Dive prep time

[Matt S.]

My wife and I are really enjoying diving, but I am finding all the setup/cleanup to be quite a chore. It's a lot of effort for maybe 30 minutes under water! (We are both new and therefore air hogs.)

This isn't really a gripe, I just wonder how you guys manage to go so often, when it seems like a full day committment to me.

First, I have to study the site if it's new--and it probably is. I hit the forums if I need more info, like my thread on Edmonds this last weekend. Over time planning will go much more quickly, of course, so I can't really complain about this too much.

The night before I prep the equipment, rent a pair of tanks, and load the car.

When we get there, 80 lbs of lead + the rest of the gear gets moved from the car to the staging area. Setting up the scuba units and getting into the drysuits always takes us a while, I can't throw together a kit in 5 minutes like an instructor. Some stuff always has to go back to the car and get locked up too.

Then, the dive. After exiting the water and walking back to staging, I'm too tired to think about putting on another tank if I even had one.

Back home, it takes a while to clean all the gear and hang it up to dry.

Aside from becoming more adept at setting up the scuba unit itself I don't see any way to save time on the day of a dive. I can't avoid hauling or cleaning gear unless I hire a butler!

So how do you guys, who seem like you're diving 2 tanks after work 3x a week, manage it?

 

[jim T.]

Matt,
I'm on my 70th dive. This IS an extremely intensive sport for prep and after the dive. I spend my 45-60 minutes underwater and 12 hrs. drying a neoprene
drysuit and a couple or three washing/rinsing gear after the dive. It is sort of "inequitable" time wise/pleasure to work ratio.

"If your gear spends more time in the bathroom than you do, then you're a diver"!

A lot of divers who are constantly diving seem to have more than one drysuit
or a quick drying suit, multiple tanks for switching out for the 2nd (or 3rd dive) or reducing trips to the LDS for fills.
and in some case are diving Nitrox which due to the increased 02 content/reduced nitrogen content reduces fatigue in some divers. This hasn't been proven in research but anecdotally has a lot of proponents. Maybe myself included, although the jury is still out on that one.

Obviously, if you have dived a site before, it goes all that much faster on future dives at that particular site.

I find that keeping all of my gear in one big tupperware box (or dive bag/cart) stacked in the order in which it will be donned speeds things up.
I like to lay my gear out in a linear fashion on a "dress up" wall or picnic table, etc. so that I simply move down the "assembly line" in the same fashion every time. It reduces the stress of worrying about forgetting something and by the time you've moved down this line, you should arrive in a logical order at your mask and fins, the last things you'll put on, maybe in the water after entry. (Storing your mask in your fin foot pocket can be helpful.)

Dive with people who are patient and say things like: "I don't mind waiting on you. This isn't a race and are helpful getting you into your "self donning" drysuit, etc. It may take you over 50 dives to get into a flow gearing up and
packing up. Drying and cleaning gear after? Having one place to rinse and hang to dry is optimum. A garage or bathroom whatever works.
When it's dry, put it in your box stacked the way it'll come out to get dressed in order for your next dives. If you get into this habit, going diving comes down to grabbing one big box (more or less) and a tank or two and you're ready!

Coming home. I prefer the tupperware box (about 2' wide by 42" long) to a dive bag because i can simply throw all of my wet gear into it and drive home without taking forever to stow things in separate places in the vehicle.
This will also keep all that Edmonds, Langley, Mukilteo sand in one spot in your car. It's fast to hose all that sand off everything while it's still in the box.
Just remember to hose off the drysuit separately due to the "open" seals and zippers. I use a folding clothes rack to hang the suit over for hosing off.

I learned the hard way that some wetsuit divers may not understand or have enough patience to wait for drysuit divers to dress. It takes awhile to double check seals for rollover etc.

