Diving Dry? Balance your Rig!

[TSandM]

If you weight yourself so you are neutral with empty tanks, which is how you should be weighted, then when you fill the tanks, you are negative by the weight of the gas you put in them. Two Al80s have 154 cubic feet of gas in them. Air/Nitrox weighs about 1 pound for every 13 cubic feet of gas, so that's a little over eleven pounds of gas in the two tanks. When you start your dive, you will be that much negative, because if you aren't, you will be POSITIVE once you have used up the gas, and you don't want that.

 

[mruseless]

Not why I do it, but I have changed my default to diving with the dump valve closed. I have a wrist dump so really easy to get to and turn on and off, but I found that I rarely want to dump air automatically and too often I would be venting automatically when I really didn't want to, both with the shoulder dump and wrist dump. Much prefer to just open and dump as required then close again. Interestingly it means that opening and closing the valve is now automatic - as is topping up the dry suit. So much so that if I am diving wet, for the first few dives I reach for my chest and wrist to adjust boyancy and have to remember to go for the wing. Mostly a photographer thing as I am more often than not in some odd position trying to get a shot and with an open dump valve air starts to vent and I have to back out close the valve add back the air to the drysuit and reposition.

A really good story. My takeaway. Always check all things that require air just before splashing. I always do three breaths from the main, and a shot to the BC and a shot to the drysuit. EVERY time just before splashing - feels stupid sometimes, but I can survive just about anything with lots of air. I can get complacent about a lot of things, but this is an infallible rule for me. A test I never skip. Have managed to jump in sans fins, weights, computer, mask, camera but so far never without working air.

I do the same thing, although since I'm just now learning to dive dry I'll have to add the drysuit inflate as part of the routine. I always take 2 quick breaths from my main reg and my necklace while watching my spg, then put a puff into my wing. I've jumped in without fins, mask, computer and even without my reg in my mouth (not all at the same time!), but while in line to jump I've done my routine so never jumped in without air.