Ascending

[Charlie99]

This is a great forum, and will continue to come here for help.

Here's a few more tidbits that might help you

1. Proper weighting makes everything easier. If you are overweighted, then you have to have more air in your BCD to be neutral. That air will expand as you rise, causing you to have to dump air to stay neutral.

2. Thick wetsuits make buoyancy control harder. They compress at depth and you need to add air to compensate for the buoyancy loss, even if you are properly weighted. Coming back up you need to dump the air.

3. As others have suggested, for instantaneous feedback on rate of ascent it's better to watch things like bubbles and the little tiny particles in the water. If you have an experienced buddy, then keeping an eye on him helps too.

4. Rather than maintaining a slow constant ascent, you might find it easier to move up 5 to 10 feet (gradually, never high speed), then come to a full stop for several seconds. The effect on decompression is pretty much the same whether you do a constant 30 foot-per-minute ascent, or a series of 10 foot moves and wait 20 seconds.

5. Once you have everything under control, the easiest method to ascend it to stay neutral, stay horizontal, and control your ascent by breathing pattern. When first starting diving, though, it is easier to be slightly negative and very gently fin to stay at a constant depth.
One way to transition between these methods is to ascend by finning gently, but then at the safety stop add tiny bits of air until you are neutral with a full lung. Then a another small squirt of air so you are neutral with lungs about half full. Then rotate into horizontal and inhale or exhale as necessary to keep depth. It's strange at first, because the changes in depth significantly lag the change in lung volume.

Once you have the hang of using your lungs to maintain safety stop, then you can progress to doing your ascent that way.

6. If you are having trouble controlling your ascent, the it's quite likely that you are also having buoyancy problems during your dive, but don't realize it. A good test is to, every once in a while, stop ALL motion. No finning. No moving of hands. You will probably sink because you aren't neutral. Adjust air in your BCD until you are. Diving will be much easier when you don't have to keep finning all the time.
Learning to stay neutral during the dive will easily translate to making a controlled ascent.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I'll second most of what Charlie said. A horizontal ascent provides the most control and more importantly places you in the best position to watch your buddy and respond to a problem if needed because from the horizontal position you can easily move in any direction without having to first change positions. Being able to fin backwards enables you to maintain a constant distance between you and your buddy. Ascents and descent are dynamic portions of the dive where trouble is most likely and when you should be ready for it. I know your just learning the mechanics but those are some reasons why it's important.

From a horizontal and neutral position I just arch my back a little raising my head and shoulders slightly to begine an ascent. I use breathing and position to control it between dumping the bc which I do through the inflator or the lower left pull dump.

 

[Randy43068]

After seeing a horzontal ascent this weekend I agree with you and Charlie. Ascending and descending horzontally really make sense when the reasoning behind it are explained.

I've got a lot to learn.