Diver dies on French Reef (Keys)
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divengolf
Contributor
Your 6' (72")DAN sausage is a large SMB and quite adequate. What I find useless are the 45" safety sausages that most dive shops sell to OW divers. The shorter sausages are very skinny, and usually don't have light/radar reflecting tape on them. Skinny is bad. Short is bad. No reflective tape is bad. All this is my opinion of course.
ScubaSteve
Wow.....what a DB
Your 6' (72")DAN sausage is a large SMB and quite adequate. What I find useless are the 45" safety sausages that most dive shops sell to OW divers. The shorter sausages are very skinny, and usually don't have light/radar reflecting tape on them. Skinny is bad. Short is bad. No reflective tape is bad. All this is my opinion of course.
Be careful and please remember this. If your 6' SMB does not seal tight at the bottom (as I am not sure if the DAN one does), then you are unable to lift it up and wave it around as conveniently as a sealed SS. I have a 6' SMB which is open on the bottom for ease of inflating and a shorter SS (length not certain about but 45" sounds about right). Since I cannot lift the 6' SMB out of the water without losing the air, the 45" SS with the length of my arm and body (which is floating above the surface) gets that SS higher up than the 6' SMB ends up being. I am also able to wave the SS which may be able to help attract attention someday if needed.
So, while the Sausage (SS) may not be the best for all situations, it is your responsibility to know your equipment and all of it's pro's and con's. IMHO, the combination of equipment that I have, is better "together" than the individual pieces on their own (just talking about SMB and SS). Your configuration and equipment may be different meaning you may not need one or the other.
Steve,
While your open bottom SMB point is sort of valid, your other point about holding up a 45" and having it extend above a 72" isn't really. Let's say you are really bouyant at the surface to where your armpit is at water-level (we're stretching reality here a wee bit), a 5'8" man is going to have about a 27" reach vertically from armpit to fingertip. Holding a 45" sausage reduces it by about 3-4 inches, putting the total height at about 69". But that isn't the real point (I know some people have longer arms). The real point is that the little 45-incher is only about 1/3 as wide as a true SMB, so the visible square footage able to be seen by a boat is substantially different:
135 square inches for the 45" sausage (45x3)
vs.
648 square inches for the 72" SMB (72x9)
This is why one is called a sausage, and the other is called a surface marker bouy
Please compare your 45"-er to this 6'-er. There will be no comparison whether you hold it up or not.
While your open bottom SMB point is sort of valid, your other point about holding up a 45" and having it extend above a 72" isn't really. Let's say you are really bouyant at the surface to where your armpit is at water-level (we're stretching reality here a wee bit), a 5'8" man is going to have about a 27" reach vertically from armpit to fingertip. Holding a 45" sausage reduces it by about 3-4 inches, putting the total height at about 69". But that isn't the real point (I know some people have longer arms). The real point is that the little 45-incher is only about 1/3 as wide as a true SMB, so the visible square footage able to be seen by a boat is substantially different:
135 square inches for the 45" sausage (45x3)
vs.
648 square inches for the 72" SMB (72x9)
This is why one is called a sausage, and the other is called a surface marker bouy
Please compare your 45"-er to this 6'-er. There will be no comparison whether you hold it up or not.
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ScubaSteve
Wow.....what a DB
You are really grasping at straws here. This is not a competition so you do not need to try to make your point "the winner". Incorrect math impresses nobody. After several attempts to make this post nicer, all I offer in return is this:
I carry a 6' SMB and a Sausage (I will go along with the 45"). One is large and sits on the surface. The other is shorter however can be picked up and easily waved to attract the attention of searchers. Neither of these is a bad piece of equipment. Both can and will aid in rescue however neither will guarantee anything. Are you better off having both? Yes I believe so as long as you are able to safely and successfully launch/use both. You blindly wrote off the Sausage as useless. However the only gurantees in life are Death, Taxes and unnecessary arrogance on Internet forums.
I carry a 6' SMB and a Sausage (I will go along with the 45"). One is large and sits on the surface. The other is shorter however can be picked up and easily waved to attract the attention of searchers. Neither of these is a bad piece of equipment. Both can and will aid in rescue however neither will guarantee anything. Are you better off having both? Yes I believe so as long as you are able to safely and successfully launch/use both. You blindly wrote off the Sausage as useless. However the only gurantees in life are Death, Taxes and unnecessary arrogance on Internet forums.
Steve,
While your open bottom SMB point is sort of valid, your other point about holding up a 45" and having it extend above a 72" isn't really. Let's say you are really bouyant at the surface to where your armpit is at water-level (we're stretching reality here a wee bit), a 5'8" man is going to have about a 27" reach vertically from armpit to fingertip. Holding a 45" sausage reduces it by about 3-4 inches, putting the total height at about 69". But that isn't the real point (I know some people have longer arms). The real point is that the little 45-incher is only about 1/3 as wide as a true SMB, so the visible square footage able to be seen by a boat is substantially different:
135 square inches for the 45" sausage (45x3)
vs.
648 square inches for the 72" SMB (72x9)
This is why one is called a sausage, and the other is called a surface marker bouy
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I like to drag a dingy with a huge dive flag at the end of my reel. It can carry food, water, radio, cell phone, gps, sunblock, log book, MP3 player, girlfriend, etc.
Each dive must decide how much he really will carry, tho. The more signaling devices, the better - but I already look like a walking dive shop boarding with my pony rig, camera rig, first aid big, hot & cold beverages, etc. If every diver carried a mirror, sausage of some sort, storm whistle, and Dive Alert whistle, we'd have fewer lost divers - and the one mentioned in post #1 would be alive if she'd floated with hers.
Each dive must decide how much he really will carry, tho. The more signaling devices, the better - but I already look like a walking dive shop boarding with my pony rig, camera rig, first aid big, hot & cold beverages, etc. If every diver carried a mirror, sausage of some sort, storm whistle, and Dive Alert whistle, we'd have fewer lost divers - and the one mentioned in post #1 would be alive if she'd floated with hers.
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