Perhaps you will find this useful if you are heading to the Galapagos with your CCR. I would have liked to have been more informed, myself.
I recently was CCR certified on the Mk 15.5 that I purchased last year. Living in Baghdad and having not much time to dive, I wanted to do a trip where I could get as much time on the rebreather as possible, as well as make it worthwhile for my girlfriend to come along. She had yet to make the move to closed circuit, though it wont be long, now.
We chose a two week liveaboard trip to the Galapagos booked through Ed Robinsons Diving Adventures, on board Peter Hughes Sky Dancer. Santiago Dunn of the Guayaquil-based tour company Ecoventura (www.ecoventura.com)is the owner of the Sky Dancer, and Peter Hughes basically serves as the booking agent and provides the reputation.
Preparation
Through and through, the Sky Dancer operation was 100% professional. They were happy to accommodate a rebreather, though they had very little, if any, experience with a closed circuit diver. They offered a full K bottle of O2 at no charge. On the other hand, I made a major logistical mistake by having my Sodasorb sent via USPS mail. It cost me almost $500.00 just for shipping three kegs. In hindsight, it would have cost a few dollars if I would have had it sent via surface cargo through Miami. Santiago Dunn personally worked with me to make sure that my Sodasorb made it through customs and the cargo ship ride to San Christobal from the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil, to which I had sent the Sodasorb via USPS a few months beforehand. The Ecuadorian customs first tried to glean as much money as they could by demanding $600, but after sitting in customs for weeks with no one paying for the three kegs, they grew disinterested and relented for not much more than $200.00. Total cost for three kegs of Sodasorb 4-8 HP: $894.00. Eventually Peter Hughes himself got involved. He expressed to me on the phone that rebreathers tend to be a pain in the ***, but he would work with me. Apparently this is standard with Ecuadorian customs. If it looks like you really need the stuff, they will demand an accordingly high price. Word to the wise if you plan to go to the Galapagos: send your sorb early, via surface cargo through Miami. Instead of $300 a keg, you can probably skate by with a total of $100 a keg for cost and shipping. And let it sit in customs for a while to reduce the extortion value!
Another problem was the universal airline baggage embargo that is standard during the South American summer. Apparently this is the time of year when the airlines use a lot of space for lucrative cargo. No overweight/oversize baggage, no extra baggage for passengers, no matter how much money you wave at the counter. I had to buy first class tickets for my girlfriend and I so that I could get my rebreather, booster, as well as my camera equipment there (first class allows an extra bag). My Pelican case with which I normally shipped my Mk 15.5 was oversized and thus forbidden during the baggage embargo, so I bought an American Tourister hard suit case from Costco and with a little bubble wrap it fit snuggly.
After having a new Juergensen Hammerhead installed on my Mk 15.5, I did a few checkout dives in Monterey a few days before we left, to iron out the kinks.
Arrival
I almost did not make it on the flight from San Francisco to Houston. The Continental rep called my name while the plane was boarding and told me that I had a piece of luggage that TSA would not allow on the plane. My mistake. I loosened the post valves, but did not remove them completely from the flasks. It was only after pleading with the TSA inspector that I could get them to open the rebreather while I had them on the radio and verify that the gas vessels were empty. Lesson: remove the valves completely from all your gas vessels!
The SkyDancer crew was very interested in my rebreather and for the first few dives hovered over me whenever I took off the cover. My bailout mounted on a titanium butt-mount bracket proved to have poor trim characteristics when using my camera, so I quickly went back to side mount. (In the future, I would like to have a quick release hard point put on the side of the Mk 15.5 like this: http://www.cybermaps.co.uk/cyberbarics/sm1600/brcktunderside.htm).
Diving
With only the minimum number of hours on my rig, the first few dives were really challenging with regard to buoyancy. Add the necessity to keep the video camera steady (especially when filming macro), and I emitted quite a grumbles in the early dives. I will be the first to admit that I am a newbie with the buoyancy thing. But by the end I was doing no-reference safety and deep stops with ease.
The Galapagos is definitely not typical tropical water. In the southern islands, water temperature was in the high 50s, low 60s. Out of 16 divers on the boat, I was the ONLY one comfortable every dive. Luckily my girlfriend was well prepared and wore a brand new Mares 5mm hooded shorty under a brand new Oneil 7mm full. But she could never outlast me on my rebreather when it came to temperature. I was quite comfortable in an Xcel 7mm full with beanie, though I busted out the 3mm hooded vest for taping batfish at 90 feet in 59 degree water. On the very last dive of the trip, my girlfriend and I were the only ones to do the 2nd dive at Gordon Rocks. Everyone else bailed because of the cold. We were treated to a private guided dive and a view of this deep cave that served as a sea lion graveyard. Awesome! With my rebreather and my PO2 cranked up, I was often able to get down below the thermocline where the visibility was endless and the water freezing. Below 130 feet at places like Punta Vicente Roca and Gordon Rocks, the visibility easily exceeded 150 feet. Above that point the vis might be only 30-40 feet. It was just too cold for everyone else!
