Suppose I want to go to Bikini Atoll

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I was in Bikini in July with TrukMaster. There was one OC guy. All the rest were CC. On my rebreather my bill for gas, sorb, etc at the end was $1500ish. The OC guy just smiled when we asked him what his bill was. He was a surgeon and hinted that a couple of us may be leaving without our kidneys or livers so he could pay for his gas.

It is possible to do it on OC but you would be well on your way to buying a rebreather with what you would pay in gas. Not just for this trip but on all the dives leading up to it.
 
@ScubaWithTurk , travel between Israel and the UAE isn't really an option currently... They don't seem to like Israeli passports there. At least Egypt allows us entry.


oh yeah, sorry, I forgot about that being an issue.
 
I was in Bikini in July with TrukMaster. There was one OC guy. All the rest were CC. On my rebreather my bill for gas, sorb, etc at the end was $1500ish. The OC guy just smiled when we asked him what his bill was. He was a surgeon and hinted that a couple of us may be leaving without our kidneys or livers so he could pay for his gas.

It is possible to do it on OC but you would be well on your way to buying a rebreather with what you would pay in gas. Not just for this trip but on all the dives leading up to it.
The last gas bill I had in that part of the world, the OC diver was 6X that of the CC diver.
 
@ScubaWithTurk , travel between Israel and the UAE isn't really an option currently... They don't seem to like Israeli passports there. At least Egypt allows us entry.
Well, nothing stops us from meeting in Egypt and doing some training there.
 
I was in Bikini in July with TrukMaster. There was one OC guy. All the rest were CC. On my rebreather my bill for gas, sorb, etc at the end was $1500ish. The OC guy just smiled when we asked him what his bill was. He was a surgeon and hinted that a couple of us may be leaving without our kidneys or livers so he could pay for his gas.

It is possible to do it on OC but you would be well on your way to buying a rebreather with what you would pay in gas. Not just for this trip but on all the dives leading up to it.

So i was CC on my trip - i was using about 6 Cuft of He and 6 cuft ofO2 for a 2 hour dive. At that time He was 6$, and O2 was $2 - about $50/dive. For 18 dives, the bill was $800, plus 250 for sorb and 500 for the marine park fee and i was at 1500/trip.
The OC guys were not using He. Air was free. They were using 30cuft of 50% at $1./cuft and 20cuft of O2 at $2 about $70 per dive - Most of them skipped a dive or two, and since no sorb for them - there total was about the same $1500/trip.

now their dives were typically about 90 minutes -and who knows how much they remember about the dives - but it is definitely doable.
 
I haven't done Bikini yet (going next summer), but my thoughts are:

1. Staying OC and doing deep air is not a great idea given where you are experience-wise. All the wrecks there are deep. Narcosis would be a factor on every dive.

2. Your stated goal of getting some wreck training is a great idea, but wreck penetration on deep air is, especially, no joke. You'd be a freshly trained tech diver and a new wreck diver and combining the two, without helium to manage the narcosis. That's just not prudent. Adding the camera complicates it even more.

3. You could dive deep air but stay out of the wrecks until you've got more experience (a) on deep air and (b) penetrating wrecks, or (c) switch to CCR and get some He in the mix. Maybe you spring for some OC helium for a dive or two, without the camera, to do a little light penetration, but unless you want to spend a fortune, you stay on air and outside the wrecks for most of your dives.

5. CCR solves those problems but introduces the challenge of getting trained and then getting the hours on the unit to be proficient. You can't even start training for normoxic mix until you have (at least for IANTD) 50 hours on the unit and that takes longer than you think. Then you can think about some wreck training if you want.

Not trying to be a wet blanket, but I was faced with the same sort of choice and maybe this will help.

In 2017, I had the option to book a slot on a 2018 trip to Bikini. I was already OC trimix mix/wreck trained, had plenty of deco dives and some wreck experience, and I was already beginning CCR, so I had a bit of a head start. But, given my schedule, I did not think it was realistic for me, in one year, to convert all that to CCR: to get all the hours on the unit I felt I needed, cross over to CCR trimix, do some wreck diving on CCR and feel good about all. So, my similarly-situated buddy and I put off Bikini for two years, to 2020 so we could take our time and it do it right. That included adding a repeat trip to Truk, this time on CCR, in the meantime as sort of a shakedown.

I figured Bikini is a bucket list trip and as long as I wasn't going to kick the bucket in the meantime, I wanted to take my time and prepare properly so that I was comfortable and competent. Cramming training for a trip like that turns it into a chore, leaves no time for actually gaining non-class experience, and isn't much fun.
 
So i was CC on my trip - i was using about 6 Cuft of He and 6 cuft ofO2 for a 2 hour dive. At that time He was 6$, and O2 was $2 - about $50/dive. For 18 dives, the bill was $800, plus 250 for sorb and 500 for the marine park fee and i was at 1500/trip.
The OC guys were not using He. Air was free. They were using 30cuft of 50% at $1./cuft and 20cuft of O2 at $2 about $70 per dive - Most of them skipped a dive or two, and since no sorb for them - there total was about the same $1500/trip.

now their dives were typically about 90 minutes -and who knows how much they remember about the dives - but it is definitely doable.

Oh it's doable, but to spend $US10k plus to go there and then dive air isn't smart. If people want to do stupid, then there is always Cozumel.
 
Well, nothing stops us from meeting in Egypt and doing some training there.
I still need at least 20 or so "practice" dives with hypoxic trimix before starting to think of more courses :) At my current rate, that turns out to be 1 to 2 a month, budget permitting.
 
So i was CC on my trip - i was using about 6 Cuft of He and 6 cuft ofO2 for a 2 hour dive. At that time He was 6$, and O2 was $2 - about $50/dive. For 18 dives, the bill was $800, plus 250 for sorb and 500 for the marine park fee and i was at 1500/trip.
The OC guys were not using He. Air was free. They were using 30cuft of 50% at $1./cuft and 20cuft of O2 at $2 about $70 per dive - Most of them skipped a dive or two, and since no sorb for them - there total was about the same $1500/trip.

now their dives were typically about 90 minutes -and who knows how much they remember about the dives - but it is definitely doable.

Between the 2 hour CCR dive and 1.5 hour OC dive, how much time do you figure was spent on the wreck as opposed to waiting for the deco timer to tick down?

Somewhat unrelated, but what kind of bailout do you carry while doing these dives on CCR?

In 2017, I had the option to book a slot on a 2018 trip to Bikini. I was already OC trimix mix/wreck trained, had plenty of deco dives and some wreck experience, and I was already beginning CCR, so I had a bit of a head start. But, given my schedule, I did not think it was realistic for me, in one year, to convert all that to CCR: to get all the hours on the unit I felt I needed, cross over to CCR trimix, do some wreck diving on CCR and feel good about all. So, my similarly-situated buddy and I put off Bikini for two years, to 2020 so we could take our time and it do it right. That included adding a repeat trip to Truk, this time on CCR, in the meantime as sort of a shakedown.

As I outlined in the OP, I'm looking at an approximate 2023 timeframe, which, hopefully, should be enough to accrue the necessary training and experience. I do need to decide whether to start training with tech OC (PADI Tec40/45/50 or TDI AN/DP) then crossover to tech CCR, or start with recreational CCR and proceed to decompression and trimix CCR. If I decide to do the latter route, I suppose I will need to pick (and possibly buy) the rebreather I want to dive with right from the start as, if I'm not mistaken, the CCR training is to a significant degree type-specific.
 

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