Getting rid of my weight belt?

[lamont]

i've been able to swim up, with ease, around 2500 psi of nitrox in double 130s with no air in my wing and a pretty good crush going on the drysuit. another 1000 psi would have been about another 7.5 lbs and i think i could have handled that as well. if i was technical diving, i might have a bottle or two of deco gas, but i'd also have trimix for backgas and be lighter there. i don't really see how i'm going to get much more negative than that, plus i dive with a drysuit, so i've got some redundant buoyancy there...

apologies to JJ, but i'm not seeing the need for ditchable...

 

[micknewton]

i've been able to swim up, with ease, around 2500 psi of nitrox in double 130s with no air in my wing and a pretty good crush going on the drysuit. another 1000 psi would have been about another 7.5 lbs and i think i could have handled that as well. if i was technical diving, i might have a bottle or two of deco gas, but i'd also have trimix for backgas and be lighter there. i don't really see how i'm going to get much more negative than that, plus i dive with a drysuit, so i've got some redundant buoyancy there...

apologies to JJ, but i'm not seeing the need for ditchable...

Okay, but could you still swim all of that up without your fins? How about with a broken leg, or some other injury that prevents you from propelling yourself with your legs and fins?

Under normal conditions, swimming your gear to the surface probably wouldn't be much of a problem, but accidents are not 'normal conditions' for most people.

Personally, I think the best option would be to have the weight retained in a very positive manner, yet still be removable if absolutely necessary. In the limited diving that I have done, I found that I really didn't like the weight belt at all. It kept coming loose and I constantly had to keep an eye on it. The simple latch they have also seems like it could easily snag on something and pop open accidentally. I don't see why a regular belt buckle wouldn't be a better option. Then again, I'm just a stupid newbie.

 

[DocWong]

Great, thanks for all the great feedback!

First I'm going to verify how much weight I really need to remain neutral at 10 feet with a nearly empty set of tanks.

Then I'll see if I can swim against the weight of my configuration with full tanks and all weight in place. Then with no air in my wing, see how much lift my drysuit can give me.

Then I'm going to add a V-weight if necessary and see what it does to my trim.

I'll keep everyone posted on what my progress on this!

Harry (Doc) Wong
www.docwong.com
President Northern California Oceans Foundation
Project Warships to Nurseries in Northern California

 

[cmalinowski]

Okay, but could you still swim all of that up without your fins? How about with a broken leg, or some other injury that prevents you from propelling yourself with your legs and fins?

Under normal conditions, swimming your gear to the surface probably wouldn't be much of a problem, but accidents are not 'normal conditions' for most people.

If I have a broken leg, or lost fins, the other members of my team better be helping me. Since this is DIR forum, we don't dive alone.

But, let's just play out the worst case scenario: In a wreck; Wreck collapses and breaks my leg, injures my teammates, punctures my BC just right so that it can't hold ANY gas, and does the same number on my drysuit (or we don't have one); We are in bad shape. Still, the odds of my teammate(s)' gear having the same failures is very, very slim... very. But, let's say it does. Start dropping anything ditchable if necessary (can light, spare double enders, anything in pockets that is weight, cut off a weight pockets--or just pull some weight out, etc.) Except the lift bag or SMB... might want to use that--maybe before you start ditching stuff . Inflate (slowly) SMB/bag and use as BC. Don't have one? Maybe it was destroyed in the wreck attack? Teammate should have one. Same problem with his? Hey, wait, this is a wreck dive. Someone is tied off somewhere... swim up line. Drift dive? Use float and pull up. Cave dive? crawl along bottom. Open ocean/deep wall? You deserve to die if your gear is that messed up and wasn't caused by a wreck.

I guess what I'm saying is that you'd be amazed how much easier it is to get out of a bad situation with planning and a team/team resources.

Just my thoughts.

Chris

 

[Derek S]

FYI, I’m a total diving newbie and have virtually no experience. I just happened to be reading these two books at the time I saw this post and thought I’d throw this out there.

Mick -

You need to take what Jarrod is saying in the context in which it is written. IMHO, he is advocating more for a balanced rig (one that can be swum from depth at the beginning of the dive assuming a complete loss of lift from your wing and/or drysuit at the beginning of the dive) than he is for ditchable weight.

Again, this is all conjecture, and whenever the written word is brought in, something is always bound to be lost in the translation somewhere.

My personal opinion is that ditchable weight is an inadequate solution to a non-problem. As Chris pointed out, there are a myriad of things that can be done as a team to fix the problem before any weight needs to be dumped.

 

[David P]

mick, I dive a steel 119 wich has 11(?) lbs of air. Lets say I run doubles, 24 lbs of air plus 2 lbs for the tanks themselves, 4lbs for the two regs, 6 for the back plate, we'll go extra heavy and say 5 for all the extra crap like lights, reels, double enders...41lbs under water at the beginning of the dive. Unless your wearing doubled maybe trippled up 7 mil wetsuits you cant have enough ditchable weights to offset 41 lbs so you can swim up with a broken leg and no fins.

 

[limeyx]

Great, thanks for all the great feedback!

First I'm going to verify how much weight I really need to remain neutral at 10 feet with a nearly empty set of tanks.

Then I'll see if I can swim against the weight of my configuration with full tanks and all weight in place. Then with no air in my wing, see how much lift my drysuit can give me.

Then I'm going to add a V-weight if necessary and see what it does to my trim.

I'll keep everyone posted on what my progress on this!

Harry (Doc) Wong
www.docwong.com
President Northern California Oceans Foundatio
Project Warships to Nurseries in Northern California

If you are head-heavy, you can cut a V-weight in half and just attach it to the lower bolt.

 

[micknewton]

I'm sorry, and I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but I've never seen anyone that I would consider an authority say that diving with all non-ditchable weight is the way to go. Every one that I have seen (admittedly not a lot) says otherwise.

I would love to hear what others in the DIR/tech community have to say about it. I suppose I should start another thread though, instead of hijacking this one. I'll go do a search, and if I don't find anything then I'll start a new thread.

 

[micknewton]

Okay, I found several threads on the subject. It looks like most advocate ditchable weight, but some go for fixed weight too. Hmmm... Oh well, to each his own I guess.

 

[DocWong]

Does anyone know what effect a V-weight has on trim. I'm not referring to head up or down trim as that would be a simple matter of moving them up or down (by cutting them, etc), but left to right or along the head to toe axis.

Harry (Doc) Wong
www.docwong.com
President Northern California Oceans Foundation
Project Warships to Nurseries in Northern California