Safety Sausage

[BKP]

I like the Carter Personal Float. A little pricey, but has all the right features: 50lb. lift (comes in other sizes, as well); oral or octo inflate with one way valve; 10ft. long (tough to miss); 400 denier (tough, period); reflective tape; dump valve.. etc.

Can't vouch for this site, but it has the best picture and description;

http://www.divesports.com/mall/carter_50personalfloat.asp

and:

http://www.carterbag.com/personalfloat.html

 

[Rev. Blade]

Rev. Blade...

Never had a sausage or SMB but will be getting one next year. So I'm having trouble visualizing your description of the handle.

Can you give another description...again? Describe how it would be used without the handle...crumpling the bottom...holding the open end underwater...all Greek to someone who hasn't seen and/or used one before. (No offence to any Greeks out there, they are some of my favorite people!).

So you manufactured a handle out of duct tape...okay, but for what purpose? When the boat captain said it worked really well, how would he know since you would have used it in the water?

You can tell by my questions that I am clueless! Maybe you can include a pic or two?

If you have a container that is sealed at the top and sides, it will float if the volume of water it displaces weighs more than the container and the contents. My cheap plastic sausage weighs just about nothing, so it will float if I get any gas inside it. Mine is just a long plastic tube, that was sealed at one end. If you get some air in it, the bubble will rise to the sealed end of the tube. If I hang onto the open end (crumpled or not), and keep the open end below the surface of the water... all the air stays inside the tube. If you keep enough of the tube under water that the air bubble gets pulled under water, lift pressure builds in the tube.... That lift pressure could be used as a lift bag if your sausage were strong. (My plastic tube is not built for that. The plastic seams would pop.) If you only submerge a small portion of the air trapped in the tube, you can make the tube stand up straight out of the water (because the air would need to go deeper to get out the open end, if the open end is deeper than the air bubble. All the floats with an open bottom work that way. The main thing that's "special" about mine, is how cheap it is. (price and quality)

To make a handle, I simply opened the tube, and ran some tape from the inside of the tube (sticky side out), about 10" down below the tube then back up to the inside of the tube. That gave me a loop of tape that was stuck to the inside, and a sticky mess hanging below my sausage. Then I ran some tape from the outside of the tube (sticky side in) to overlap the tape. Then I ran some tape around the base of my tube, to keep the other tape from comming undone when it got wet.

To give you an idea how it all works, if you've never used one... let's reverse the bag idea, and use it on land....
If you take a sack (SMB), and drop an apple in it (air bubble), the apple stays in the bag as long as the open end stays above (below, if it were a SMB) the apple.

If that example made any sense, we can talk about why bother with a handle.... You could hold your "apple sack" by crumpling up the sack, and grabbing on, but your hand will get tired, because you need to grip the bag so tightly. (Not to seal it, because the apple won't jump up out of the bag... you hold on tightly to keep the bag from falling to the floor (floating to the surface if it were a SMB... remember the "apple sack" is like an upside down SMB). If you try to carry a sack with a handle, you quickly notice how much easier it is to keep a grip. It doesn't matter if the sack hangs open at the top or not. The same way a SMB can be open or closed at the bottom. (I hope that made some sort of sense....)

So how could the captain know how well my sausage worked? He simply saw that the tube deployed somewhat smoothly at the surface. I put a small amount of air in the tube (filled perhaps one foot of the tube), while I was at my safety stop. My tube is 10 feet long, and held above my head from a 10" handle, so with about a foot sticking out of the water... I was still at a good depth for my stop. When I was ready to surface, I simply added a bit more air to the tube. (When I had 3' of air in the tube, I was hanging about 8' deep.) Add a bit more air, and come up a bit more. By the time I wanted to be on the surface, I had about 9' of tube stickinng out of the water, and a foot of tube held underwater to keep the pressure on the tube to hold it upright.

So the captain saw a slow rise to the SMB, and eventually saw me. Partly he seemed impressed, but I imagine he partly just didn't want to say my tube looked super cheap. (It does look cheap, but it never pays to insult your customer's gear.) Oh yeah, did you notice I said my cheap tube is 10' tall? He also noticed it was easier to see my 10' tube than his wife's 48" tube.

