I've done all my diving in warm, clear water. But I plan to do some diving up north in '08. Would you mind sharing some things you've learned? I'd hate to show up for some big dives with dangerous gear.
Thanks.
I'm sorry if I'm hijacking this thread; I believe that is considered bad etiquitte. I also hope I'm not missing any sarcasm in the above post... That said, I found that small, vital items like dive knives and reels, which were easy to work in the dive shop and were recommended for diving off the NJ coast, turned out to be a lot tougher to use in the water with cold water gloves or mitts on.
I lost my brand new, expensive knife the first time I tried to get it out of its sheath. I couldn't make the push button work with 1/4" gloves on. Fortunately, I had a tiny backup knife on my console to cut myself free of the fishing line I had gotten caught in. When I got back on the boat, I found the bigger knife had disappeared, leaving me with an empty sheath.
I soon figured out (by looking at what the experienced divers were using) that a big, simple knife kept in the sheath with a rubber ring around the handle was easier to use with gloves on, and cut just as well. I also found out that a point on a knife doesn't do you a lot of good unless you are hunting flounder (or other divers). I can use my flat-tip knife to pry with without worrying about the tip breaking off, and don't worry about missing and stabbing my drysuit with a pointy tip either...
Another problem was with the clips that items like dive reels come with. My first reel was a Dive Rite reel, with a small single-ended piston clip bolted to it. I could not undo that clip with gloves on. Almost everything I use that I clip off now has a large clip on it, and even those can be trouble when your hands are cold enough.
Much more recently, I purchased an LED cannister light as I was amazed at the light output when I saw it at a dive show. I tried it diving in Georgia, and it lit up the areas under the wreckage quite nicely. When I tried it in the NY mudhole, all it lit up was the particulate in the water, with a beam penetration of about 3'. My buddy only had a halogen light, but it had far greater penetration and less backscatter, albeit yellower in beam color. Fortunately, I was able to speak with the manufacturer and am working out an exchange of sorts. But it looked fantastic on land... While not dangerous per se, it made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the dive, and had I not been able to exchange it, I would have been stuck with a $600 light only good for clear water.
I think a lot of this could be avoided by just thinking about the conditions you are going to be diving in and doing some preplanning or practice with the exposure gear you will be using. Of course it is a lot easier to do that with some experience, which, as a new diver, I didn't have when I bought my first bunch of equipment. Early on, I had no one I could ask to borrow gear from to try before making a purchasing decision, and it seemed to take a long time for the experienced divers to warm up to a newbie, especially one decked out in gear none of them would use.
