Minimalist Setup for Small River Diving (~15ft or less)?

[Brett Hatch]

I seriously doubt that this man was in the river with 45 lbs of lead. I think he meant 45 lbs of total gear. It looks like he's got an AL80 which would weigh around 30 lbs, and with that thick wetsuit, the rest of his stuff should weigh around 15 lbs. Of course that's all dry weight, in the water it'd be pretty close to neutral.

We all know that. If this guy stops and thinks about it, he probably does too, but most of his audience probably does not. At the end of the day, he's a youtuber; he makes money not by being entirely ingenuous, but by attracting as many eyeballs as possible. So yeah, of course he's gonna stretch the details a bit to fit his story of almost drowning.

 

[halocline]

I love the MK10, it's got swivel turrets, plenty of ports, breathes great. The only annoyance is the 1/2in ports, but that just requires having spare plugs on hand.

What 1/2" ports are you talking about? The MK10 has standard 3/8" (LP) and 7/16" (HP) ports.

 

[SlugLife]

SlugMug,

I guess what bugs me about these kinds of video depictions of diving is the intent to show diving as an extremely dangerous undertaking. Here, at 10 feet depth and probable 20 feet from shore, this guy says he nearly died because of the hazards of diving; in fact it was the hazards of an untrained diver. I have been diving more hazardous currents, in more rivers than this guy, and in half a century of diving never came close to what he describes.

SeaRat

PS, RHWestfall, I like the horns on your buddy’s hood, and your Phoenix Aquamaster regulator.

Dive Talk (the youtube channel) frequently makes similar comments in their reaction videos, where "entertainment" divers try to make dives seem way more dangerous than they actually are, which can drive people away from the sport. Hyping extremely normal or casual dives, as if they were extremely dangerous.

"this guy says he nearly died because of the hazards of diving; in fact it was the hazards of an untrained diver. " With a few rare exceptions, the biggest danger to any diver is themselves, by diving outside their training, skills, experience, or equipment. Any diver who couldn't handle the situation described couldn't pass an open-water course.

I did notice he did not include any raw footage from his almost-drowning. The only footage appeared to be short clips from a re-enactment. Would you really re-enact your own almost-drowning that was so traumatic you're making claims you probably won't dive again? That seemed odd to me, given I just bought an action camera & 256gb card, and I can (and do) just leave it recording for hours, especially if I set the video-quality to 1080p 60fps. If a battery or memory-card is the issue, you buy multiple and swap them as needed. Not proof he's lying, but more holes in the story.

I seriously doubt that this man was in the river with 45 lbs of lead. I think he meant 45 lbs of total gear. It looks like he's got an AL80 which would weigh around 30 lbs, and with that thick wetsuit, the rest of his stuff should weigh around 15 lbs. Of course that's all dry weight, in the water it'd be pretty close to neutral.

We all know that. If this guy stops and thinks about it, he probably does too, but most of his audience probably does not. At the end of the day, he's a youtuber; he makes money not by being entirely ingenuous, but by attracting as many eyeballs as possible. So yeah, of course he's gonna stretch the details a bit to fit his story of almost drowning.

"45 pounds of extra weight" was the exact phrase. I've heard the term "extra weight" refer to diving weights by divers many times, but as John C noted, there are hints he may not be a certified diver, and as you noted there are several parts where his story comes across as disingenuous.

 

[SlugLife]

What 1/2" ports are you talking about? The MK10 has standard 3/8" (LP) and 7/16" (HP) ports.

You're right! (facepalm) Now I'm confused as to which of my regulators had that odd size.

 

[lowwall]

You're right! (facepalm) Now I'm confused as to which of my regulators had that odd size.

Mares 22 or 32, some early Apeks, some old Aqualungs.

 

[kelemvor]

I'd do it exactly as you suggested in your first post. Except that you seemed to be saying you had an air2 type device but weren't going to connect it? Connect it, then you've got power inflator and octo. That's pretty much the exact config I'd use if I were doing this dive. Make sure you have a z-cutter and a pair of shears in case you need to cut yourself loose from something. Maybe some kind of a pry bar in case you get stuck but that seems a bit superflous to me.

A PLB might be a good idea in case you get injured and swept down river. You will want some way to call for help. If you're 100% sure the whole river has cell coverage, maybe that would be good enough. I'd test it first.

 

[SlugLife]

Mares 22 or 32, some early Apeks, some old Aqualungs.

Ah, it was probably my Apeks set. My dive-buddy currently has my Apeks set & so I couldn't check it.