I hope that helps, more than it hurts. I tried to attach a photo, let's see if it works.

 

[Rev. Blade]

...and then I tied about 15' of clothes line to the handle... and a small bolt snap to the end of the line not attached to my tube. Without a metal clip (or weight of some kind) on the line, the line floats in a cloud around you when you unwind it from around the SMB. I don't do anything fancy for storage. I roll up the tube, then wrap the string around the rolled tube... then just shove that in a BC pocket.

People who fuss with a fancier deployment or storage, tend not to want to deploy (or even bring) their SMB. I've seen plenty of divers floating away from the boat that didn't have, or didn't deploy, a surface marker.

If my tube got a leak at the top, I can tie a knot in the plastic until I can go buy another $10 tube. If it got frayed and leaky near the bottom, I would have a tube which would hold less than 10' of air.

Then again, my tube is almost 5 years old, and just as good (OK, just as cheap looking ) as when I bought it.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Rev, is the 15' of line just floating in the water around you before you inflate the SMB?

 

[Rev. Blade]

Rev, is the 15' of line just floating in the water around you before you inflate the SMB?

No. The bolt snap works fine to keep the line hanging straight down. The first time I tried to deploy with line, I did not have a weight attached. That was a mess. The next day I had a snap.

Oddly, the day I got surrounded by my own line, was the day the captain of the boat said how well my SMB worked... but he only saw what happened on the surface.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Yeah, I thought it might be a problem but the bolt snap would work...

 

[slingshot]

I've got a Carter personal float SMB, and having no relationship to the company besides being a customer, I have to say that they were very helpful when I was
ordering my float, which I did directly from their website. Like others of its size (~6 foot tall, 7" wide) it is a bit big when rolled, but I keep it bungied under the bottom of my BC on every dive, even from shore.

 

[Rev. Blade]

I've got a Carter personal float SMB, and having no relationship to the company besides being a customer, I have to say that they were very helpful when I was
ordering my float, which I did directly from their website. Like others of its size (~6 foot tall, 7" wide) it is a bit big when rolled, but I keep it bungied under the bottom of my BC on every dive, even from shore.

The Carter personal floats (and super sausages) look excellent, but at prices from $40 - $122 not every diver is prepared to get one before their next dive. I think every diver in open water should have an SMB.

Instead of waiting to buy a really nice SMB, or leaving it behind because it's too bulky, I simply wanted to point out the super cheap option. The $10 tube is nowhere near as nice as the $40 (or more) options... but they are small when not deployed, and among the most visible when they are deployed. It's 10 feet tall and 6" diameter... I even added a bit of reflective tape to the top of my tube.

 

[slingshot]

I agree it's better to have an inexpensive smb with you than an expensive one at home on the sofa. Thanks for the photos.

 

[Rev. Blade]

...and then I tied about 15' of clothes line to the handle... and a small bolt snap to the end of the line not attached to my tube. Without a metal clip (or weight of some kind) on the line, the line floats in a cloud around you when you unwind it from around the SMB.

I think, "a small bolt snap to the end of the line not attached to my tube", should have been, "a small bolt snap to the end of the line furthest from my tube."

It doesn't take much weight at all to get the line to hang straight down, and (mostly) out of your way.

...and a quick comment about deploying an SMB, for anyone who has not tried it. Be ready to let go of it! If you can purge your BC into it, your bouyancy should remain neutral... but if you're using gas directly from your tank (any sort of push button infate); or exhaling multiple times into the tube.... you will start to rise. Some of the tubes have a LOT of lift, and would bring you VERY quickly to the surface. If you start to rise, let it go, even if you don't have a line on it. It would almost always be better to lose your SMB, than to do a fast ascent. ...and unless the surface current is moving at a drastically different speed than the current at your depth, you can follow your SMB from below it. Then you can stand it up when you can reach it.

Practice deployment in a pool, or if you practice on a dive, try it once after you've completed your safety stop, but are still 10' - 15' down. At least that would keep you from missing your stop, when you rocket to the surface.

...and the boat captain appreciated that I told him before my dive that I was going to deploy my SMB. That way he didn't need to wait 3 minutes to find out why there was an extra marker coming up. (...and not the style used by his boat.)