chrpai
Contributor
I recently dove with a new buddy that has around 10 dives (OW and AOW and then stopped diving for an extended period ). We headed down to Lake Travis for some fun dives to dust off the cob webs.
We had a nice discussion on diving and gear selection ( he was curious about these BP/W's he keeps hearing about around here ) and then we headed down to the water. He was wearing a rental BCD that I think was a ScubaPro Seahawk. He had a some problem getting down at first but all in all I think his weighting was good and we didn't "fix" the problem by adding more.
I'll be honest, we were cruising along the wall and he had some pretty gnarly vertical trim / rototilling issues going on. He would trim it out sometimes and then it would go south again. The funniest was when he kind of flipped on his back, put his hands on the bottom to support himself and then started churning away. At first I thought maybe he had a cramp but then he recovered. What the heck, he was having fun, as was I, so I didn't worry about it. Total dive time was 30 minutes.
So between the dives we talked about the first dive and I mentioned to him some really dirt simple advice that had been passed down to me by 50Fathom. Arch your back, get your knees up, squeeze your arse cheeks like your holding a golf ball, hands in front locked together and head up. I told him that you might be a little sore the first time
The difference during the second dive was amazing. We didn't change his weight, we didn't move it around, we didn't switch him to a BP/W ( not you anyways...) Every time I glanced over to check on my buddy he was in a nice prone trim position gliding along without kicking up the silt. Bottom time was 48 minutes.
Now that overly long boat anchor of a console being dragged through the silt was another story but oh well, it's rental gear.
Thanks for the dives buddy. Hope to see you around again soon.
We had a nice discussion on diving and gear selection ( he was curious about these BP/W's he keeps hearing about around here ) and then we headed down to the water. He was wearing a rental BCD that I think was a ScubaPro Seahawk. He had a some problem getting down at first but all in all I think his weighting was good and we didn't "fix" the problem by adding more.
I'll be honest, we were cruising along the wall and he had some pretty gnarly vertical trim / rototilling issues going on. He would trim it out sometimes and then it would go south again. The funniest was when he kind of flipped on his back, put his hands on the bottom to support himself and then started churning away. At first I thought maybe he had a cramp but then he recovered. What the heck, he was having fun, as was I, so I didn't worry about it. Total dive time was 30 minutes.
So between the dives we talked about the first dive and I mentioned to him some really dirt simple advice that had been passed down to me by 50Fathom. Arch your back, get your knees up, squeeze your arse cheeks like your holding a golf ball, hands in front locked together and head up. I told him that you might be a little sore the first time
The difference during the second dive was amazing. We didn't change his weight, we didn't move it around, we didn't switch him to a BP/W ( not you anyways...) Every time I glanced over to check on my buddy he was in a nice prone trim position gliding along without kicking up the silt. Bottom time was 48 minutes.
Now that overly long boat anchor of a console being dragged through the silt was another story but oh well, it's rental gear.
Thanks for the dives buddy. Hope to see you around again soon.