So if James is not wearing a dry suit he must be overweighted? How much more training and experience do you think it will take for him to get his weighting correct?
As gypsyjim noted above, it's all about individual comfort. If James prefers to be overweighted on his dives, that's entirely his business. Who am I to tell him that he can't dive overweighted?
A good response to Irene would have been, "Yes, I know I'm overweighted, but I really like diving with the extra weight because ...". Not sure what would fit the ellipsis, but I guess that's where the subjectivity comes to play. For instance, if I'm diving with someone who I think might have a underweighting issue, I might carry extra weight so that I have spares to donate. I realize that will impact my diving by making it less efficient, but at least I'm aware of the consequences. I can only imagine that James has his reasons to dive overweighted, has the knowledge to know how it negatively impacts his diving, and has the skills and experience to compensate for the impact. Or at least I hope that's the case.
For instance, men have a disproportionate amount of muscle mass, hence density, in their legs. When I float in my pool, it's my legs that are first to sink, so I have to compensate by inflating my lungs and using muscle tension to keep my legs on the surface. On the other hand, a legless diver would be more buoyant and need more weight to sink relative to another male diver of the same body weight that has legs. If James, for instance, has prosthetic legs made of buoyant material, that could also explain the need for 26 lbs to sink him in a 3mm.
Not sure if further training can help at this point. Some people get stuck in their ways. Bad habits are hard to break and overweighting, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is one of the most prevalent bad habits among divers. Only after several hundred dives not caring about being overweighted (it's worse coming to warm water from a cold-water background), I finally took heed of the advice of far more experienced warm-water divers and, just like gypsyjim, made myself do with less and less, to the point where I finally became too light. For me, that was the 10 lb mark. I use 12 lbs because I want to be able to hold my safety stop or 10' stop when my AL 80 drops below 500 psi. However, as I get in better shape, I anticipate being able to drop at least another pound or two.
It wasn't extra training that caused me to rethink my being overweighted, it was a conscious effort to figure out why I thought I needed the extra weight, then made sure I was doing everything I could to ditch the weight, i.e. making sure I had no trapped air and keeping my trim horizontal and balanced. It does take time and effort to get it right and perhaps some people don't believe it's worth it. Still, I'm happy I got it right. Now if I could only improve my air consumption...
