diving wet with twin steel tanks

[jonnythan]

Cool. Drop to 100 feet, empty your wing or bc completely, and swim... let us know how it goes

 

[Miami_Diver]

Cool. Drop to 100 feet, empty your wing or bc completely, and swim... let us know how it goes

sound a little sarcastic there. you have an inside on this .
from your experience you probably think I wont. maybe youre right since I've never try it. lol

anyways .I still have my other (If its a dual wing bladder)wing and a 125lb lift bag as back up.

thanks!!

 

[jonnythan]

No sarcasm.

 

[nitroxbabe]

sound a little sarcastic there. you have an inside on this .
from your experience you probably think I wont. maybe youre right since I've never try it. lol

anyways .I still have my other (If its a dual wing bladder)wing and a 125lb lift bag as back up.

thanks!!

I'd like to know how that works for you, too.

Ain't so easy, trust me. Try it with steel doubles, you'll really be in for a surprise.

Or better yet, don't try it - it's really not a great situation to get into.

I can't imagine having the presence of mind to deploy a lift bag as you sink deeper and deeper, fighting to swim up, ears cracking - doesn't sound like anything I want to do at anytime in the near future...

 

[Mark Vlahos]

sound a little sarcastic there. you have an inside on this .
from your experience you probably think I wont. maybe youre right since I've never try it. lol

anyways .I still have my other (If its a dual wing bladder)wing and a 125lb lift bag as back up.

thanks!!

Jonnythan has a good point. The reason I use a redundant bladder when diving steel doubles is because I did the "test" from about twenty feet. In my case the swim up was in fresh water so that made things more difficult, but I did have the bouyancy of my wetsuit at twenty feet to help. Swimming up was one of the most difficult things I have done. If you are going to try this little test I strongly encourage you to try it in a controlled environment, you might be surprised at how difficult it actually is. I have the redudnant bladder on my other post as most divers would put their drysuit unless they use a separate argon bottle.

I have detailed my experience elsewhere on this board but I learned a couple of lessons that I will repeat. Redundant lift is important. Keep your rig light, things like a lightweight plate instead of steel make a difference with heavy doubles. Be willing to dump any available weight like reels or battery canisters. Good fins make a difference if you need to kick for all you are worth to get to the surface. Leave yourself adequate breathing gas reserves, if this happens at or near the end of your dive you will be working very hard to swim up, running out of gas would really suck.

Mark Vlahos

 

[PerroneFord]

This is a great thread and something I've wondered about for a long time. I actually had a BC failure on the surface (fresh water) with an Al80 and about 20 pounds of lead. I was wearing a 7mm farmer. I was 30+ yards or more away from the edge. I was VERY fit a the time.. like triathalon fit, and that surface swim absolutely WHIPPED me.

I could not IMAGINE having to swim up double steels without the help of the wetsuit.

Also, I have been told that there exists some guidelines for the ratio of ditchble to non-ditchable weight. I have yet to see it. Does anyone have something like this?

 

[Hoosier]

I think another big factor is the depth where you are diving. If your diving is mostly deep diving, your wetsuit is losing the buoyancy over the depth. So you have to deal with it to maintain the neutral buoyancy. Lift bag and reel is NOT designed for lifting your body from the underwater, maybe for a dead body though. You don’t want to be a torpedo by yourself….

Occasionally, I used dive wet with 130cf steel tank. It is a way different with an AL80 single in underwater. Yes, I am also in a good shape to manage myself though…


But, who cares? It is your life. If you can manage it, nobody cares it.

 

[ShakaZulu]

I don't see the problem, just sink to the bottom, take off you fins and walk back to the shore??? You do have doubles right???

 

[do it easy]

How about you try it?

this scares the cr@p out of me. i dive double faber 95's, with a 2mm crushed neoprene drysuit in fresh water. i don't need a weightbelt, so i don't have a whole lot that i can ditch- 10w HID can light, my dive shears, and the bolt on my pee valve.

i'm going to try it one of these days when i work up the courage. that and take my mask off in the water when it's 35f, but not both at the same time.

 

[Hoyden]

I tried the "can you swim your rig up without aid" test this past Sunday. I have recently started diving doubles and moved to a dry suit. In fresh water with every bit of air out of my wing and drysuit (thin polar fleece undies) swimming double steel 72s up from 20 feet in fresh water was way more work than I thought it would be. It was at then end of a long day of diving and skills practice in a quarry. I am not sure that I could do it with my steel 100s. The experience certainly helped me understand the issues with diving double steels wet especially in fresh water.

Jackie