It still takes me a literal 3-5 minutes before I can catch my breath from "dress stress" before descending. I worry that a new buddy will think that I'm
taking too long and won't want to dive with me again, but I make sure this is discussed and understood and accepted at the time we arrange to buddy.
Usually once we've completed a nice relaxing and enjoyable dive it's no longer an issue for future dives with that person. Maybe this will go away for me, maybe not but at least I can prevent that bit of extra wait time from being a stress inducing issue. I've learned that getting to the site ahead of your buddy or just getting into the water ahead of them, to cool down and breathe deeply is the answer.

Once your seals (if you're diving dry) stretch a bit, it'll really speed things up too.
Don't know what you've already tried but...

Hope that helps some...

 

[Missdirected]

One thing I do is pack my gear ahead of time. Personally I come home and immediately clean my gear - just because that is my system and it works for me. If I sit down first, you can forget it.

As soon as I get out of the car, I rinse/clean what I need to in the driveway, bring the suits in to be cleaned, and carry the masks to the sink. A couple hours later, I reverse; take the masks from soaking in the sink, grab the suits from the laundry and head back to the garage where I place the items in my dive gear area. It is important to me to keep all of my stuff together at all times. A day or two later, this is what I think may be beneficial for you, I place all my gear back into my bag so it is ready to go for next time. Having my gear packed already makes it easier to grab the bag and go.

 

[scubak]

Yup! Diving is an all day or several hours activity....
You are saying youre only down for about 30mins...wait till your bottom times get longer...then what? ;0
Personally, I have a small dip tank that I put my stuff into after a dive to rinse off or I really like Redondo because of the hose to clean the gear...
I then hang it on a rack to dry and when I am getting ready to dive again, I just pull everything off the rack and have all my stuff ready to go.
Also, if you are diving all the time..your gear will never dry out....just keep diving!
It's time consuming but well worth the effort...Its a sport that many people cannot fathom doing...count yourself blessed...
Enjoy,
K

 

[Charlie99]

What has helped cut down on both time and confusion is to get a routine going that minimizes extra gear handling.

Rather than haul gear down to a staging area I fully suit up at the car, make the trek down to the beach and immediately enter the water. If I need to catch my breath a bit, I'll do it on the surface, deep enough that I'm well offshore of the shore break.

Two 58 quart sterelite tubs hold all the wet gear after the dive, and then work as rinse buckets at the carwash area of our condo. The gear drains water a few minutes while hanging from an improvised clothesline while I hose down the car and squeegee the windows. Then everything goes back into the tubs for the 400' drive back to my parking spot and getting hauled up to dry on the lanai.

The following morning, everything gets packed back into the gearbag and put back in the car. If nothing is left on the lanai, then nothing is forgotten.

=======

Total elapsed time this morning for a 1:40 minute bottom time dive was somewhere between 2-1/2 and 3 hours, including pickup and drop off of a rental tank, gear cleanup and a post dive shower. Having the divesite only 5-10 minutes away helps a lot.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Yup ... you get into a routine after a while.

After you've done a bunch of dives at the same dive site, you don't have to research it anymore. Some of the sites are so familiar to me I think the fish know my name (the resident harbor seal at Cove 2 certainly does).

Tanks ... most folks who dive regularly own theirs ... some own multiple sets ... so there's always a tank or two ready to go at all times.

Gear prep becomes a matter of pulling everything down off of hangers and tossing it into a box, then putting the box in the car. I use the same box when I get home to rinse and hang everything back up ... takes about 10 minutes.

The rest just comes with practice ... we all went through the same learning curve you are. Patience ... before you know it, those dives will be lasting an hour and you won't feel all that tired after the dive. Your body just needs time to adapt.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Brandon]

To echo NWGratefulDiver; however you build and don your gear, just do it the same way, every time.

My buddies and I have it down to a pretty good system. For time planning, 30 minutes on each side of the planned bottom time seems to work out pretty good.

We met at 10:30 this morning, did a 30 minute dive, and were done before noon. This included rinsing / hanging gear, and was a drysuit dive.

Now if there's a bunch of us.. and someone starts a good or heated conversation, double the amount of time everything takes!

-Brandon.

