Maximum Run Time poll

[RTodd]

Interesting, RTodd. Since I'm not doing exploration or scientific projects, I keep my dives to what's fun to do, and these days, a single stage is enough -- and that's about 2 1/2 hours in many of the Mexican caves. It's a long time to swim!

Open water in Puget Sound is not limited by gas or deco for me, it's cold. No more ever than 60 minutes in the wintertime, and rarely much more than that in summer. 70 minutes in 50 degree water is a long time. The guys who do the 250+ dives and hang on deco for an hour or more are nuts.

I think we are in pretty complete agreement on this one. Swimming for a significant period of time with two stages isn't much fun. Being on a scooter for more than 3 hours also isn't much fun. That is where my general times come in at. One of my first trips diving with Danny maybe a decade ago involved I believe a triple stage swim dive. I thought I was going to die swimming out. I was diving wet and the backs of my knees started bleeding from the chaffing I had never seen my bottom timer start over that many times. The only thing that made me feel remotely better was Danny admitting the last night that he was barely making it home before passing out. As for open water dives, my hour limit is for 82 degree tropics stuff, my favorite type of diving is the simple stuff but I do tend to get bored on one site after that amount of time and no longer need to try to drain the tanks. As for cold, now that all of my diving involves travel, I have the luxury of not diving cold water anymore.