Howard Hall describes the myth of invisibility well. For me in the Galapagos, stuff like creeping up on garden eels and batfish, the rebreather absolutely excelled. For hammerhead sharks, I had mixed results. The reason I think is that yes, I may have not been blowing noisy bubbles, but I think I looked rather scary with my black Gates housing and gauges and video lights sticking out (even if the video lights were not on.) The hammerheads would often make a very close pass to me, but if I tracked their motion with the video camera, they were often startled. Sure, the absence of bubbles made shooting directly up for silhouettes very easy. No breath holding needed here.
For whale shark encounters, my Mk 15.5 was worthless. In fact, it was worse than worthless. It was impossible to get enough speed up, even with my Bio Fin Pro XTs, to swim out to a passing whale shark, whereas some of the fitter open circuit divers on the trip had no trouble whatsoever. At Darwin Island, I was forced to go open circuit in order to have a chance. It paid off. Against a strong current, I was able to keep up with and tape my solo encounter with a giant 45-footer. Unfortunately, I had already deployed my safety sausage from my reel just before the point of putting air in it and it acted like a skinny sea anchor. If I would have stopped and tried to roll it back up, the whale shark would have already gone by. So I still ended up kicking like crazy.
Back in the colder southern islands, my longest dive was 150 minutes at Punta Vicente Roca. Other than that dive and two others where the currents were manageable or predictable, I pretty much had to stay with the group. A rebreather-only boat would have been great. In fact, I did see the Deep Blue at Darwin when we were there. Supposedly that was a rebreather-only trip booked through Silent Diving Systems, though I think it would be a shame to only get to dive one week in the Galapagos. As it was, with two weeks I felt absolutely cheated!! Whale sharks were not as thick as expected this time of year at Darwin and Wolf, where the Deep Blue was hanging out. I thought the southern islands had more diversity and brought out the advantages of a rebreather even better than the northern islands like Wolf and Darwin. In any case, with all the ups and downs, my O2 consumption was very high. I ended up burning almost TWO full K bottles during my trip, instead of the one that I expected. It would have been much different had I done more typical closed circuit profiles. Three kegs of sodasorb was plenty. But I wouldnt have wanted to bring any less for as many heavy current dives as we did.
I recently was CCR certified on the Mk 15.5 that I purchased last year. Living in Baghdad and having not much time to dive, I wanted to do a trip where I could get as much time on the rebreather as possible, as well as make it worthwhile for my girlfriend to come along. She had yet to make the move to closed circuit, though it wont be long, now.
We chose a two week liveaboard trip to the Galapagos booked through Ed Robinsons Diving Adventures, on board Peter Hughes Sky Dancer. Santiago Dunn of the Guayaquil-based tour company Ecoventura (www.ecoventura.com)is the owner of the Sky Dancer, and Peter Hughes basically serves as the booking agent and provides the reputation.
Preparation
Through and through, the Sky Dancer operation was 100% professional. They were happy to accommodate a rebreather, though they had very little, if any, experience with a closed circuit diver. They offered a full K bottle of O2 at no charge. On the other hand, I made a major logistical mistake by having my Sodasorb sent via USPS mail. It cost me almost $500.00 just for shipping three kegs. In hindsight, it would have cost a few dollars if I would have had it sent via surface cargo through Miami. Santiago Dunn personally worked with me to make sure that my Sodasorb made it through customs and the cargo ship ride to San Christobal from the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil, to which I had sent the Sodasorb via USPS a few months beforehand. The Ecuadorian customs first tried to glean as much money as they could by demanding $600, but after sitting in customs for weeks with no one paying for the three kegs, they grew disinterested and relented for not much more than $200.00. Total cost for three kegs of Sodasorb 4-8 HP: $894.00. Eventually Peter Hughes himself got involved. He expressed to me on the phone that rebreathers tend to be a pain in the ***, but he would work with me. Apparently this is standard with Ecuadorian customs. If it looks like you really need the stuff, they will demand an accordingly high price. Word to the wise if you plan to go to the Galapagos: send your sorb early, via surface cargo through Miami. Instead of $300 a keg, you can probably skate by with a total of $100 a keg for cost and shipping. And let it sit in customs for a while to reduce the extortion value!
Another problem was the universal airline baggage embargo that is standard during the South American summer. Apparently this is the time of year when the airlines use a lot of space for lucrative cargo. No overweight/oversize baggage, no extra baggage for passengers, no matter how much money you wave at the counter. I had to buy first class tickets for my girlfriend and I so that I could get my rebreather, booster, as well as my camera equipment there (first class allows an extra bag). My Pelican case with which I normally shipped my Mk 15.5 was oversized and thus forbidden during the baggage embargo, so I bought an American Tourister hard suit case from Costco and with a little bubble wrap it fit snuggly.
