Question about “balanced rigs” and having all ballast unditchable

[lowviz]

Oh so it’s a “team” now? ...//...

Some divers refuse to enter the water without a buddy assigned to their safety. (you know this)

I would expect that the developer of the Freedom Plate to have an issue or two with this concept.

Old rules. I am responsible for me and while there may very well be times that a buddy could be incredibly useful, I dive alone as it is inordinately more enjoyable.

 

[Bob DBF]

Oh so it’s a “team” now? Is this some sort of militarized special ops excercise, or is it just another hip and cool buzz word?

Yes.

Some folks don't believe in solo and same ocean buddys. They probably haven't dove the sparcely populated North Coast. @LoViz covered the rest.


Bob

 

[Storker]

I’m talking about new divers in 2 pc 7mm wetsuits with 40+ lbs stuffed into every orifice of their BC plus some more hanging off that an instructor has clipped onto them to “make sure they stay down”. They waddle into the water and trudge out to the drop spot. As soon as they dump air they drop feet first like an anvil.

Am I detecting a slight whiff of hyperbole here?

They also need to educate themselves on current fads on some of these internet boards where all the “experts” hang out and see the pros and cons, not just follow the leader uninformed.
I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from.

I believe I do.

 

[EireDiver606]

Oh so it’s a “team” now? Is this some sort of militarized special ops excercise, or is it just another hip and cool buzz word?

It’s another word for buddy....

I don’t like the word buddy because that only refers to one person. Everyone should look after everyone in the team not just one on one.

 

[Dan]

...I’m talking about new divers in 2 pc 7mm wetsuits with 40+ lbs stuffed into every orifice of their BC plus some more hanging off that an instructor has clipped onto them to “make sure they stay down”. They waddle into the water and trudge out to the drop spot. As soon as they dump air they drop feet first like an anvil. When they are done trudging around on the bottom and come up with 500 psi in their tanks they still need to inflate their BC’s almost full to stay floating...

I didn’t know such dive instructors exist & such idiotic methods are being thought. It’s a sure way to drown the students if something go wrong in the water, especially with too many students & poor visibility.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I didn’t know such dive instructors exist & such idiotic methods are being thought. It’s a sure way to drown the students if something go wrong in the water, especially with too many students & poor visibility.

Yes they are out there, I’ve seen it all. Go to San Carlos Beach in Monterey, CA on any summer weekend and you will see it all.

 

[Storker]

Yes they are out there, I’ve seen it all. Go to San Carlos Beach in Monterey, CA on any summer weekend and you will see it all.

So, based on what you've seen at San Carlos Beach in Monterey, CA, you claim that more than 50% of the world's OW students are seriously overweighted?

 

[boulderjohn]

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that better than 50% of newly trained divers trained by all basic OW agencies are diving overweighted.
It simply has become a standard practice to add several more lbs (or kilos) to make sure students can get down. The problem is they never rectify this practice once the student moves on, and the new diver then thinks this is how they must be weighted.

Lots of divers fail to realise that excess weight exacerbates bad buoyancy, they fail to grasp that the additional air needed in the BCD to compensate for the excess weight will have a greater effect when it expands. They think this is due to being underweight and add more weight . A vicious circle.

So, based on what you've seen at San Carlos Beach in Monterey, CA, you claim that more than 50% of the world's OW students are seriously overweighted?

I would say that the estimation of 50% of divers being overweighted is conservative. I am sure it is much more than that.

The reason for it, IMO, is the most common training technique--having students kneel on the bottom of the pool to learn skills and then on the bottom of some shallow OW site to demonstrate them. If students are kneeling on the bottom, they MUST be significantly overweighted, or else they will be bobbing around and tipping over. When I had to pose for photographs comparing teaching skills while horizontal and neutrally buoyant with teaching them while kneeling, I had to wear more than twice as much weight to do the kneeling photographs.

I worked for two different shops over a number of years, and these shops had at least a dozen instructors each. Here are some observations.

1. I started as a DM and then an assistant, and during that time, I learned how much weight people needed, because it was principally my job to give them the weights. (All of that was with kneeling instruction.)
2. When I was later an instructor and gradually adopted the "horizontal and neutral" approach, I cut that weight dramatically.
3. After I had been doing things neutral and horizontal for a while, I was called upon to assist in a class because the scheduled assistant was sick. The instructor told me right off that he knew I did things differently, but we were going to do things his way--on the knees. He put an ungodly amount of weight on everyone. When it came time to do the weight check, he said he usually skipped that, because the weight check was so divorced from the reality of all the weight students needed to dive.
4. When I later worked for another shop, I saw other instructors using ridiculous amounts of weight. I saw as much as 20 pounds on students who probably really didn't need more than 4.
5. In one of those classes, a student asked if he could do the pool sessions in a 7mm suit because he would be doing the OW in a 7mm suit in fresh water, and he wanted to have the weight perfect. In the pool, the instructor determined that he needed 22 pounds, so when he came to me for the OW portion of the class, he insisted that he needed that much weight. When we were done with the class, he was happily doing the dives with 10 pounds.

 

[Akimbo]

I'm just speculating based on my limited sphere of visibility, but Eric's observations are consistent with mine in Monterey and the San Diego area. The tendency to overweight students for the convenience of the instructor "might" be more prevalent in colder water where wetsuits and long surface swims are common.

Watching instructors running their class' first ocean dive illustrates the phrase "herding cats". Getting all of them suited up for the first time in their rented rigs, down the beach, through the small surf, a 100 yards/meters or so swim through the kelp, and ready for their first drills in salt water is... challenging. Do that a few times with a few students that are too buoyant to get to the bottom and the motivation to overweight becomes clear.

Unfortunately, there aren't many places on the California Coast that are easy to do salt water buoyancy checks. Most pool sessions are too limited (and pools are too warm) for students wear one or two piece 5-7mm wetsuits for buoyancy tests. None of this excuses the practice in my mind, but I understand the barely tenable situation that instructors find themselves in.

A lot more time and pier-side access from a floating dock would be wonderful, but most harbormasters don't allow divers to get wet without permits and good reasons, like scraping hulls. Even with that, most marinas in this state are not places you want wouldn't want to introduce students to diving, or the wonderful world of littered mud bottoms with propellers spinning overhead.

 

[MichaelMc]

If you believe in the, proper required, checks, a skin diving first dive seems a partial solution, without freezing students with bobbing on scuba. Not perfect, but it might be a closer starting point. The buoyancy of the rig is easy to find in the pool and convert. I haven't focused on classes at Monterey but the one I saw entering was a train wreck, any issues of proper weighting aside. We always have a float for weights on our first three dives, and use the calmer and more boring Del Monte beach.