Redundant buoyancy in warm weather

[TSandM]

When we did our boat dives in West Palm, with a whole bunch of GUE divers, we did hot drops . . . and maybe I wasn't quite as good at getting down immediately as I would be if I had a chance to do it more often and figure out the best approach, but we didn't dawdle at the surface doing checks. We knew it was a hot drop, and did our checks on the boat, and our bubble checks on the way down.

Dan, I think you're being a bit ingenuous in condemning everybody who dives dry in warm water as being brainwashed into excessive standardization. I dive dry because I GET COLD!!!! There is ABSOLUTELY nothing in GUE training that says you have to dive dry everywhere, even in doubles. You have to dive prudently, which means not combining big double steel tanks with a heavy wetsuit. Aluminum doubles with a wetsuit are fine; steel doubles with a dry suit are fine. The bottom line is being able to get back to the surface.

 

[tajkd]

When we did our boat dives in West Palm, with a whole bunch of GUE divers, we did hot drops . . . and maybe I wasn't quite as good at getting down immediately as I would be if I had a chance to do it more often and figure out the best approach, but we didn't dawdle at the surface doing checks. We knew it was a hot drop, and did our checks on the boat, and our bubble checks on the way down.

Dan, I think you're being a bit ingenuous in condemning everybody who dives dry in warm water as being brainwashed into excessive standardization. I dive dry because I GET COLD!!!! There is ABSOLUTELY nothing in GUE training that says you have to dive dry everywhere, even in doubles. You have to dive prudently, which means not combining big double steel tanks with a heavy wetsuit. Aluminum doubles with a wetsuit are fine; steel doubles with a dry suit are fine. The bottom line is being able to get back to the surface.

Exactly the point. Diving dry is great for those who feel the absolute need for redundancy. It's also great for those who get cold. It really is a super solution that too many people raise their nose to. I never understand the intolerance and criticism that comes when I wear a drysuit in the Caribbean. And what a great relief to use that single AL80 with my homemade freedom plate and my tropical drysuit. Drysuit definitely does not equal doubles.

 

[danvolker]

When we did our boat dives in West Palm, with a whole bunch of GUE divers, we did hot drops . . . and maybe I wasn't quite as good at getting down immediately as I would be if I had a chance to do it more often and figure out the best approach, but we didn't dawdle at the surface doing checks. We knew it was a hot drop, and did our checks on the boat, and our bubble checks on the way down.

Dan, I think you're being a bit ingenuous in condemning everybody who dives dry in warm water as being brainwashed into excessive standardization. I dive dry because I GET COLD!!!! There is ABSOLUTELY nothing in GUE training that says you have to dive dry everywhere, even in doubles. You have to dive prudently, which means not combining big double steel tanks with a heavy wetsuit. Aluminum doubles with a wetsuit are fine; steel doubles with a dry suit are fine. The bottom line is being able to get back to the surface.

Lynn, I am not griping about you and your drysuit--I know it is the thermal issue that has you in it...and as a PNW diver, your norm is to be in very cold water where this is the only way you have felt warm enough---and this is your primary suit year round.
My rant is not aimed at you.....If/when you visit here again, I would want you to visit the big dive shops....Amazingly, they are selling Dry suits to the locals....The shops make big $$$ on the large ticket purchase, and the instructors and agencies get to make $$$ selling skills training for Dry suits....
For people that get cold easily--and that live in the tropics...I think the better Alternative is the Semi-Dry wetsuit---Sandra just found one at the last DEMA Show, Force E actually bought out the whole inventory, so Sandra bought this from Force E....the suit
by Aqua Lung....was actually so warm when she used it last week at the BHB that she had to get out early due to overheating.... and she is in her DRysuit at the BHB till it gets a bit colder....But this suit was atually purchased for open water diving in 40 to 140 foot deep ocean dives we do--where currents make dry-suits a high drag liability ( at BHB it is a non-issue--dry suits are fine here)...this suit is actually quite slick in the water for challenging ocean dives... it costs much less than a drysuit ( if you have no cold water suit, and are deciding on what to get for winter), and the skills you already have from diving wetsuits are the same skills you use with this....
So for me, I will use my 2.5 mil freedive wetsuit until it gets to be too cold for me...probably around 72 degrees...then switch to one of these Aqualung suits.... Maybe I will give my TLS 350 to someone I don't like

 

[HIGHwing]

What else is wrong with Cave divers doing ocean dives like they do cave? Watch a bunch of them jump in, and float on the surface for a minute doing surface checks and taking their time.....and being blown 400 yards beyond thye bottom structure that had been planned for them. We are talking the wrong standards for ocean.

With all due respect, that's just nonsense. Anyone who's been diving in S. Florida knows the deep stuff isn't marked or tethered. You hotdrop the wrecks using a negative entry. We usually exit the boat so fast you be hard pressed to adjust the spring strap on your split fin before we were all underwtaer. There's no way you're going to dive the Hydro, Ande, Lowrance, RBJ, or any of the other tec/cave favorites by dawdling around on the surface. I reject your conclusion as normal thing a cave diver does.

Regarding the separation of divers, people swim in all different directions anyway. If you want people to all go in the same direction to make observation and pickup easier, put guides in the water. You can't possibly expect me to beileve that all the recreational divers stay in perfect groups and make perfect little 30ft descents and end up precisely where you want them to be.

 

[danvolker]

Sorry, you can't make up stuff like this....if I had not seen it with my own eyes, many times, I too would say this would never happen....but I am not talking about the hydro or the RB and other tech wrecks..I am talking about the cave divers that visit and get dropped on recreational sites, reef or wreck....they insist on doing what they were taught and what is their Standard behavior. Some can be reasoned with, and will do their safety check first on the boat prior to splashing...and then again near the bottom....some won't budge....

As to separation.... in a drift current from Boynton to Jupiter, divers are ALWAYS told to go WITH the current...which is often from 1 to 3 mph, and sometimes faster. The problems happen when a group stops on the bottom where the current is lesser, and does macro photography for 15 minutes or more at a time...often only moving 50 feet in one hour...the other divers doing normal drift dives, will be more than a mile away....this does happen--all it takes is a bunch of macro photographers that don't get, or don't listen to a briefing.
Cave divers I have seen, are no where near as bad..they just swim slow--or hang without swimming in the area 5 feet off the reef. I think due to the slow going of the doubles and dry suit, many are fine letting the current do 100% of the work...so if 4 cave divers do this...and 6 fairly slick divers with free dive fins just put along...but are kicking easily for an hour...they can be many hundreds of yards to up to a mile or more away from the cave divers. I have been on boats where this annoyed the captain considerably...the two groups being fairly incompatible with each other--the worst ( other than macro) would be spear-fisherman in one group, cave divers in the other...then, there are plenty of recreational divers that like swimming at a spearfishing diver's mission pace, to cover as much reef as they can. They have the right to do this, if that is what they like. The cave divers have the right to dive slow....but a boat really can't cater well to both groups if they won't try to compromise. So their are boats with better clientele for either direction

---------- Post added December 5th, 2013 at 05:02 PM ----------

[video]http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/zWQyiZOc-C3PNGnB0[/video]

The semi dry suit and Sandra trying it on at the Riviera Beach Force E....

 

[00wabbit]

Oh my god are we still beating this horse?

There is going to be nothing left if this keeps up.

 

[Imla]

For most diveboats, it get's to be problematic if 6 divers go down like they are "supposed to" on a drift dive, and then another group of buddies(say the cave divers--or, a couple of macro divers on a drift dive) does something that can physically separate the 2 groups by over a mile in the next hour....

I am curious... What is it that makes _your_ idea of diving, the correct one? ie: the swift swimming in the current to cover the most area the "correct" one... Vs the macrodivers idea of spending the dive on one spot, or the cavediver(HUH??? do they all dive alike?) slovly drifting along with his drag...

Could it not be _your_ style of diving that is ruining the experience of the rest of the group? Maybe you are the one that needs to slow down and let others smell the rust/anemones/fish?


Just wondering...

 

[HIGHwing]

...I have been on boats where this annoyed the captain considerably...the two groups being fairly incompatible with each other...

So the question becomes not what the diver is wearing, as much as why you're taking divers with dissimiliar interests to sites that don't make sense. Why not make it easy on yourself? If you have incompatible divers, do what everyone else does - take them to a wreck and drop 'em at one place in the sea. If you're making your life hard on yourself over and over again, as you've seen it 1,000 times before - and you're the only one annoyed. Fix YOUR process to make the dives work. Where divers dive is quite within your range of control if you are driving the boat.

 

[danvolker]

I am curious... What is it that makes _your_ idea of diving, the correct one? ie: the swift swimming in the current to cover the most area the "correct" one... Vs the macrodivers idea of spending the dive on one spot, or the cavediver(HUH??? do they all dive alike?) slovly drifting along with his drag...

Could it not be _your_ style of diving that is ruining the experience of the rest of the group? Maybe you are the one that needs to slow down and let others smell the rust/anemones/fish?


Just wondering...

I don't think you read me properly....in fact, I just said both the fast and the slow have the "right" to dive fast or slow...
Now....the line you responded to....here I am saying divers are supposed to swim down or to "drop" ( be negative on descent) as quickly as they can....There are divers that can't do this--divers with ear problems...the boat would ideally give them a special drop because they can't drop down on to the desired structure ( reef or wreck) the way divers with no physical impairments would.... Chronic sinusitis and bad alergies plague many divers with stuffed up Eustachian tubes --and the ones with this, that choose to deal with the problem, are either going to use nasal irrigation to fix this and clear the the tubes without drugs, or, if this won't work, then Mucinex D or other powerful decongestant.....Not doing anything to solve the problem, is putting your physical impairment on the other divers, or on the captain--so that a special drop has to be performed for you.,.,...and this is typically far less effective in getting you to where you want to be without wasting a lot of bottom time and air.
Believing this is not a physical impairment, is self indulgence at it's worst.

---------- Post added December 5th, 2013 at 05:47 PM ----------

So the question becomes not what the diver is wearing, as much as why you're taking divers with dissimiliar interests to sites that don't make sense. Why not make it easy on yourself? If you have incompatible divers, do what everyone else does - take them to a wreck and drop 'em at one place in the sea. If you're making your life hard on yourself over and over again, as you've seen it 1,000 times before - and you're the only one annoyed. Fix YOUR process to make the dives work. Where divers dive is quite within your range of control if you are driving the boat.

You don't understand the diving here....pretty much every site in ocean has great macro, AND great wide angle.
Moreover, people book onto each boat and many do not know each other....there are boats that cater to spearfishers, and some that cater to photographers....as far as I know, there are no boats that cater SPECIFICALLY to macro photographers--although a group of macro shooters COULD charter a boat and be very happy with this--it is just infrequent that enough want to do this at the same time.

As far as MY process... I don't work as a DM....ever. For some reason SB picked this up and shows it in my profile.... and ignored my instructor rating..which I don't use either. I dive alot, and I am on many of the boats in Palm Beach, alot.
I have been watching all the best boat captains since the 90's....constantly..... I know what works, and what does not, in a drift diving environment.....that's here in Palm Beach, in other places with currents I've dived such as in Cozumel, Fiji, Puerto Rico..even the Niagara River.

When a charter boat picks a dive site,. the captain often has multiple interests and skill sets in the divers.....and the Captain has to make the best compromise he/she can. Then the briefing follows--which is where the Cave divers will often choose to ignore hot drop instructions, and do what they want--which is where I got that from. And the photographers...well...sometimes they start out intending to comply with the compromise, then they see a Nat Geo moment, and all bets are off !

 

[Imla]

Actually Dan... The quote I responded to mention nothing to the sorts of divers with earproblems. It mentions cave-divers and macro-divers... Or do all cave-divers and macro-divers have earproblems? You advocate that the swift diving in current on a wreck would be impossible in a drysuit, or that cave-divers will dwiddle along, or that macro-divers will stay in one spot...

From the posts I have read in that past couple of pages, (I am sorry.. I didn't read the previous 15 ish pages...) your opinion is that the right way to dive is swimming with the current with freediving fins that give lots of thrust and can get you very far during a dive. (Correct me if I am wrong, as english is my second language)I

just fail to see where _your_ opinion on what is "the" way to dive is the only one...