After having a new Juergensen Hammerhead installed on my Mk 15.5, I did a few checkout dives in Monterey a few days before we left, to iron out the kinks.
Arrival
I almost did not make it on the flight from San Francisco to Houston. The Continental rep called my name while the plane was boarding and told me that I had a piece of luggage that TSA would not allow on the plane. My mistake. I loosened the post valves, but did not remove them completely from the flasks. It was only after pleading with the TSA inspector that I could get them to open the rebreather while I had them on the radio and verify that the gas vessels were empty. Lesson: remove the valves completely from all your gas vessels!
The SkyDancer crew was very interested in my rebreather and for the first few dives hovered over me whenever I took off the cover. My bailout mounted on a titanium butt-mount bracket proved to have poor trim characteristics when using my camera, so I quickly went back to side mount. (In the future, I would like to have a quick release hard point put on the side of the Mk 15.5 like this: http://www.cybermaps.co.uk/cyberbarics/sm1600/brcktunderside.htm).
Diving
With only the minimum number of hours on my rig, the first few dives were really challenging with regard to buoyancy. Add the necessity to keep the video camera steady (especially when filming macro), and I emitted quite a grumbles in the early dives. I will be the first to admit that I am a newbie with the buoyancy thing. But by the end I was doing no-reference safety and deep stops with ease.
The Galapagos is definitely not typical tropical water. In the southern islands, water temperature was in the high 50s, low 60s. Out of 16 divers on the boat, I was the ONLY one comfortable every dive. Luckily my girlfriend was well prepared and wore a brand new Mares 5mm hooded shorty under a brand new Oneil 7mm full. But she could never outlast me on my rebreather when it came to temperature. I was quite comfortable in an Xcel 7mm full with beanie, though I busted out the 3mm hooded vest for taping batfish at 90 feet in 59 degree water. On the very last dive of the trip, my girlfriend and I were the only ones to do the 2nd dive at Gordon Rocks. Everyone else bailed because of the cold. We were treated to a private guided dive and a view of this deep cave that served as a sea lion graveyard. Awesome! With my rebreather and my PO2 cranked up, I was often able to get down below the thermocline where the visibility was endless and the water freezing. Below 130 feet at places like Punta Vicente Roca and Gordon Rocks, the visibility easily exceeded 150 feet. Above that point the vis might be only 30-40 feet. It was just too cold for everyone else!
Howard Hall describes the myth of invisibility well. For me in the Galapagos, stuff like creeping up on garden eels and batfish, the rebreather absolutely excelled. For hammerhead sharks, I had mixed results. The reason I think is that yes, I may have not been blowing noisy bubbles, but I think I looked rather scary with my black Gates housing and gauges and video lights sticking out (even if the video lights were not on.) The hammerheads would often make a very close pass to me, but if I tracked their motion with the video camera, they were often startled. Sure, the absence of bubbles made shooting directly up for silhouettes very easy. No breath holding needed here.
For whale shark encounters, my Mk 15.5 was worthless. In fact, it was worse than worthless. It was impossible to get enough speed up, even with my Bio Fin Pro XTs, to swim out to a passing whale shark, whereas some of the fitter open circuit divers on the trip had no trouble whatsoever. At Darwin Island, I was forced to go open circuit in order to have a chance. It paid off. Against a strong current, I was able to keep up with and tape my solo encounter with a giant 45-footer. Unfortunately, I had already deployed my safety sausage from my reel just before the point of putting air in it and it acted like a skinny sea anchor. If I would have stopped and tried to roll it back up, the whale shark would have already gone by. So I still ended up kicking like crazy.
Back in the colder southern islands, my longest dive was 150 minutes at Punta Vicente Roca. Other than that dive and two others where the currents were manageable or predictable, I pretty much had to stay with the group. A rebreather-only boat would have been great. In fact, I did see the Deep Blue at Darwin when we were there. Supposedly that was a rebreather-only trip booked through Silent Diving Systems, though I think it would be a shame to only get to dive one week in the Galapagos. As it was, with two weeks I felt absolutely cheated!! Whale sharks were not as thick as expected this time of year at Darwin and Wolf, where the Deep Blue was hanging out. I thought the southern islands had more diversity and brought out the advantages of a rebreather even better than the northern islands like Wolf and Darwin. In any case, with all the ups and downs, my O2 consumption was very high. I ended up burning almost TWO full K bottles during my trip, instead of the one that I expected. It would have been much different had I done more typical closed circuit profiles. Three kegs of sodasorb was plenty. But I wouldnt have wanted to bring any less for as many heavy current dives as we did.