 

[covediver]

I am going to put a different twist on your story, which has the ring of the "old bull, young bull" looking over the herd

You seem to be doing everything right and if you try to rush things you will could screw it up. So keep on doing what you are doing.

I had an orthopedic surgeon tell me that in rehab slow and steady wins the race. I guess it is the same with diving. Many of amassed our dives doing what you are doing, two or three at a time, once or twice a week. You get into a routine and get better at packing and donning gear. I also combined trips to the dive shop, rinsing gear at the shop while waiting for tank fills, etc.

Lots of folks build up that kind of time by working on dive boats or as instructors. Others are fortunate enough to live 10 minutes from good shore diving (as was I when I lived in Socal).

I managed to build the time because it was an obsession, now diving is merely a preoccupation When diving was part of my job, I got a lot of dives. When it was not it was less. Yet, when I look at my dive logs I see there were time when I made 12 dives in one year. Ouch, I am still trying to figure out how that happened.

 

[TSandM]

I've laughed and said any number of times that this sport involved more setup and cleanup time for the time you are actually DOING it than anything else I've ever done. And, when I sat in on the Essentials class last April, the instructor pointed out that a LOT of diving is the social interaction that goes on as you gear up and pack up, which is really true.

You do get MUCH faster at packing the car and assembling gear with practice. I'm down to a half hour to load the car, if I'm only loading my stuff. Ten minutes of research got spent somewhere along the line to check tides and currents (a little more if it's a new site).

Coming home, I've got a system. I have a hose near the carport, buckets to put regs in to soak, and a hanger for my drysuit. It takes about twenty minutes or so to get everything out of the car and hosed off. The big stuff sits out until the next day (under cover) and the little stuff like computers and compasses and lights come into the house to be stored, downloaded or recharged.

Regarding the fatigue -- That, too, will get better as you get more practiced. You're working hard, both physically and mentally, as a new diver. With increasing relaxation, that gets better. And, although the studies don't bear it out, I found a HUGE improvement in post-dive fatigue when I switched to diving Nitrox all the time.

Good on you guys that you're getting out there. It's the only way it gets better!

 

[MSilvia]

My wife and I are really enjoying diving, but I am finding all the setup/cleanup to be quite a chore. It's a lot of effort for maybe 30 minutes under water! (We are both new and therefore air hogs.)

I can relate, but you can rest assured that as you continue to dive, setup will get faster, and your dives will get longer. As you gain experience, the situation will improve, but it'll rarely if ever be totally remedied. Some things take time to do right.

First, I have to study the site if it's new--and it probably is. I hit the forums if I need more info, like my thread on Edmonds this last weekend. Over time planning will go much more quickly, of course, so I can't really complain about this too much.

Nope... it is what it is. If you don't know a site, a little recon is in order.

The night before I prep the equipment, rent a pair of tanks, and load the car. When we get there, 80 lbs of lead + the rest of the gear gets moved from the car to the staging area. Setting up the scuba units and getting into the drysuits always takes us a while, I can't throw together a kit in 5 minutes like an instructor. Some stuff always has to go back to the car and get locked up too.

One thing that can help with prep time is owning your own tanks. If you fill them AFTER diving instead of before, you'll be ready to go without making a pre-dive trip to the dive shop. You may also find that once your gear is dried, it's convenient to basicly leave your scuba unit set up, so all you have to do at the site is put on your exposure protection and weights, put on your scuba unit (which is already set up), grab mask and fins, and head for the water. Personally, I use my car as the staging area, and walk right down the beach and into the water.

Then, the dive. After exiting the water and walking back to staging, I'm too tired to think about putting on another tank if I even had one.

Less effort before and during the dive means more energy after. If diving is hard work, that explains why you're an air hog. Practice your buoyancy control, get your trim set the way you like, and relax. If you don't get your heart rate up during the dive, it'll last longer, and you won't be exhausted afterward. Boat dives make going for a second dive a little easier, of course.

Back home, it takes a while to clean all the gear and hang it up to dry.

Short of diving in freshwater, I don't know many ways to speed that process.