How to (politely) advocate for more weight?

Please register or login

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

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Everything else the same? If so, that sounds like a much larger swing from fresh to salt than I would expect.

This might make sense if the freshwater dives are warm water with steel tanks and the saltwater dives are in a wetsuit and AL tank. Otherwise, the 18-19 lb addition sounds like more than should be needed just to account for the difference in salinity.
I had to look it up, and apparently my above quoted numbers were incorrect. I went from 5lbs to 20lbs. So 15lbs difference. I still felt very slightly bouyant (1-2 lbs) at the end of the dive.


Factors were likely: Thicker wetsuit (7mm vs 5mm), being very cold, and unfamiliar environment. Almost all of my equipment was the same (I only rented tanks & weights), except downgrading my redundant air from 19cu to 6cu.
 
Factors were likely: Thicker wetsuit (7mm vs 5mm), being very cold, and unfamiliar environment. Almost all of my equipment was the same (I only rented tanks & weights), except downgrading my redundant air from 19cu to 6cu.
This makes more sense. The wetsuit, and other factors could make up the difference.
 
I fully understand that, having taught it. These days, however, I believe that properly taught OW students do not need Peak Performance Buoyancy.

BJ,

Please elaborate. Not quite sure how you can learn anything else, if you do not know and/or understand correct buoyancy characteristics, especially when it is needed in conjunction with a dry suit, and/or a very negative kit.

I have mentioned this before about being on a charter, with a dry suit diver, an ill fitting dry suit, double 130 HP steels, jumping off the boat with 40 pounds of lead, lots wrong with this picture.

I do not own any lead, not one pound, I normally dive to the 150 ft. deep range.

I do not believe in living by what you were originally taught, and never learning anything new after that.

Not preaching, just me.

Rose
 
BJ,

Please elaborate. Not quite sure how you can learn anything else, if you do not know and/or understand correct buoyancy characteristics, especially when it is needed in conjunction with a dry suit, and/or a very negative kit.

I have mentioned this before about being on a charter, with a dry suit diver, an ill fitting dry suit, double 130 HP steels, jumping off the boat with 40 pounds of lead, lots wrong with this picture.

I do not own any lead, not one pound, I normally dive to the 150 ft. deep range.

I do not believe in living by what you were originally taught, and never learning anything new after that.

Not preaching, just me.

Rose
I apologize, but I do not understand your post.

In the past, OW students were taught diving skills on their knees, overweighted, with little chance actually to swim while neutrally buoyant. Graduates of such an OW class very much needed a class like Peak Performance Buoyancy.

Now that we have learned to teach students while they are neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim, we see that students who have been taught that way leave the OW class already showing the skills that are taught in the Peak Performance Buoyancy class.

You say "I do not believe in living by what you were originally taught, and never learning anything new after that." I am not talking about not learning anything new after the initial learning. I am talking about learning it the first time and not having to take a remedial class. It seems downright sad to me that you think buoyancy is supposed to be new learning to a diver.
 
I apologize, but I do not understand your post.

In the past, OW students were taught diving skills on their knees, overweighted, with little chance actually to swim while neutrally buoyant. Graduates of such an OW class very much needed a class like Peak Performance Buoyancy.

Now that we have learned to teach students while they are neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim, we see that students who have been taught that way leave the OW class already showing the skills that are taught in the Peak Performance Buoyancy class.

You say "I do not believe in living by what you were originally taught, and never learning anything new after that." I am not talking about not learning anything new after the initial learning. I am talking about learning it the first time and not having to take a remedial class. It seems downright sad to me that you think buoyancy is supposed to be new learning to a diver.

I wonder then, why is it that there are so many divers, who prefer being called competent, who appear by performance to know little to nothing regarding correct buoyancy characteristics.

Of all the issues I see on a near continual basis on charters, is buoyancy issues.

It would appear I've dodged a bullet, by never having you on a charter, if you being a technical diver, have not learned anything since your first open water class.

There are lots of divers in the water, who are not new to scuba diving, and who were not trained by current methods, who could take lots of current courses to improve on old skills that were originally taught incorrectly, or not taught at all.

Now that's sad!

Rose
 
I wonder then, why is it that there are so many divers, who prefer being called competent, who appear by performance to know little to nothing regarding correct buoyancy characteristics.

Of all the issues I see on a near continual basis on charters, is buoyancy issues.

It would appear I've dodged a bullet, by never having you on a charter, if you being a technical diver, have not learned anything since your first open water class.

There are lots of divers in the water, who are not new to scuba diving, and who were not trained by current methods, who could take lots of current courses to improve on old skills that were originally taught incorrectly, or not taught at all.

