Advice: hitting the ground running, or biting off more than I can chew?

[The Chairman]

The point is that some skills do not need to be done in trim or with neutral buoyancy.

What skills are those? Do you kneel instead?

A lack of neutral buoyancy can be very dangerous. It's a lack of control and causes all kinds of anxiety which is a problem all it's own. Proper trim allows a diver to achieve neutral buoyancy rather easily. The two go hand in hand.

I wasn't really thinking about anyone in particular.

I'm not taking offense, but I would love for you to clarify what you think we're marketing?

 

[HantsDiver]

What skills are those? Do you kneel instead?

A lack of neutral buoyancy can be very dangerous. It's a lack of control and causes all kinds of anxiety which is a problem all it's own. Proper trim allows a diver to achieve neutral buoyancy rather easily. The two go hand in hand.

The ones I have listed above are some. If I had a problem where I needed to take my wing off (I dive in a team so it's not likely) if I could I'd get on the floor. I'd feel no shame about doing so. To try and doing it in a steel twinset with a ss backplate and a tailweight whilst neutrally buoyant would be a total act of gross stupidity.

Similarly if I need to hand of a deco stage to someone it can be easier to do this out of trim. Whilst I can do it in a training environment without I probably wouldn't if I needed to do it for real.

Buoyancy and trim have nothing to do with each other in my opinion. If they did I would not be in trim as I ascend or descend. If I'm negatively buoyany and want to swim in trim I just turn the gas on.

I'm not taking offense, but I would love for you to clarify what you think we're marketing?

It's about creating a need in the market and about one product being better than another. If it wasn't marketing it wouldn't be stated. In reality if people want that then it's all good. I think some of the arguments about safety are totally ridiculous and blown out of proportion. Statistically, we know what the most dangerous types of diving are and what is most likely to cause injury and death. And it's not poor trim.

 

[RayfromTX]

Ok, I have to say this as I am much closer to my first dives than many around here. I'm not going to give you advice or tell you what it will be like for you because in my experience and in my opinion every diver is different and different conditions can have a profound effect on how well you do.

My wife and I did a discover scuba dive last October. We loved it and the experienced people we were with told us we did surprisingly well and were unusually comfortable and calm in the water for our first scuba dive. It is important to note that this was a shore dive in Cozumel with an exceedingly calm dive master in 150 feet of visibility and 80 degree water. We decided to do it again the next day and it went even better and our air consumption came down and we had no problems at all with the skills we needed for where we were and what we were doing. They said later that it was unusual to do so well with no experience. I thought they were just being kind but I have since seen many people struggle with the same conditions and I actually have only seen one other diver take to it instantly the way we did. I have seen dozens of others struggle a little or a lot but at the time I thought it was just easy peasy.

When we came ashore we asked what else we could do and the DM pointed across the way and said my friend has a boat. We didn't know what we didn't know and an hour later we were at 60 feet. It was amazing. It was like being in a magical aquarium and the surface seemed 15 feet away. We saw a shark and a turtle and lots of other cool stuff and we learned to control our level with our breath and we were sure enough flying under water. We did a second dive to 45 feet after a surface interval. This is where we found out how things can go wrong quick and I'm glad we each had our own rescue trained diver with thousands of dives watching over us. We started our ascent to our safety stop and ignorant me, I bumped what I thought was the elevator button to start my ascent and at the same time I noticed my octo was leaking pretty bad so I got distracted trying to make it stop and the next thing I know, the DM is grabbing me, pulling me down and dumping the air in my BC all at the same time. I look up and the surface is 7-10 feet above me. We descended to 15 feet and he held onto me for the SS while our friend monitored my wife. I felt like an idiot but I was really too stoked at how fantastic the experience of the day had been to actually be bummed out and I still didn't know what I didn't know.

All of that ended well and we were totally hooked and became scuba divers in our hearts that day. We went home and signed up for OW classes. We were reading the course work in separate rooms. We got to the parts about AGE and DCS I went into the room she was in. She had just read the same parts and her eyes were as big as mine. We both said, WE COULD HAVE DIED! yep. We kept learning.

After our first pool dive we were on our way home having just spent a couple of hours on mask drills and various other miserable tasks in overchlorinated water. She turned to me and said. If we hadn't already dived in Cozumel, I wouldn't want to continue. We kept after it and we've both done a few dumb things but at least not of the life threatening variety. When we did our open water dives, it was a whole nuther experience. Cold lake with low visibility and it was exponentially more difficult than drifting along in the aquarium of Cozumel. Everything was harder but we managed. 10 degrees colder would have been no fun at all.

When we went to that same lake in february the vis was maybe 3 feet and it was 58 degrees. It was less than stellar. We had recently gotten back from 12 days in Cozumel where we had a blast. There we did night dives, dives to near 100 feet and wall dives, swim throughs and dives with strong currents and none of it compared to the difficulty of 50 feet with not much more light than our dive lights provided and cold as the dickens.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that conditions matter a lot. Who you are and how you think and feel in the water matters a lot. Experience and training matter too. I have watched other divers and some with hundreds of dives don't seem very comfortable but are managing. I watched a guy named Logan who was doing great and seemed to have great skills and calm in the water. I found out he was doing his OW and had just started two days earlier! He was a natural. It was a hoot in later days to watch him calmly floating in perfect trim just above the reef while others on the same boat that had been vacation diving for years and had lots of dives in different places were sucking down their air and bouncing off the bottom. It just depends.

