Pony bottle vs. Spare Air?

[northen diver]

by shrinkage...he means you better be using a lanyard!!!!

Nope..........CO2 cartridge for an safe, easy and rapid inflate. Lanyard has a certain intanglement hazards for me.

 

[Bob Vincent]

I guess a few people answered you.

 

[Adobo]

Depends on the diving that you are doing. I would prefer to have a pony slung and turned on with the hose tucked neatly onto the bottle and the reg around your neck on all deep dives and ice dives. I would not really feel real warm and fuzzy if I had to share air with a distress buddy with both of us breathing off of one 1st stage under the ice. IF you practice deploying a pony bottle, it actually doesnt take that long.

Given that an ice dive is an overhead dive, I wonder if it would be such a good idea diving with just a single tank for back gas in the first place. Some folks do overhead dives with doubles. In this case, divers would be breathing from different first stages even while gas sharing.

 

[Adobo]

If you have to ask......

I'm from California. What do you want from my life?

 

[rhlee]

1)wow...you spent the whole dive watching this guy??? Did you ever talk to him about his setup and ask questions??? alot of assumptions in your comment about him!

No assumptions, just facts. There was no SPG (there was a one of those button guages). I know it was on because i heard it purging on-deck. I never followed him around underwater.

2)Do you really thimk a diver using specialized equipment like nitrox in staging bottles would just 'forget' what bottles had what and would just grab any reg handy...jeez...

I should hope not. If you slowed down enough to read what I said, you would see what I was saying was that it is a bad habit to form if you are headed down that road. Bad habits are hard to break (primacy); better to avoid them in the first place.

3)If......you're going to a pony bottle, you think a diver would wait until there was absolutley no air in his tank , then start to rig up his pony...wow....he has enough forethought to bring a pony....only to completly forget about his guages.....give it up...!!!

I don't know, I've never used one.

If you don't "believe" in pony bottles just say...don't come up with a bunch of crap....

Don't get all emotionally wrapped up in this... Just trying to have a factual discussion here. I'd rather make safety decisions based on logic and sound reasoning, than knee-jerk reactions. But ok, whatever.

 

[DandyDon]

I remember diving with a local around the San Juan islands of Puget Sound. The viz was challenging so we were both getting in close to see what was on and in the rocks and both shooting pics. With the reduced viz, each distracted by cameras, and some kinky currents we got into that day - we lost count of how many times we lost each other. In the last washing machine, we couldn't even get to each other on the surface - I was headed one way, him the other, and the boat spinning around. At the end of the day I said: "Dan, you're a fun guy and a good diver, but you really need to lose the camera or get a pony."

I see people shooting cameras without ponies and just hope their buds are good about following them closely.

 

[Kingpatzer]

Given that an ice dive is an overhead dive, I wonder if it would be such a good idea diving with just a single tank for back gas in the first place. Some folks do overhead dives with doubles. In this case, divers would be breathing from different first stages even while gas sharing.

If you're doing ice diving the right way, you have a surface crew who are tending the hole, and they have a line attached to you that leads directly to the surface. If you're dive plan only calls for a depth and time that a single tank will give you the gas you need, along with a reasonable amount of contingency gas should your line break for some reason, then you're ok with a single tank.

Lots of folks carry a pony or dive doubles for ice diving, but it's all about doing proper gas planning/management and there's nothing inherently wrong with diving a single beyond the risk incurred should your first stage freeze up.

For recreational ice diving, you should be with a buddy and a frozen reg, while seriously sucking, should just be a nice calm assent to the hole with your buddy.

 

[alwaingold]

If you don't "believe" in pony bottles just say...don't come up with a bunch of crap....

Wow, and they say DIR people are mean

 

[northen diver]

Lots of folks carry a pony or dive doubles for ice diving, but it's all about doing proper gas planning/management and there's nothing inherently wrong with diving a single beyond the risk incurred should your first stage freeze up.

For recreational ice diving, you should be with a buddy and a frozen reg, while seriously sucking, should just be a nice calm assent to the hole with your buddy.[/quote]































In a perfect world. But, when yhen you have a free flow in an overhead enviroment thats in cold water and two some what distressed divers breathing off of one 1st stage swimming perhaps 100 feet back to a hole really doesnt help ones stress level. I wont dive in a overhead enviroment with out bail out bottles.

I just had this happend to me just a couple of days ago. My buddy full free flowed with 100 feet of line played out, I gave him my bail out reg, he gave the OK sign, I shut off his tank, gave 4 tugs on the rope and started to return to the hole. Easy right............Nope. He kept SPITTING out the friggin bail out reg after he took a breath or two. Then he started to grab for my main reg, which I gave to him and I went to the bail out reg. AGAIN, he spit out my main reg after a breath or two. I finally grabbed the back of his head and held in the bail out reg in his mouth. We got pulled back to the hole this way. He is a experianced diver and I dove with this guy on many dives in the cold. We practiced OOA drills many times, practiced deploying bail out bottles.After several days of reflecting, he still cant explain his actions. Even though my Blizzard had never free flowed, I sure would had been worried about it still with two of us breathing off it stressed and knowing that was our only air source. I feel that using lines attached, trained line tenders and bail out bottles saved our lifes.

Even though a lot of Ice classes does teach one bottle per diver is acceptable.

 

[Kingpatzer]

For recreational ice diving, you should be with a buddy and a frozen reg, while seriously sucking, should just be a nice calm assent to the hole with your buddy.[/quote]


In a perfect world. But, when yhen you have a free flow in an overhead enviroment thats in cold water and two some what distressed divers breathing off of one 1st stage swimming perhaps 100 feet back to a hole really doesnt help ones stress level. I wont dive in a overhead enviroment with out bail out bottles.

Lots of people make that choice and there's nothing wrong with it.

<scary story deleted>

Even though a lot of Ice classes does teach one bottle per diver is acceptable.

Quick question about your story -- if he's spitting out your reg, would he not also have been spitting out a pony bottle reg? And if he was on a pony, would you have been right next to him to hold the reg in his mouth? It sounds like his life may well have been saved by an alert buddy who was RIGHT THERE because he wasn't using a pony. Which is something that using a buddy's reg enforces.

Really glad to hear you're ok!