- Messages
- 20,561
- Reaction score
- 14,946
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
primary unless I'm on a loop of some variety *CCR, SCR, Double Hose* where primary donate is not feasible
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
Primary, known to be working with breathable gas.
The scenario of the alternate become dislodged is not spin. It happens very frequently. When I used that setup, I tried a number of different octopus holders and never found one I was happy with. My alternate came out of its keeper at least once seemingly on every dive, often during a giant stride entry. When teaching OW students in the pool, I learned to check that the alternates were in place before doing an OOA exercise, because often they are not.the standards for all of the major agencies include properly securing the octopus where it is not dangling or dragging. (streamlined). So before a diver gets in the water all regulators are checked twice and before we dive everything is secured.
If a diver does these things, (self-check, buddy-check, secure the octopus) then I am comfortable asserting that point #2 is also moot. I'm sure that someone will now jump on this saying that octopus can become dislodged
^This. Why in the world would someone get into the water if there is any doubt whatsoever whether the secondary is working properly or not. Whether you donate the primary or secondary, one of you could be using a partially or non-working secondary. You may as well not even have one at all. An OOA situation would be stressful enough without having to deal with a shared regulator on the ascent.On #2 there is an issue to address here with the quality of pre-dive checks and securing the octopus. In my open water course I teach students to do a "self check'" AND a "buddy check" before getting into the water. In addition, the standards for all of the major agencies include properly securing the octopus where it is not dangling or dragging. (streamlined). So before a diver gets in the water all regulators are checked twice and before we dive everything is secured.
If a diver does these things, (self-check, buddy-check, secure the octopus) then I am comfortable asserting that point #2 is also moot. I'm sure that someone will now jump on this saying that octopus can become dislodged or they will spin some scenario where the octopus is full of sand or whatever, but these discussions are academic. They are interesting for online theory spinning but in practice, if someone does a self-check and a buddy-check, even if the octopus does become dislodged, it will be functioning, even if everyone got tunnel vision, missed the fact that it was dislodged, didn't fix it being dislodged and the octopus somehow got debris in it.
R..
The scenario of the alternate become dislodged is not spin. It happens very frequently. When I used that setup, I tried a number of different octopus holders and never found one I was happy with. My alternate came out of its keeper at least once seemingly on every dive, often during a giant stride entry. When teaching OW students in the pool, I learned to check that the alternates were in place before doing an OOA exercise, because often they are not.
I first learned to use a long hose and bungeed alternate in my tech diving training, but I did not bother changing from the common alternate setup on my single tank gear for a long time.I finally changed to using that setup in my single tank gear when I read a story of a woman who drowned when she went OOA, went for her buddy's alternate, found that it was not in its normal place because it had come loose, panicked, and drowned.
Bend the octo hose 180 degrees close to the regulator, stuff the loop through the right shoulder D-ring. Problem solved.Without fail, my wife's octo unclips and sails behind her. It doesn't matter how well we clip it off. Short of shoving it in a pocket, it's GOING to drag. I have better luck (when renting regs), perhaps because I regularly check and reclip equipment during a dive.
A lot of people say that a diver should use whatever approach was in their training. There is an important problem with that concept--the choice is often not yours to make.
If you have a traditional setup with an alternate in the "golden triangle," in many and perhaps most cases the method used in an OOA emergency is determined by the OOA diver, not the donor. If the OOA diver gives the OOA signal and then stares at you expectantly, you get to make the choice. I don't think that is what is most likely to happen, though. In every case I know of, the OOA diver reached for a regulator, often aggressively. I have read cases on ScubaBoard of the OOA diver going for the primary regulator, but in every case I know of personally, the OOA diver went for the alternate. In those cases, there was no signal, and the "donor" only realized the situation when the OOA diver was grasping at the regulator.
If you have the traditional setup, you have to recognize what is happening and make an appropriate reaction. If you don't act appropriately, things can go bad. In my experience doing OW certification dives, I have mostly worked for a shop that separated the pool sessions from the OW dives, so the group of OW students you had to work with had different instructors in the pool. I had to ask the students before the OW dives how they had been taught to do the OOA sequence. Some were taught to let the OOA diver take the alternate. Some had been taught to donate the alternate. When I got a mix on a buddy team, it was usually trouble. I told them to decide what method they would use before the dive, but they usually reverted to their training. When the "alternate take" student was OOA, he or she would reach to take the alternate while the "alternate donate" student was reaching for it to donate. This usually resulted in a fumbled handoff as one hand knocked the regulator out of the other.
If you have a bungeed alternate under the chin or any of the various models of an alternate on the inflator hose, that problem is eliminated.