What do you mean, "covers?" If you mean talks about, OK, that's what PADI does. If you mean practices in open water, that's crazy.
Question Do you ever practice dropping weights and handling the unexpected ascent?
- Thread starter LightBrownPillow
- Start date
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Blackcrusader
Contributor
@LightBrownPillow,
No, never practiced this per se.
However, during my open water checkout (YMCA/NAUI, in 1987), we had to perform a "lost weight belt at depth, weight belt recovery" drill: On the surface, wearing full gear (full 0.25" two-piece farmer John wetsuit with hood and gloves) with a full cylinder and completely empty BC and weighted correctly, but with snorkel (rather than 2nd stage reg) in our mouth, we would take a breath and do a competent surface dive down (kick down) to our instructor who was waiting on the bottom, 20-25 ft below. Then we would signal "okay", drop our weight belt, immediately retrieve it and don it, signal "okay", and return to the surface using our best skindiving technique (i.e., "look up, reach up, rotate 360 degrees as you come up").
The drill was meant to emphasize that even at a relatively shallow depth, a wetsuit will have compressed enough, and therefore lost enough positive buoyancy, that losing your weight belt at depth will not put you immediately into an uncontrolled ascent.
rx7diver
No, never practiced this per se.
However, during my open water checkout (YMCA/NAUI, in 1987), we had to perform a "lost weight belt at depth, weight belt recovery" drill: On the surface, wearing full gear (full 0.25" two-piece farmer John wetsuit with hood and gloves) with a full cylinder and completely empty BC and weighted correctly, but with snorkel (rather than 2nd stage reg) in our mouth, we would take a breath and do a competent surface dive down (kick down) to our instructor who was waiting on the bottom, 20-25 ft below. Then we would signal "okay", drop our weight belt, immediately retrieve it and don it, signal "okay", and return to the surface using our best skindiving technique (i.e., "look up, reach up, rotate 360 degrees as you come up").
The drill was meant to emphasize that even at a relatively shallow depth, a wetsuit will have compressed enough, and therefore lost enough positive buoyancy, that losing your weight belt at depth will not put you immediately into an uncontrolled ascent.
rx7diver
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