Safety Stop - 3 min or 5 min?

[nolatom]

I (an English major) have a fuzzy concept of the science. What I look at are nitrogen ticks on my computer.

More of them? 5-minute stop, or enough time, air permitting, to get out of the yellow Caution zone (hockey puck computer)

Fewer? 3-minute stop

Extend the stop? Sure, if you have air and the boat ain't gunning its engines. Then you can have a long 41-minute dive instead of that chintzy little 39-minute dive...... ;-)


Also a chance to work on buoyancy control, see different fishies and sunlight streaming down through the water, and swap out your alternate as a practice thing.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

I wasn't aware that any rec DC's safety stop settings could be changed.

I have a few settings on the Oceanic Veo 2.0 - not the best but I assumed it was on most PDCs.
Safety Stop Off or On - you do not get penalized for blowing it off if you so desire. You can tell the SS 3 min or 5 min - 10 foot, 15 foot or 20 foot stop.

I realize the image is difficult to see - but I have not figured out how to delete the image...

 

[NAM001]

That may be the instruction doctrine again. I would think thta if it were a legitimate stop then the NDL would have been changed to turn it into a deco stop. Just guessing. I think that kinda falls in hte 90% of ndl calling for a recommended stop. Too many agencies agendas ect. To go any further with PADI's recommendations on safety stops will open the can of worms of OW's with 60 ft limits. Interesting you said that. Is that the proccedure when using tables for planning or is it non table diving also. If it is table is would suspect that to be a recommendation for table dives in event you make an error in execution. |What do you think?

I think (in the PADI system anyway) that if you come within 2 pressure groups of an NDL, then the safety stop is a mandatory otherwise it's optional. It's been about 4 years since I have taken a PADI course, and don't dive with the RDP or a computer anymore so I could be wrong about that.

---------- Post added May 4th, 2015 at 02:55 PM ----------

Yes i am seeing more computers with this option in the setup. Possibly a move to compete with the tech computers. Shearwater has become more recreational so it stands to reason that the rec computers are moving a little closer to the tech arena to maintain sales.

I have a few settings on the Oceanic Veo 2.0 - not the best but I assumed it was on most PDCs.
Safety Stop Off or On - you do not get penalized for blowing it off if you so desire. You can tell the SS 3 min or 5 min - 10 foot, 15 foot or 20 foot stop.

I realize the image is difficult to see - but I have not figured out how to delete the image...

 

[nimoh]

That may be the instruction doctrine again. I would think thta if it were a legitimate stop then the NDL would have been changed to turn it into a deco stop. Just guessing. I think that kinda falls in hte 90% of ndl calling for a recommended stop. Too many agencies agendas ect. To go any further with PADI's recommendations on safety stops will open the can of worms of OW's with 60 ft limits. Interesting you said that. Is that the proccedure when using tables for planning or is it non table diving also. If it is table is would suspect that to be a recommendation for table dives in event you make an error in execution. |What do you think?

I'm not all that sure about whether it is table planning only, but I agree with you that it is probably a can of worms. The original question was about NAUI anyway

 

[BRT]

I dive a very liberal computer. If I need to I dive it close to its limits. Then I make every attempt to "breathe it out of the yellow zone" before surfacing. If I were OOG or had some other emergency I'd trust that Oceanics algorithm was correct and surface.

 

[The Chairman]

Blood and neural tissues have @ a five minute half time. Back when we looked at Type I or II hits, DAN noticed that the recreational divers almost always got a type II while commercial divers got a type I. Mind you, getting a hit is incredibly rare, but if you happen to get one, then a rec diver is far more likely to incur a Type II or 'neural' hit. Consequently, I do a five minute safety stop if gas and the situation allows. If I am doing a deco dive, then odds are that I have O2 and I'll go ahead and breathe another 2/3 minutes more on O2 after my deco finishes.

No, I've never been bent. I hope that my practice of over stopping will keep it that way.

So you know, I've blown off safety stops a few times because of aggressive sharks, an abundance of jelly fish, a cold buddy and getting sick during the dive. Safety should never be compromised during a precautionary stop.

 

[dmaziuk]

Since new divers aren't doing any gas planning other than getting back on the boat with 500 psi, hanging out for longer times at 15 ft. increases the risk of running OOA.

Well, out of air at 15' should not be much of a risk if they passed their swim test and did their freediving bit in the OW pool. IME it's more of a convenience if you can swim back underwater instead of having to splash around in the chop w/ the cylinder trying to flip you sideways.

 

[GrandpaScuba]

The longer the better. The ultimate would be to stay at 15 ft long enough to off-gas enough that your tissues are equalized at 1/2 ATM over surface pressure. Then to ascend leisurely from there. I'm sure that's much longer than 5 minutes.

Basically, the 15ft safety stop is a "pop bottle" stop. It's like when you are opening a 2 liter pop bottle. First you crack open the lid, then wait a few seconds for the excess pressure to bleed off a little, before opening it the rest of the way. That is all a safety stop is, a brief pause to let the excess pressure release before making your final ascent to the surface. So, I'd suggest the longer and deeper your dive, the longer your safety stop should be.