a go, I did a little tiny swim around in the water while my buddy got ready, feeling good.

We went in the Eye with the river being so high. Even though it was not crowded there were a number of divers sitting by the sign as we made our way in. Man I was stoked, I was getting back into the cave system that I had cut my teeth on and it was going to be AWESOME!!!! Worming our way down the Eye passage was pretty uneventful and in no time we found ourselves at the Reaper sing in the Gallery. We dropped our O2 bottles and pushed onward to the Lips. PPo2 are good, breathing is easy, buoyancy was good, man this is going to be incredible. I was seeing stuff that I had seen before, passed the area where I did my first lost line drill with Johnny in my Intro class. Welcome home, Doby!!! Flow was down big time, almost to the point of a "Peacock" type dive and I kept on keeping on.. I could remember only one other time that Ginnie's flow was so low and it could not have been a year before I had made my last dive. Made it through the Lips and kept thinking to myself "This is where I lost most of my finger meat during my Cave class". I had decided that I was going through the Keyhole Bypass and headed that way. Once I was at the end of the bypass and was sitting there looking at the Cornflakes something snapped mentally and I froze. I could see myself going on through the Cornflakes and passing the Park Bench but I could not move. Man, I have been past here so many times, and yet I could not move from where I was. I checked my PPo2 and I was right at 1.10 (check) I had not been exerting myself and had no crazy squeeze, ears (check), suit (check). What the hell was wrong, I HAVE DONE THIS MANY TIMES!! I got frustrated at myself and was not sure what was going on. I signaled my buddy to hold and he signaled back OK. I sat there inside my head for what seemed like forever (probably more like a minute). I checked my computer, everything was good. I checked my monitor, everything was good. Training kicked in and I decided to do a flush, MAYBE I had COed myself, maybe I had done something wrong with my setup, what the hell was going on. I flushed my loop and had to have sat there like a blind crayfish for another minute or two. I looked to my buddy and thought to myself, what the hell is he thinking of me being an idiot right now? When I looked at him, I saw someone that was perfectly content with me figuring out what was going on with me. Finally, I made the decision that everything was OK equipment wise and it had to be something in me that was hitting this wall. I decided at that point that I was going to see if I could make it to the Park Bench and go from there. I pulled myself through and got to the Park Bench and then decided that things looked much brighter and signaled that we would go ahead and head down the Bone line. Each foot I traveled felt like more and more weight was taken off my shoulders and by the time we made it to the "jump" for the White Room, I felt like I could go anywhere. We slowly made our way to the Maple Leaf and although it was cloudy, it was the prettiest I had seen that section of cave. I was fascinated by clay layers that I had swam by before without giving it any thought. Passed the Mud Tunnel and giggled to myself at the first time I went through there and how it must have looked when I came out. On the way out on the gold line, I decided to do a jump to Hill 400 (even though no one can find this jump) and we traveled on until I thumbed the dive near Double Lines. The way out was uneventful and even the 10min of deco was uneventful. The one thing I hold true about deco is, it gives you time to analyze things. Right, wrong or indifferent, every event plays over and over in that amount of time. Sometimes that event is joyous, like watching a favorite sitcom rerun over and over, or it is painful as you relive the same mistake over and over. This deco was spent with me seeing my buddies eyes over and over, letting me figure things out and fight my demons.

Once on the surface, I was the one that broke the silence and explained to my buddy what I was dealing with there at the Cornflakes. Never once did my buddy judge or doubt me, he knew what I was capable of and knew that I had to hump that ruck myself. I also knew him to be a strong enough diver that if he had doubts, he would have thumbed the dive himself, right then, right there.

Either way, this is the blathering that comes out of my head. The moral of the story is not Fathom, it is not long lay offs, it is not buddies, it is all of that and then some. I put this out for public consumption and I am open to public ridicule but I just wanted to get this out there.
 
@Doby45 thanks for posting! Good on you for stepping back and doing a dive you had done many times before and making sure everything was ok. You'll work back to 5+ hours in due time but take this as an opportunity to really explore the other parts of the cave that you think you know. I still see new parts of passages I have dove many times and it is truly amazing what is in the front of so many of these systems that people blow past without a thought.
 

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