How often do you need a 400ft primary reel?

[CaveMD]

The only time I have actually needed more than half of my Larry Green reel with 350-400' of line on it in any cave environment to date has been exploration/virgin cave. For those situations I started carrying the orange reel from home depot pictured below with pre-knotted 10' increment line to quickly respool the Larry Green reel on site. One thing I would personally recommend just as good practice, put knots in the line every 10' in your reels/spools because ya just never know and it's also helpful reference when exiting a silted out cave with limestone dinner plates and silt raining down from exhaust gas bubbles

 

[flymolo]

The only time I have actually needed more than half of my Larry Green reel with 350-400' of line on it in any cave environment to date has been exploration/virgin cave. For those situations I started carrying the orange reel from home depot pictured below with pre-knotted 10' increment line to quickly respool the Larry Green reel on site. One thing I would personally recommend just as good practice, put knots in the line every 10' in your reels/spools because ya just never know and it's also helpful reference when exiting a silted out cave with limestone dinner plates and silt raining down from exhaust gas bubbles

Here's a good video on how to knot the line- although I've never tried it myself, I enjoyed watching the video:

 

[tbone1004]

@flymolo that's the easiest way to knot line for sure. On my spools/reels that go in the ocean, the first 70 feet are knotted with a sequence of knots. I.e. 20ft has 2x knots back to back, 40ft has 4, etc. This can roughly give you the ability to complete decompression without a depth gauge. It obviously can't factor in scope of the line though, so you have to gauge that with current and approximate with experience by shooting the bag/buoy and seeing the scope and validating against a depth gauge. It's not usually a whole lot unless the current is ripping and you're tied to the anchor line.

 

[1atm]

Here's a good video on how to knot the line- although I've never tried it myself, I enjoyed watching the video:

or you use the knotted line purchase as an excuse for a trip to Mexico. At ZeroGravity they have a "line knotting machine" and sell pre-knotted line at a reasonable price Let me know if this reasoning works for any of you to convince their better half why the Mexico cave diving trip is an economically sound proposition

 

[Manatee Diver]

@tbone1004 I do that with my SMB spool for that exact same reason.

@1atm If they sell it by the spool I might have to pick up a couple of spools. I would like to redo the line on my primary and safety reels, but I am a bit lazy to do hundreds of feet of knots, the 50ft of knots on my SMB was a huge pain in the rear.

 

[1atm]

@tbone1004 I do that with my SMB spool for that exact same reason.

@1atm If they sell it by the spool I might have to pick up a couple of spools. I would like to redo the line on my primary and safety reels, but I am a bit lazy to do hundreds of feet of knots, the 50ft of knots on my SMB was a huge pain in the rear.

They sell it by the meter, so you can buy and re-spool as much as you like. The spool in the shop that has the knotted line on it is humongous

 

[Manatee Diver]

They sell it by the meter, so you can buy and re-spool as much as you like. The spool in the shop that has the knotted line on it is humongous

I was thinking of getting enough to respool my spools at home. But I think just build the line knotting machine.

 

[gbf]

How often do you need a 400' primary?

You need 2 or 3 - for all those times you need to scoop a bunch of virgin cave.

Knotted line? Naw, you can get more on without the knots.

And be sure to not survey...

 

[macado]

Get 400ft, as others said 250ft pretty much works in all the Florida tourist caves (and non-tourists too that I can think off). There have been a few caves I have dove in Mexico that ~250ft was not enough.

If you haven't experienced this already it sucks to be running a reel and run out of line ~10-15ft from the permanent guideline.

As other mentioned if you start doing some deeper ocean dives a 250ft reel is not really enough if you're shooting a dSMB at ~200ft+ with current. It ends up being not enough scope in some cases.

 

[Manatee Diver]

I picked up a 400ft classic reel, saw one of CL. I also have a bunch of REMs, because apparently those are common in Mexico. Going to need a Mexico navigation primer when I arrive.

As far as the ocean, the last time I went ocean diving it didn't turn out too well.

We will see how the final weekend of my AN/Helitrox course turns out next weekend.