Breathing The Long Hose
Despite its growing popularity, many divers remain opposed to donating the regulator from their mouth. The following discussion reviews the most common resistance to donating the long hose from the mouth.
The last thing I want to do in an out of air situation is give up my primary regulator.
This concern does not really seem to be a rational fear. It is likely that a diver incapable of removing the regulator from his or her mouth for five to ten seconds is not skilled or practiced enough to be in an overhead environment. One may question this divers ability handle an out of air situation in which the out of air diver chooses the regulator in their mouth despite their best intentions. A diver with this degree of concern over the regulator in their mouth may find it quite a challenge to even deal with the very real possibility of an accidentally dislodged regulator.
By donating the long hose regulator from the mouth in an out of air situation one guarantees that the person most in need of a clean fully functioning regulator is going to get it. If you pass any other regulator to an out of air diver it is possible that the regulator received may contain contaminants that will be impossible for the stressed diver to manage. In essence, what you will have done is to place the last straw on the camel's back, creating the last problem your dive buddy can manage. The advantage of donating your long hose primary is that you are always ready for this very real possibility. You are, in essence, always prepared for any eventuality rather than maintaining a fixed picture of how things should operate. Emergencies have an annoying habit of not going as planned and the Hogarthian system strives to remain prepared to manage a variety of out of air scenarios.
I don't want to breathe my long hose , I want to have the best performance regulator in my mouth and the long hose decreases this performance.
With literally thousands of deep exploration dives accomplished by divers breathing the long hose, the performance argument seems rather a moot point. Yet, if one were to insist that the reduction of performance is unmanageable, it seems like a poor solution to leave the stressed, out of air diver gasping for air on this lower performance regulator so you can have a more relaxed dive. Your best performance regulator must be on your long hose and if its performance is unacceptable in a relaxed situation then it is certainly inappropriate to suggest that the your stressed dive buddy is better prepared for this increased resistance. The one thing to be clear on is that if the regulator you try to provide to an out of air diver is in any way substandard, you will be giving up the regulator in your mouth and your ability to handle that situation may make the all the difference.
I just don't want to deal with that hose on the second stage in my mouth.
Any skill worth learning usually takes refinement. The long hose may at times seem uncomfortable to some people, but regardless of your storage location, you have to deal with that hose. When you tuck a long hose into some surgical tubing you feel that it is forgotten and indeed for some it is, but what happens when it pulls free or is not set just right? If you rely on your buddy to arrange this hose for you, what guarantee do you have that it is to your liking or even correctly placed? In a sport that preaches self-sufficiency, does it seem logical to configure your equipment in a way that forces dependence on your dive buddy?
