semi-experienced diver about to buy some gear

[synrb]

Hey everyone! I've lurked on this forum for a little while. I'm going down to the Bahama's for a week long live-aboard trip in November. I'm about to buy a bunch of gear with my brother and I was hoping some of the experts could give me their opinions!

I've been diving for ~4 years now and have been on over 30 dives. The last 2 pieces of gear I need are a reg and a BCD. I'm thinking about getting a Mares Dragon BCD and a Mares Abyss 42 reg. I'll probably get the same stuff for my brother.

I was considering the Icon BCD, however the Dragon is only slightly heavier (for traveling) and seems to have very good reviews.

Any suggestions for a backup 2nd stage? Have I made a grave error and you can correct my thinking?

Thanks for the help and suggestions!

 

[TSandM]

Well, synrb, is all your diving tropical vacation, or do you dive locally? If it's all tropical, you need very little lift and packing weight is really important. If you dive at home as well, the parameters are a little different.

 

[synrb]

Most of the diving I have done is in Florida and Mexico. This will be my first trip to the Bahamas. I have also dived in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego. This was by far the coldest water I have dived in (~60 deg at 80ft).

I don't really anticipate doing much diving in cold water.

The Icon is advertised as being good for travel (on Mares website) Should I put more emphasis on the weight and "fold-ability" of the BCD?

 

[TSandM]

Wow -- I just had a look at the BC, and my first take is that you will NEVER need that much lift when doing warm water diving. As Tobin George (cool_hardware52) observes frequently, a BC needs to do two things: Float your rig at the surface, and compensate for the loss of lift in your exposure protection. In tropical diving, you use fairly light exposure protection, so there is minimal loss of lift at depth. In addition, you don't have to wear very much weight, so the whole rig is light, too. The bottom line is that you don't need a lot of lift, and you certainly don't need a big old bladder that requires bungies to collapse it! I went briefly through the Mares BC area, and they seem very focused on high lift, which means big bladder that can air trap, and reduces streamlining (and adds weight).

I went looking for what I would consider a good travel BC, and came up with the Zeagle Scout. Dry weight of 6.7 lbs, 24 lbs of lift, weight integrated . . . That's the sort of thing I'd be looking for, if I were looking for a tropical BC.

You could also consider a backplate system with an Aluminum or Kydex plate and a small wing. Those are nice because they come apart and pack very neatly, and they are very light. The only disadvantage is the need for a weight belt or weight pouches added to the waistband, but again, in the tropics, you will need very little weight anyway. A Kydex plate, 20 lb wing and Hog harness from DSS (very high quality gear) will run you $460.

 

[kathydee]

I love my little 20lb wing DSS rig for travel. A few advantages: the wing/harness are easily to separate thus it dries very quickly, it’s small and light to pack, has less buoyancy than a BC so you need less lead to descend, and it's tons of fun to dive!