I'd do it exactly as you suggested in your first post. Except that you seemed to be saying you had an air2 type device but weren't going to connect it? Connect it, then you've got power inflator and octo. That's pretty much the exact config I'd use if I were doing this dive. Make sure you have a z-cutter and a pair of shears in case you need to cut yourself loose from something. Maybe some kind of a pry bar in case you get stuck but that seems a bit superflous to me.

A PLB might be a good idea in case you get injured and swept down river. You will want some way to call for help. If you're 100% sure the whole river has cell coverage, maybe that would be good enough. I'd test it first.

I've adapted the idea a little since I created this post, but we're mostly on the same page. The rivers I'm looking at are casual slow inner-tube rivers. Unless there have been torrential rains recently, in which case I'd avoid diving them as someone relatively new to currents.

• The octo is by Sherwood & has a BCD connector. Since I wouldn't be buddy-diving, it would do the job, so there's little harm in throwing it on.
• I haven't looked into PLBs yet, but I'll add that to my ever-growing list of scuba-items attacking my bank account. Do you have any PLB recommendations? I highly doubt I'd need a PLB for this river, given there are people on inner-tubes everywhere.
• I also recently purchased DAN insurance, though not specifically for river-diving. I keep a DAN card in my wetsuit pocket.
  
• I have 2x cutter-style devices, shears, and a knife. I probably don't need all 4, but will have at least 2 of those on me.
• I'm skeptical of the utility of a pry-bar. If experienced river-divers say it's useful, I can probably find a spot for it in my backplate.

 

[Brett Hatch]

"45 pounds of extra weight" was the exact phrase. I've heard the term "extra weight" refer to diving weights by divers many times, but as John C noted, there are hints he may not be a certified diver, and as you noted there are several parts where his story comes across as disingenuous.

I've heard divers using similar language with that meaning as well. But to my ear, this seems a little different. The guy spends half a day snorkeling, and says the bad news is that he's found all that can be found this way, because he's too buoyant to go down deeper. Good news is, he brought a scuba rig just in case.

He demonstrates the rig in question, with its standard 2 pull-out pockets which typically hold 6-10 lbs of lead each. He does not appear to have another 20 or 30 lbs on a giant belt or a harness. So it seems like the "45 lbs extra weight" refers to the entire scuba rig -- compared to snorkeling, the whole thing is extra. It seems more likely to me that he used an appropriate rig and was loose with his language, than precise with the language but took like 3x more lead than was needed. But that's an interpretation, and your interpretation of 45 lbs of ballast might be correct, who knows.

Now that's pretty in the weeds, and a little off-topic. I think we can agree that regardless of the youtuber's antics, I think I can learn some lessons here for river diving, which is consistent with the advice from river divers in this thread. You want to be correctly weighted, which might mean a little bit negative, but not massively overweighted. You want to be very comfortable removing and retrieving your regs. You want a setup that facilitates actually using both regs, I think a typical OW yellow rubber-band octo holder thingie would be much worse than a necklace, for example. He didn't demonstrate this in the video, but I think the advice to carry a variety of cutting tools is sound, especially for crap like fishing line.

 

[100days-a-year]

Done several hundred if not a thousand of these dives.
Wore 20- 30 pounds total as the current runs hard and you are fanning which tries to move you as well.
BP/W and I changed out my normal small wing for a larger one for these dives.
Saw every single Air2 type device and Poseidon reg on any boat I went on fail after a few to a few dozen dives due to the heavy silt from fanning.
Have quite a few friends with 5000 to 10,000 plus dives on old style backpacks with no bladder who would not dive them in these conditions but would wear a borrowed BC with enough buoyancy to compensate for additional weighting.
Same for some of the guys blowing sand offshore with scooters, additional weighting to compensate for thrust.

 

[Subcooled]

Anyway, I was curious if anyone had put together a sort of minimalistic setup for this style of diving.

This is a minimalistic setup for warm and shallow water. Used this last saturday.

A nearly neutrally buoyant cylinder with approx 49 cuft of air (AL80 would be fine too), 1st, 2nd, SPG, snoopy loops, cutting device(s).
You can't share any gas with this but as the intended max depth is 30 feet one can always just swim to the surface. You need to be proficient in controlled emergency swimming ascents.
No buoyancy issues whatsoever.

Note though that there is no exposure protection (helmet missing!) and that the bare skin is exposed to whatever chemicals or bacteria there might be in the water. Do not have/get cuts. Note that there is nothing to keep you floating would you experience a medical emergency or end up in the rapids. Rivers do not come without risks.
Ask local divers for guidance.