The only advice I will give is to know who you are and do what feels right but err on the side of caution. I think we got lucky and I'm glad our lessons didn't cost us. We still have lots to learn and plan on spending a lot of time this summer in that lake building our skills and improving our communication as a buddy team. Dive safe and often.

 

[The Chairman]

To try and doing it in a steel twinset with a ss backplate and a tailweight whilst neutrally buoyant would be a total act of gross stupidity.

Oh. So since you don't know how to do it, it's stupid? It's really not that hard if you know how. Keep the tanks above you while you spin under it. My open water students don't need a floor to do the doff and don with either steel or Al tanks. It's all a matter of technique.

Buoyancy and trim have nothing to do with each other in my opinion.

Again, we disagree. My OW students even know and utilize the connection. Here's a treatise I wrote on the subject: Master Neutral Buoyancy: The Importance of Horizontal Trim (Simple Vector Physics) - ScubaBoard If you're interested, it will teach you how they intertwine.

 

[HantsDiver]

Oh. So since you don't know how to do it, it's stupid? It's really not that hard if you know how. Keep the tanks above you while you spin under it. My open water students don't need a floor to do the doff and don with either steel or Al tanks. It's all a matter of technique.

Again, we disagree. My OW students even know and utilize the connection. Here's a treatise I wrote on the subject: Master Neutral Buoyancy: The Importance of Horizontal Trim (Simple Vector Physics) - ScubaBoard If you're interested, it will teach you how they intertwine.

No I don't know how to do it. Because I think it's totally ridiculous. Can you think of a single situation where someone who is diving as part of a unified team would need to do this? Wouldn't your students time be better spent making them better buddies? What does it achieve? Could it potentially be dangerous? Do your students do this in a drysuit and a twinset? This is an example of what I meant by a party trick.

If they are connected I'll ask again how on earth can I ascend or descend in trim? By definition, I must be positively or negatively buoyant. What you have done is explained how we can overcome poor buoyancy and cheat. It doesn't mean they are connected. If they were you would not be able to hover in whatever position you chose.

 

[cupofjoe]

@The Chairman @scubadada @wetb4igetinthewater So this thread's getting even more fun. It raises another question that underlies some of my thinking. I'm approaching this (based partly on experience w/other sports) with the idea that I should get the best training I can, early and often, and there's no such thing as too soon, if they let me in the class. I'd understand it better and get more out of it if I had more experience, but on the flip side, the more (quality) training I get now, the higher my odds of having fun, being safe, and sticking around in the sport. Thoughts on that approach? To be clear: I'm not saying I plan on pushing the limits of any certification I can earn, as if all it takes is a card. Hopefully that's clear from the fact that I'm here asking for advice on these dives. I just want as many tools in my toolbox as I can get.

 

[RayfromTX]

Can anyone help the OP with the dive sites he's asking about? What kind of exposure protection will he need and what is the viz likely to be? Those are good things to find out.

As to your latest question, I would take the same approach that you seem to be leaning toward and we spent a good bit of time building our skills at the beginning of our trips. We are a balanced team. I'm about getting good at skills so we can have fun. She's about having fun so we can get good at skills. We are Eeyore and Tigger. Together we thrive in the water. The answer to your questions are within you. Obviously any two people, even those with great experience and thousands of dives can disagree about what is important but you already know. I will cosign onto you jumping in with both feet and getting as much training as you can so you can progress well and fast. That is what I hear you saying is important to you. Dive safe.

 

[TMHeimer]

RayfromTX's post supports two views I often put forth:
1) Some people do a lot better at first because they enter the scuba world already very comfortable in water...Correct me if I'm wrong Ray.
2) Discover Scuba can be dangerous in open water and/or with more than a one on one situation. The ascent could have been a disaster. And oh, wait........WHAT WERE THEY DOING AT 60 FEET????? Max is 40. Should somebody maybe be reported? Beware of DSD.

 

[RayfromTX]

RayfromTX's post supports two views I often put forth:
1) Some people do a lot better at first because they enter the scuba world already very comfortable in water...Correct me if I'm wrong Ray.
2) Discover Scuba can be dangerous in open water and/or with more than a one on one situation. The ascent could have been a disaster. And oh, wait........WHAT WERE THEY DOING AT 60 FEET????? Max is 40. Should somebody maybe be reported? Beware of DSD.

1)True but I suspect there is more to it than mere comfort in the water
2)Scuba diving and uh, no

 

[TMHeimer]

1)True but I suspect there is more to it than mere comfort in the water
2)Scuba diving and uh, no

1) Perhaps.
2) Yes, the DM should be reported. This is a blatant violation of standards. 40 max depth for SSI as well as PADI. As you said yourself "We both could've died". Coming up inadvertently from 40' isn't good, but it is significantly worse from 60'. I'm no expert, but perhaps that is a big reason the Try Scuba depth is 40'.