First open water dives with rebreather...

[Aaron Harmon]

I had my first two open water dives with a rebreather yesterday. The first dive was an unmitigated disaster within the first three minutes, I was questioning every life choice I have ever made.

My instincts told me to swim the rebreather to the middle of the quarry, scuttle it there, swim off, never look back, and pretend I never gave rebreathing a go...

By the second dive, we had my weight dialed in much better (I was initially over by a lot). We made some adjustments to the harness to improve the fit and the instructor gave me some pointers about several mistakes I was making with both my technique and trim.

It's kind of a terrible feeling to go from a very good diver OC REC diver to an underwater clusterf*&k.

 

[tbone1004]

welcome to rebreathers! keep at it and you'll do fine. Min loop is 100% the most critical thing in getting rid of the frustration, make sure you get to min loop asap and you'll expedite the learning process

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I'm starting training the weekend after next. I'm expecting a humbling experience.

 

[sea_ledford]

Sounds about right. Everything you instinctively know about buoyancy is wrong on a CCR. Overweighting will lead to all sorts of problems, and until you really get minimum loop volume figured out, you'll probably be overweighted. And it's hard to figure out min loop until you get your weight right... it's a vicious catch 22!

Stick with it, have fun!

 

[beldridg]

Yep - welcome to the club. Don't get discouraged.

 

[Wibble]

Well done.

It gets much harder from now ;-)

Actually it's really not that bad.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

 

[lostsheep]

If it makes you feel any better, on my first OW dive I full on bailed out because I had had enough.

It gets easier, stick with it.

 

[rddvet]

It's kind of a terrible feeling to go from a very good diver OC REC diver to an underwater clusterf*&k.

it’s even worse when you’ve been cave diving for 10 years and think you’re a pretty squared away technical diver. Then suddenly you feel like you’ve never dove a day in your life.
Agree with above. Minimum loop volume is your friend. Though I prefer the concept of ideal loop volume as opposed to minimum. It’s really more semantics than anything else.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Welcome to the sh!tshow of learning to dive a rebreather where you get to be the headlining star.

It does eventually get much better.

 

[nadwidny]

I'm surprised at the amount of comments along the line of "Yeah it kicked my butt hard. Had to start all over...blah...blah...blah".

Sure there was a transition for me but it wasn't that effing bad. Makes me think that most didn't have their basic skills down in the first place.