Goooooood morning! OK.. the brain is starting to engage and I've began to really digest the experience I had yesterday... to lay the groundwork I recently recieved 2 sets of 72 doubles from a friend of mine to help support him in an upcoming dive (Monday and Tuesday). Since the dive is a somewhat perilous dive that requires a diver have a certain amount of skill and comfort in the water, and him being a new dive buddy, we decided a dive day in a trianing lake was totally in order. OH.. and for those who hadn't seen my posts about my rig, I switeched from a jacket style BC to a BP/W about September 2004. It was a change made with the idea that I had other diving ideas in mind than just floating around a 15' reef.
So yesterday was our 'getting to know you' day and some crash course training on a new rig set up. Needless to say I was totally stoked to be learning something new. The tanks were gassed up, O2 % double checked, the Jeep was completely stripped down, water and nibbles loaded and off I went.
After learning about his rig (he was diving a KISS Megalodon rebreather) we proceeded to put my stuff together. It was a little bit more complicated than his rig... more hoses, heavier, etc.. Rusty had brought with him the rig for the right side, a long hose hog rig set-up. I used my gear and with the aid of my basic tool kit, created the rig for the left side.
OK - so, lets track the changes here. Double tanks mounted, Hog rig set up, and a buddy with a rebreather. Oh... lets add wetsuit in there as everyone who knows me knows a wetsuit is not part of my collection either.
After a quick adjustment of straps to accomodate for a wetsuit, the I was ready to go. My buddy tossedd on his rebreather like it was a small backpack (it kind of is) and was ready to go in less than a minute and off we went down the rooted sandy slope to the water. After a bubble check at 10' we took off in search of the tell tale markers of the underwater trail around the lake that take us to the training platforms and back again.
The first thing I noticed was that in the water this new tank set up was very comfortable. I figured out I was overweighted about 8# (I slipped on weight on my rig for the wetsuit not knowing how much the changes create pos and neg.. the guesstimate as close to no change but wanted to be safe), but it was easily compensated for with a few taps of air. I should also note that the longer hose took care of the forced feed of the regulator to one side of my mouth or not allowing me to comfortably turn to the other. In my head I'm saying "OK, I'm feeling better about this already!" and feeling comfortable about my set up I started really paying attention to my buddy.
Rusty was square on... solid boyancy, going through his checks and basically watching me get the feel for my new underwater cockpit. We left the a floatball on the 30' platform for the new OW students who arrived at the lake when we were heading out and continued the course to deeper water... so far so good...
OK.. I'll start cutting this short as the dive wasn't really exciting except the visibility in the lake was amazing at 30' (the lake is usually around 10') which made for seeing more wild life, better buddy contact, and an excellent environment to get used to this new gear in. A practice bail out pass off of the regulator totally sold me on the long hose diving... I found it interesting at how intuitive (as if I had always been trained that way) I found just passing that regulator away and grabbing the one under my left side was. The balance of the double rig was amazing. Most of all, my anxiety of supporting a rebreather diver was completely abated by knowing so much more about the system he was diving, his redundancy, and how I was providing a 3rd if needed.
The only thing I didnt like was peeing in the wetsuit.. it took to long to disperse!
So yesterday was our 'getting to know you' day and some crash course training on a new rig set up. Needless to say I was totally stoked to be learning something new. The tanks were gassed up, O2 % double checked, the Jeep was completely stripped down, water and nibbles loaded and off I went.
After learning about his rig (he was diving a KISS Megalodon rebreather) we proceeded to put my stuff together. It was a little bit more complicated than his rig... more hoses, heavier, etc.. Rusty had brought with him the rig for the right side, a long hose hog rig set-up. I used my gear and with the aid of my basic tool kit, created the rig for the left side.
OK - so, lets track the changes here. Double tanks mounted, Hog rig set up, and a buddy with a rebreather. Oh... lets add wetsuit in there as everyone who knows me knows a wetsuit is not part of my collection either.
After a quick adjustment of straps to accomodate for a wetsuit, the I was ready to go. My buddy tossedd on his rebreather like it was a small backpack (it kind of is) and was ready to go in less than a minute and off we went down the rooted sandy slope to the water. After a bubble check at 10' we took off in search of the tell tale markers of the underwater trail around the lake that take us to the training platforms and back again.
The first thing I noticed was that in the water this new tank set up was very comfortable. I figured out I was overweighted about 8# (I slipped on weight on my rig for the wetsuit not knowing how much the changes create pos and neg.. the guesstimate as close to no change but wanted to be safe), but it was easily compensated for with a few taps of air. I should also note that the longer hose took care of the forced feed of the regulator to one side of my mouth or not allowing me to comfortably turn to the other. In my head I'm saying "OK, I'm feeling better about this already!" and feeling comfortable about my set up I started really paying attention to my buddy.
Rusty was square on... solid boyancy, going through his checks and basically watching me get the feel for my new underwater cockpit. We left the a floatball on the 30' platform for the new OW students who arrived at the lake when we were heading out and continued the course to deeper water... so far so good...
OK.. I'll start cutting this short as the dive wasn't really exciting except the visibility in the lake was amazing at 30' (the lake is usually around 10') which made for seeing more wild life, better buddy contact, and an excellent environment to get used to this new gear in. A practice bail out pass off of the regulator totally sold me on the long hose diving... I found it interesting at how intuitive (as if I had always been trained that way) I found just passing that regulator away and grabbing the one under my left side was. The balance of the double rig was amazing. Most of all, my anxiety of supporting a rebreather diver was completely abated by knowing so much more about the system he was diving, his redundancy, and how I was providing a 3rd if needed.
The only thing I didnt like was peeing in the wetsuit.. it took to long to disperse!
