Doing it Ridiculous

[Kim]

You are right.... I bet you are more DIR then you think you are... It's not just about equipment. Mindset can be more important than equipment... You will however at some point in time need to loose the Pink HUB with all the cetacea clips hangin all over it :11:

:11: My pink HUB!!!!! are you serious?????:11:

 

[shiro85]

As long as you can reach the valve (correct tank placement), and you have had a little practice, it's a lot faster to reach back and shut it down than take your whole gear off first.

Either option leaves you at 90ft with minimal air supply.

For the OW application, the immediate remedy is to ascend if your buddy's not immediately present. If you can get the air turned off en route, that's gravy.

 

[Don Burke]

So? You travel around the country setting the nasty DIR people straight?

Actually, I would like to hear the other side of the story from someone with no financial interest in bashing DIR.

 

[Don Burke]

Yeah the guys were idiots but come on man. thats too funny!

"Excuse me gentlemen, but I have it on good authority that you guys wore doubles! And that you called others strokes!"

Personally , I would never say the stuff the guys might have said...(w/ all due respect as I would say this to anyone else)
but I would tell you to B--w me!

What the heck we now have the SB "nice police"!!!!!!!!!!

My opening line would be somewhat shorter: "This is what some dude is saying. W TF?"

 

[pennypue]

:11: My pink HUB!!!!! are you serious?????:11:

YES, send it to me. I'll save it and dive it as vintage gear in twenty years.

 

[Kim]

Either option leaves you at 90ft with minimal air supply.

For the OW application, the immediate remedy is to ascend if your buddy's not immediately present. If you can get the air turned off en route, that's gravy.

I'm sorry I have to disagree. Whether you end up with a minimal air supply in this situation depends on how fast you recognize the problem and how fast you can shut your tank down. It doesn't matter what the 'OW' procedure is - no-one can do an ESA from 90ft with no air available - or at least even if they can it's certainly not what is taught in OW. For a start off an OW diver should never be that deep. Being able to turn your valve off and on can be both crucial to getting out alive, or without getting seriously bent. Remember - I'm not talking about a gradual leak here - I'm talking about a massive 1st stage failure that can empty your entire tank in under a minute (actually it can be not so many seconds)

 

[Kim]

YES, send it to me. I'll save it and dive it as vintage gear in twenty years.

You are DIR. (you passed right?) I could possibly put temptation in your way.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Either option leaves you at 90ft with minimal air supply.

For the OW application, the immediate remedy is to ascend if your buddy's not immediately present. If you can get the air turned off en route, that's gravy.

Lets look at this. First of all, I don't care to do 90 ft dives with a single and no redundancy. A 90 ft ESA thrills me not in the least so my solution is to calmly signal my buddy, shut down the offending post and switch to my backup and end the dive in the most appropriate way from there. Works every bit as well in OW as it does in a cave.

With your immediate ascent with one buddy not immediatly present, you not only have a diver facing a 90 ft ascent with little or nothing to breath but you have the divers seperated on top of that. But going further what if it's a 90 ft dive on a wreck with a current and you're down current from a moored dive boat. Now an immediate ascent may mean drifting to Cuba before the boat can come looking for you. How good are you at deploying a surface marker during an ESA? I'd rather switch to another breathing source and make my way back to the boat or at least have the luxury of a slow ascent deploying a marker on the way up.

Now if buddies are working together you have him for a backup breathing source. The problem there is that most divers aren't taught to plan their gas so they each have enough left to get both back and the typical 80 cuft tank results in a pretty short dive if you do plan your gas that way for a square profile 100 ft dive. So, even with your buddy there, you're liable to end up sucking on a dry tank. If you do have enough gas to get back to the boat and up, that trip along the wreck navigating the current sharing air on that short little hose is going to be a real chore.

I threw in the wreck and the current but recreational divers are doing dives like this all the time without a plan, equipment or skills that give them a good chance of getting back if things go wrong. In fact, I remember a dive on the Papoose. 90 ft to the top of the wreck, 120 or so to the sand and a boat load of rec divers. the current was strong because the weather had been bad so you had to stay behind the wrck (below 90 ft). My wife and I hit the sand (yes in those days we hit the sand), poked around a bit and decided we didn't have enough gas to be there and headed up. We hung around near the line watching the jacks and a big cuda and sure enough a few minutes later the other started bee-linning it up the line with near empty tanks, some having to skip any kind of safety stop. If one of them had an equipment failure on that wreck it would have been a real mess because no one had enough gas to help any one. Could you imagine any of those divers doing a free ascent in that current and OOA? BTW, two of the divers who came rushing up, near OOA, seperated because one was in more of a hurry than the other and skipping safety stops were an instructor and a DM diving together (sort of). The next dive was a max of about 65 ft with no current and there were no near death experiences. What a difference.

Of course being able to reach ones valve might not have been enough to help. here wasn't a single diver on that trip that had the equipment or skills to have any business doing that dive including my wife and I. That trip was a real hint that we needed to start doing something different. Well, more like everything different.

 

[pennypue]

You are DIR. (you passed right?) I could possibly put temptation in your way.

Not yet.

You really should send that my way.....and anything else pink you might possess. :11ztongue

 

[u-boat853]

Recently diving off Point Lobos in Monterey I had the unfortunate experience to see a pair of "DIR" divers in full meathead mode. On a clear day, in a very easy and nice dive site these fellows pulled up in their oversized truck with their oversized egos and proceeded to gear up with seven foot primary regs, doubles, HID lights, backup lights and a plethora of other equipment. The seas were flat calm, nice open ocean, daytime. The lads in a loud tone talked about all the "strokes" who were diving with single tanks and rec. equipment. What a sad sight they were; legends in their own mind. After a while, I asked them how many dives they had made: "I've got over 50" one muscle head said. I know that the GUE training has much merit. These guys had none.

Im not DIR but i do know a few Gue trained divers. They are some of the best diver's that i have dove with. Ive been around all kinds of divers and generaly like most of them. Id love to be on a boat with the guys you are talking about. My buddies and i would have a lot of fun teasing them. Over 50 dives wow! Do you think you could sigh my log book.