Drawbacks of Sidemount, compared to backmount diving

[beanojones]

I mean double BM, and how much time does it take to screw a couple of wing nuts?

It takes long enough to line everything up, and depending on the harness (TransPac), put everything back together. It takes long enough that some people leave their harness and wing attached to their doubles when they are filling them, which means the bladder and the wing are exposed to much greater potential to damage.

And kudos to you if you can gear up in SM on land without a bench. Personally, I need a bench or a table if I'm putting my tanks on while on the boat.

Putting the gear on and off in seconds: That's the entire reason I switched to the Nomad Ring Bungie and choker system. Yes there are pain in the butt SM systems. But the Nomad Ring Bungie system is basically instantaneous to clip in the top if it's a boat clip or a butterfly: throw the ring at the clip, and done. Whether the tank is racked or just pulled out from under the seat, it take seconds to bolt in the top. Same goes double for shore diving: bend over pull the ring forward, clip it in, walk into the water.

Of course part of the cheat is that the BCD (which weighs nothing) can be put on back at the shop and just kept on, something which is compltely impossible with BM, doubles or singles.

 

[billgraham]

Really? I see it the other way. Most BM divers have no issues with clipping on a stage. Most SM divers have to go through a learning curve to figure out how to top mount a stage. And most of them are still top mounting stage bottles that sit too high at the bottom.



So how do you propose people learn how to sidemount?

Rob, carrying stage bottles is a learning curve but when I got it sorted out, I found it to be a lot easier (physically) and obviously more streamlined than backmount.

You know why I think the OW sidemount class is problematic. Learning how to put the gear on and dive it is fine, but it's not cave training and people get a false sense of security. This is also true in backmount as recent events have shown, but I feel like people want to take their new SM gear and stuff it in someplace small. I'm sure you do a good job of drilling into their heads that the OC sidemount class is no substitute for overhead training and I hope everyone else does the same.

Bill

 

[Dive-aholic]

It takes long enough to line everything up, and depending on the harness (TransPac), put everything back together. It takes long enough that some people leave their harness and wing attached to their doubles when they are filling them, which means the bladder and the wing are exposed to much greater potential to damage.

Lining things up is not a big deal. It takes seconds to do. And people leaving their harness and wing attached is just laziness.

Putting the gear on and off in seconds: That's the entire reason I switched to the Nomad Ring Bungie and choker system. Yes there are pain in the butt SM systems. But the Nomad Ring Bungie system is basically instantaneous to clip in the top if it's a boat clip or a butterfly: throw the ring at the clip, and done. Whether the tank is racked or just pulled out from under the seat, it take seconds to bolt in the top. Same goes double for shore diving: bend over pull the ring forward, clip it in, walk into the water.

Of course part of the cheat is that the BCD (which weighs nothing) can be put on back at the shop and just kept on, something which is compltely impossible with BM, doubles or singles.

That may work well for the ring system, but the ring system is not my choice of systems for a few various reasons. Also, my back and knees appreciate me not bending over, clipping 2 50lb cylinders onto my chest and standing back up.

Sidemount has a lot of variables to it and a lot of different ways of setting things up. There are very few general statements that can be made about it since there are so many variables.

 

[bkbomb123]

Hi Dan, People that dive sidemount or doubles at BHB in 10' of water at high tide are are trying out new equiptment or working things out,
you know that.

 

[danvolker]

Hi Dan, People that dive sidemount or doubles at BHB in 10' of water at high tide are are trying out new equiptment or working things out,
you know that.

Maybe this is it and the majority I have seen are still in the midst of getting a handle on how to configure. The majority wearing doubles does seem to have no trouble frog kicking 2 inches off the bottom without silting , while the norm I have seen has the sidemount divers needing to be much higher off the bottom if they don't want to drag tanks and silt. But like you said, these may well be new students , and several here have said the configuring is harder to dial in.

I look forward to seeing some of the well configured SM'ers soon, showing they can skim the bottom without silting ( the behavior typical if looking for nudibranchs, for instance)

I'd like to get this on video.

 

[beanojones]

Lining things up is not a big deal. It takes seconds to do. And people leaving their harness and wing attached is just laziness.
.

And yet if it took seconds people would probably not leave the harness attached to the tanks. It's a PITA to take off the harness and wing, as is carrying doubles around without a harness, which is another reason why people leave it attached. We put up with it because it is a tool that does a job, but there are a bunch of reasons why people never dive doubles even when they own all their own gear, and their own doubles etc. I stopped diving doubles because of the all-around PITA including the fact there was no way in hell I could do it at work (probably most important for me).

Everything with banded doubles is a PITA, even when doing it regularly. If you are listing cylinders as weighing 50 pounds, then the manifold and the tanks for doubles in 115 pounds. That's more than half a person's bodyweight for most people, (and more than their body weight for some of my people). It's hard carrying thing that weighs more than half one's body weight without a harness, so the harness stays on for that reason as well.

The fact is while for some, attaching BP/W may not be that time consuming; it is apparently time and effort consuming enough that lazy is actually a factor in practice, since some people leave their gear on. So while it may be quick enough, it is not seconds. And there are good reasons why people leave their harness attached to the tanks for practical reasons, because banded doubles are just a major PITA because of the weight.

Of course SM has a built in cheat: The harness weighs nothing when it is being put on, and it can be worn to the boat. But that is part of the point. SM modularizes everything from gearing up, to adding bottles, etc. etc. It goes from putting things, on to carrying things, to adding bottles.

And in the end that modularity is maybe SM's strength, and it's weakness.

