Wait. No. Let's just stop talking about this computer or that computer. The premise of the entire question is wrong. No your first dive of the day in Cozumel will NOT be at a depth greater than the MOD of EAN 32. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. These are coral reefs and walls. There's nothing terribly interesting below 90 feet which is well within the MOD of EAN 32, Cozumel or otherwise.
Stop worrying. Start diving. Do the entire week on EAN 32 if you like. You'll get great bottom times and never come close to your NDL.
-Charles
I was following the British Diving Safety Group recommendations on Advice to Divers Chartering Boat Dives:
"What about the dive plan? Here there will be quite a big difference between booking onto a dive boat on a space available basis and booking a whole boat for a club or party. If you have booked a couple of spaces, then you will be committed to the dive site the boat has planned for the day you have booked. It is therefore essential that you have checked that the depth and any other factors are appropriate to your own qualifications, currency, experience and fitness. If you have booked the whole boat, you will have more flexibility and you can expect to agree with the skipper a dive site that is suitable for your party.
You must therefore know the limitations of all the members of your party to make this selection. In any case you will be responsible for your own or your partys dive plan for the particular dive site..."
As Mr Carcharodon has pointed out, we do plan on doing sites that exceed MOD of EAN32 - ie. Maracaibo Wall, Devil's Throat part of Punta Sur, and Santa Rosa Wall - if the conditions are right.
Since on my previous trips, I had always been able to use EAN32 for all my dives, I asked for experiences of other divers in Cozumel whether diving air followed by EAN would adequately extend the NDL on the Suunto as I hoped - this is something that I had not done before so I thought it was a reasonable question to ask.
In the end, I contacted the dive op directly and they agreed that the best dive plan was to do the first dive on air, the second dive on EAN36, with a surface interval appropriate to the 1st and 2nd dive sites chosen for that day.
With this approach, we anticipate that we will be able to remain well within NDL limits of the Suunto algorithm - I am not worried - and I have explicitly stated so many times already.
I feel satisfied that I have adequately checked all the factors to ensure I have formulated a safe dive plan that I am comfortable with as per the British Diving Safety Group recommendations.
---------- Post Merged at 07:40 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:34 PM ----------
Those are advanced dives and you should not be diving beyond your training, experience, and comfort level. I'd expect anyone diving to those depths to know how to handle that situation.
The OP was suggesting that every first dive of the day would be beyond the MOD for EAN 32. That is not the case (and I'm pretty sure you knew that).
I've been diving Cozumel for more than 13 years and never, ever heard a DM tell a diver they could NOT choose to stay at the top of the wall or avoid the swimthroughs if they so chose.
-Charles
We do recognize these are advanced dives and we do have the experience level and training to dive these sites.
I never suggested that every first dive exceeded the MOD of EAN32.
I said "... the first dive of the day in Cozumel
may be at a depth greater than the MOD for EAN 32% so we were planning on diving air..."
What I did not know was whether we would have to commit to air or Nitrox without knowing which dive site was planned - so I thought it was completely reasonable to ask how other Suunto divers approached this issue.
A number of SB'ers replied in the affirmative they had used air for the first dive and EAN for the second dive, as well as some who commented that they wished they had used EAN32 for the first dive on those sites that did not exceed the MOD - this was very helpful in formulating my dive plan.
---------- Post Merged at 07:48 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:34 PM ----------
I doubt that any of the well established OP's would decide to drop divers onto any of these sights without some pre-planning. The guys that we dive with, always have at least one day or so of warm up, get to see how you dive days before they will run down to Punta Sur or Maracaibo. Even though they know us and know what our skill level is (or was the last time we went). Even if it was just a few months since we were down.
We usually talk about where we are going to want to go the day before at our surface interval, make our dive plan, decide what gas we want and it's set for the next day. If there is a mix up on gas or the weather changes, we just pick another of the multitude of places to go. No Problem.....
Yes, we fully expect that the dive op will choose an appropriate site on the first day as a checkout dive - we merely made the request that we would like to do some of the advanced sites during our week of diving if the conditions are suitable.
And I did follow up and ask if we could use EAN32 on the 1st dive for those sites that did not exceed the MOD - and exactly as Fish-R-Man described - the dive op agreed that this was something that could be discussed and decided on the day before to prepare the necessary tanks - so yes, agreed - not a problem.
So yeah, what Dandy Don said:
It's challenging to read thru 90 replies already posted when you arrive to a thread long done, huh...?
