Diving with No weights

[rx7diver]

interesting comments about practicing dropping weights.

Belairbrian,

These aren't my ideas. (I'm not that clever.) This is how I was taught, and I continue to think these ideas make sense.

Weight-integrated BCD's concern me for a number of reasons, one of which you pointed out: People don't seem to routinely practice releasing their own (or their buddy's) weights!

(Wow, the prices you pay are really high compared to what I pay. I just got back my steel steel 72 from hydro: $35 (including VIP and fill)! Are you also getting your valve serviced? Or maybe your tank and valve oxygen-serviced? Oxygen service is not necessary for recreational nitrox--unless partial pressure blending is being done in them.)

rx7diver

 

[pjhansman]

Weight-integrated BCD's concern me for a number of reasons, one of which you pointed out: People don't seem to routinely practice releasing their own (or their buddy's) weights!

rx7diver

Not sure what other issues you refer to....but releasing the weights on my weight-integrated Knighthawk is just as simple as releasing a weight belt. And my wife/buddy's Ladyhawk is surprisingly similar. And we often exchange weight in the water when trying new configurations. I have the additional choice of only releasing a portion of my weights.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I went through the EXACT same question with my young son at around 12... was considering buying him some 80 steels, but the bouyancy issue stopped me. If you dive in cold water and she always has a thick suit, then maybe you can get by. We stuck with aluminum 80's now and he wears 4-8 lb weight belt with a full 5 mm suit. This is much. much safer than being over weighted with no ditchable lead. In my mind there is no comparison.

Anybody want to buy a used AL 63 for cheap?

 

[flots am]

So I'm thinking about moving her to one of the steels. The concern is this will likely put her at or below 4 pounds ditchable weight. Thus early in a dive she could be close to a point of not being capable of obtaining positive buoyancy if she had a BCD rupture. Since I don't know for sure, I plan to get her in the pool and weight her and see where she would be.

I wouldn't do it.

The entire OW safety protocol is designed around being able to get to the surface and stay there if "something bad" happens.

Diving with insufficient ditchable weight to make this happen at any point during the dive makes many OW emergency procedures ineffective, and makes things that could have been annoyances, potentially fatal.

For example, a ruptured eardrum often causes vertigo, which makes swimming "up" difficult, while ditching weights makes "up" pretty much automatic.

While there are other ways of dealing with the problem, and a couple of failures would be required in order to make this an issue, I wouldn't be in a big hurry to make a Jr. OW diver's rig not behave as taught in training.

I wouldn't be happy having a child underwater with much less than 4-6 Lbs of ditchable weight.

flots.