Some people do not want to (or can't) make two trips down to the entry carrying tanks in their hands, and/or don't feel balanced with two tanks clipped into on the side, and/or dive an SM system that does not have a hard attachment point up top. Modularity Bad.

While the BM setup, for some,may have better balance and load bearing characteristics. One big Unit Good.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Who said anything about weight and carrying them around??? Please stick to the topic. I provided a specific response to the OP. I never said anything about the weight of either configuration. If you think BM is a PITA, that's your prerogative. The same argument can be said of SM. It can be said that SM is a PITA. It's much easier to gear up in BM than SM. You state SM modularizes (is that a word??) everything but so does BM.

Over 90% of my diving is done in SM but that doesn't mean I'm going to discount BM. You are doing your students a major injustice by having such a closed mind about different diving configurations.

---------- Post Merged at 09:17 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 09:13 PM ----------

Rob, carrying stage bottles is a learning curve but when I got it sorted out, I found it to be a lot easier (physically) and obviously more streamlined than backmount.

Key phrase - learning curve. I find staging in sidemount to also be more streamlined but it did take a while of trying to figure out how to mount the bottle before I liked it. I've also figured out a better way of mounting a stage bottle in backmount that makes it more streamlined than most people are doing.

You know why I think the OW sidemount class is problematic. Learning how to put the gear on and dive it is fine, but it's not cave training and people get a false sense of security. This is also true in backmount as recent events have shown, but I feel like people want to take their new SM gear and stuff it in someplace small. I'm sure you do a good job of drilling into their heads that the OC sidemount class is no substitute for overhead training and I hope everyone else does the same.

Bill

I teach a lot of OW sidemount classes and I do drill into my students' heads that we aren't doing overhead or tech training. I'm still wondering how you propose people learn to dive in sidemount configuration. I've had students come to me for cave classes with several months experience in sidemount and/or having taken a sidemount course from another instructor and spent as much time getting their sidemount rig trimmed out properly as I did teaching them how to cave dive. It makes for some very long days. I'd much rather have divers come to me to get sidemount training and then come back for cave training so I can focus on each during each class.

 

[billgraham]

I teach a lot of OW sidemount classes and I do drill into my students' heads that we aren't doing overhead or tech training. I'm still wondering how you propose people learn to dive in sidemount configuration. I've had students come to me for cave classes with several months experience in sidemount and/or having taken a sidemount course from another instructor and spent as much time getting their sidemount rig trimmed out properly as I did teaching them how to cave dive. It makes for some very long days. I'd much rather have divers come to me to get sidemount training and then come back for cave training so I can focus on each during each class.

Hopefully, those who want to do that type of diving will go out and get the training. When I learned it, there wasn't a course. I think the only thing that existed was Rennaker's workshop, which you couldn't take unless you were a cave diver. I don't care what is good/easy/convenient/lucrative for the instructors or gear manufacturers, I'm concerned that having the neato new gear will lead the newly-minted open water sidemount divers to places they don't have the training to be in.

 

[shoredivr]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a back mount doubles dive followed by a sidemount dive. Both were shore dives, both used HP 100 steel tanks. The BM dive was one walk to the water in heavy tanks, carefully picking my way over a rocky limestone boulder beach while not losing my balance or twisting an ankle. Under water it was like I had strapped a refrigerator on my back, I had to make a conscious effort to keep trim. The SM dive was two trips to the water with the tanks. Same boulders, less struggle. Underwater the trim was effortless, the tanks unobtrusive, the shutdowns easy. The whole experience was interesting.

---------- Post Merged at 08:36 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:15 AM ----------

Hopefully, those who want to do that type of diving will go out and get the training. When I learned it, there wasn't a course. I think the only thing that existed was Rennaker's workshop, which you couldn't take unless you were a cave diver. I don't care what is good/easy/convenient/lucrative for the instructors or gear manufacturers, I'm concerned that having the neato new gear will lead the newly-minted open water sidemount divers to places they don't have the training to be in.

The OW SM divers I'm seeing here are doing their dives in open water. There are a handful of Ontario SM cave divers, and AFAIK a couple of tight, silty Ontario caves whose locations are closely guarded by the SM cavers. Up here we have lots of wrecks, and you could make a case for untrained people trying to squeeze into engine rooms on Great Lakes freighters. However, untrained people are already doing this in BM doubles.

You could also make a case for concern over people now having twice as much gas and going into deco, an arguement that appears from time to time when newish divers want to learn doubles for redundancy instead of for deco dives or other real or virtual overhead dives.

Bottom line is people can do crazy things that harm or kill them in single BM tanks....bounce dives to 200 ft are a good example. Best case scenario is push for quality training in any configuration that stresses diving within limits.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Hopefully, those who want to do that type of diving will go out and get the training. When I learned it, there wasn't a course. I think the only thing that existed was Rennaker's workshop, which you couldn't take unless you were a cave diver. I don't care what is good/easy/convenient/lucrative for the instructors or gear manufacturers, I'm concerned that having the neato new gear will lead the newly-minted open water sidemount divers to places they don't have the training to be in.

AFAIK there wasn't a course when I started either. I don't really see it as good/easy... for anyone except the students. For the same reason I require my full cave students to already be deco trained. I'm not going to teach them how to cave dive and how to do safe decompression at the same time. They are two different classes with two very different curriculae. I only know of one diver who was going somewhere he shouldn't have been and he was doing that before he ever took a sidemount class. The class had nothing to do with his choice to go into a cave. The concern should be more focused on instructors who are taking non overhead trained divers into overheads like Morrison, Vortex, Ginnie, and even Jackson Blue during classes because it's there or it's convenient.