Now that's sad!

Rose
It's really sad that we are unable to communicate. When I read what you write in response to me, I feel you did not understand anything I wrote. It is as if you are replying to some fantasy post you dreamed of the night before.

For example, where the Hell did this come from?
"It would appear I've dodged a bullet, by never having you on a charter, if you being a technical diver, have not learned anything since your first open water class."​
Where did I say that I have never learned anything since my first OW class?
All I said that if a student is taught in an OW class with the instructor using the modern approach of having students neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim throughout the class, they do not really need to take Peak Performance Buoyancy. Students who are taught on the knees (vertically and overweighted, as they must be) need Peak Performance Buoyancy, because they were not taught buoyancy from the start.

Maybe you are suggesting that Peak Performance Buoyancy brings divers to the perfection of buoyancy. It does not. Not even close. It brings them to a level that, as I said, they should have reached had they been properly taught from the start. I was an instructor teaching Peak Performance Buoyancy when I first started taking technical diving training and learned that I was still a beginner on the road to true buoyancy control.

I have no idea where you are coming up with everything else to which you claim to be responding.
 
I wonder how much of this is a training versus experience issue, especially with the cost of diving before you have your own gear.

Some of my training was on my knees in the pool, but most if it was (more or less) neutrally buoyant in the water. I know how to set my BCD for a given depth, but also know that the difference between rocketing to the surface and sinking like a stone comes down to how much air I am holding in my lungs. I know the theory, but acknowledge that I need more practice for it to be automatic and instinctive. To my mind, this is a reasonable outcome of a class, not mastery, but the skills and information the student needs to work towards mastery. Is there value in paying an instructor to watch me practice a skill?

Now add to this the costs involved. If I wanted to go dive tomorrow it would mean spending $70 in rentals. that is a hard thing to stomach just to practice a skill, as opposed to going and doing or seeing something I'm excited about. Once I have a full set, then it would only cost $10 to go jump in the lake and practice for an hour or so at shallow depth.

A fair chunk of divers never own their own gear and only dive a handful of times a year on vacation. Even if they had the best training in the world it will be gone after a year of not using it.
 
It's really sad that we are unable to communicate. When I read what you write in response to me, I feel you did not understand anything I wrote. It is as if you are replying to some fantasy post you dreamed of the night before.

For example, where the Hell did this come from?
"It would appear I've dodged a bullet, by never having you on a charter, if you being a technical diver, have not learned anything since your first open water class."​
Where did I say that I have never learned anything since my first OW class?
All I said that if a student is taught in an OW class with the instructor using the modern approach of having students neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim throughout the class, they do not really need to take Peak Performance Buoyancy. Students who are taught on the knees (vertically and overweighted, as they must be) need Peak Performance Buoyancy, because they were not taught buoyancy from the start.

Maybe you are suggesting that Peak Performance Buoyancy brings divers to the perfection of buoyancy. It does not. Not even close. It brings them to a level that, as I said, they should have reached had they been properly taught from the start. I was an instructor teaching Peak Performance Buoyancy when I first started taking technical diving training and learned that I was still a beginner on the road to true buoyancy control.

I have no idea where you are coming up with everything else to which you claim to be responding.
I'm not in disagreement with anything you have just narrated, with one exception, which I did mention previously, which you have chosen to look past.

What about the thousands of divers, who have not been trained by current methods, and still follow religiously what they were taught 20/40 years ago, a lot of which is now considered incorrect. And, still do not have proper control of correct buoyancy practices.

Do they not matter, would not a PPB course be of benefit to them.

When was training ever a bad thing, maybe not reaching perfection, which comes through years of practice and sometimes never comes, but still better than not knowing what you don't know.

Don't forget for a minute, everyone in the water was not trained yesterday.

with respect,

Rose
 
I was certified in 1970 by LA Co. The training was excellent. Then, I had to learn how to use an SPG, a BC. a 2nd regulator, and then a dive computer, diving nitrox, air integration. It has all been an improvement, I'm glad where I am today.
 
What about the thousands of divers, who have not been trained by current methods, and still follow religiously what they were taught 20/40 years ago, a lot of which is now considered incorrect. And, still do not have proper control of correct buoyancy practices.

Do they not matter, would not a PPB course be of benefit to them.
You keep missing his point. @boulderjohn did not say (and has never said in the years I've been reading his posts) that PPB was not potentially beneficial for some divers. What he did say was that it wasn't necessary for divers who had been through a properly taught, modern OW course.

That's only a fraction of the rec divers out there. Many will have figured out good buoyancy control on their own and others will have had advanced training that covers it. But that obviously still leaves plenty of divers who would benefit from taking it.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom