Safety Sausage

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The Mighty Thor

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I am about to go on my first ocean dive and need reccomendations on a safety sausage. I've seen some in LDs which seemed very big and bulky and others that were quite junky or hard to inflate. What is a good and sufficient sausage to buy?
 
If you need it, big and bulky won't be a problem.

Models that I like...

Carter
Halcyon
Manta (new and I like it very much)

Buy one and practice with it.
 
First you need to be sure of what you want and what you are looking at. Safety sausages are about 6" around and about 6' long. They generally inflate orally through a small tube at one end. They do not have an overpressure or dump valve. They are designed to be inflated on the surface.

Those BIG sausages you are seeing are SMBs or Surface Marker Buoys. Those can be 9 to 12 feet long and are bigger around. They will typically be open ended and/or have an overpressure valve. These bags are meant to be partially inflated at depth from a regulator and shot to the surface which allows the expanding air to complete inflation. They are connected to a spool or reel and are big enough to support a diver doing decompression stops and allows the boat to find them before they surface.

I cary one of to ~$25 yellow and orange safety(yellow on one side and orange on the other) sausages on all dives. It is small enough that I don't notice it and hopefully visible enough that it would get me found if lost.

Joe
 
I bought, use and recommend something similar to this. It rolls up small enough to fit in the mesh pocket attached underneath my Transpac BCD.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...ssPageName=MERC_VI_RSCC_Pr4_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT

Important things are multiple inflation methods, an OPV and being big enough so that you can be spotted when the ocean swells are big.

The sausage I use can double as a SMB or small lift bag. However you need to buy a reel and line to make use of this facility.
 
bradshsi:
I bought, use and recommend something similar to this. It rolls up small enough to fit in the mesh pocket attached underneath my Transpac BCD.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...ssPageName=MERC_VI_RSCC_Pr4_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT

Important things are multiple inflation methods, an OPV and being big enough so that you can be spotted when the ocean swells are big.

The sausage I use can double as a SMB or small lift bag. However you need to buy a reel and line to make use of this facility.
The problem with using something like this as a lift bag is the generally lousy placement of the dump valve. I have seen a lot of them with the valve on the bottom of the bag. What good is that? All the air is in the top of the bag.

Joe
 
True, it's a compromise for that duty. The OPV is only on there to vent excess pressure and as such it can be (and is) placed anywhere.
 
I'm not looking for a SMB. Only a sausage, and possily a brand name or place where I can order one. Thanks for your insight.
 
steely123:
I'm not looking for a SMB. Only a sausage, and possily a brand name or place where I can order one. Thanks for your insight.
Dive Rite makes the ones you're talking about, I think. Check Dive Rite Express, as I'm sure they'd carry it.
 
Consider where you'll put it, before you buy one. I bought the ultra cheap one sold by Trident. It's 10 feet tall, but made of such cheap plastic (like a 10 foot tall red plastic bag) that it rolls up very small. All but one of the times I've deployed it, someone has comented how much better theirs was ...but they couldn't show me how great theirs was, because it was at home. If you don't bring your sausage for drift dives in the Carribean, there's no point in owning one.

I recently added a "handle" (made of duct tape) to my tube. (As sold, you just crumple the bottom of the tube, and hold the open end under water.) The captain of the boat said, "That really worked well. Did you buy that like that?" I laughed, and said that I'd added the duct tape on my own. Personally I prefer the added height of my 10' tube, in case of waves that might hide a 36" tube.

Whatever you buy, practice deploying it once in a while (when you don't need it). You don't want to have to figure out how your going to inflate it, while you're already have a bad dive.
 
Marker bouys come in two flavors:

Sausage: smaller (less than 4' tall), skinny, oral inflate only. Small and easilly stowed, or, usually clipped off to be yet another dangly. A safety blanket of marginal real-world utility. Here's one.

SMB: Big (usually 6' tall +), wide, can actually be seen before a boat runs you over. Rolls up about twice the size of a sausage. Lots of different versions.

All the best, James
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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