Sidemount on a Liveaboard... Musings on my trip on the Rocio del Mar

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[The Chairman]

Here are some pics...

 

[danvolker]

I have been sidemounting in caves for at least five years now, mostly with big, heavy steel tanks. But since my move here to Key Largo, I have not used my sidemount rig that much since I am going off of a boat. I just didn't trust the sling style I was using to support the valve end of the tank to hold if I splashed off the back. You can read a bit about my modifications to resolve this in the thread Choker Clip Solutions. Well, I tried them here at home first, but walking in off the shore at Canon Beach. I really liked them, but I never got the chance to go off of a boat... until Elena's birthday trip on the Rocio del Mar in the Sea of Cortez.

Packing... This was easy. I put all the stuff I thought I would need, including extra zip ties, and while I had bought BIGGER hose clamps, just in case, I still managed to leave them at home by mistake. Still, my Zeagle Frankenrig, two Hog regs (their newest, with the left hand feed second stage), two tank harnesses, fins, boots, lights, camera and wetsuit all fit into my little bag and weighted well under 50 pounds. Coolness. Oh yeah, I even put in two yoke adapters just in case they didn't have DIN.

Setting up... If you have ever done a liveaboard, you know that one of the first things you do is to stake out a bit of turf. I had relayed a message to our host, Dora, that I would be sidemounting and she had absolutely no idea what this would entail. She was used to having divers show up and putting two of her Al80s into a manifold and bands. I can tell she's not wild about the idea of having people messing with her tanks, and I assured her that all I needed was for the inserts to be taken out. The look of confusion on her face was funny, but this was my second time on her boat and she trusted me. They gave me stations 1 and 2. Cool, I get to spread out a bit. I hung up my wet suit and then dug out the two harnesses (must remember to pack them last next time). That's when I realized that I forgot the bigger hose clamps. Crikey, these tank necks are BIG. I might have need the next bigger size! At least I put in the zip ties and with that, I put the harnesses on both tanks. Unfortunately, the zips would not hold on to the tanks' sloping necks, so I cinched them onto the base of the valve. It didn't affect how I assembled my regs on them, but I wasn't sure how the choker clips would work in practice. With everything set up and the crew trying to make heads and tails out of what I was doing, I retired to my cabin to get it squared away. Later that evening we given the big briefing and told how we would be diving out of the Zodiacs.

The first dive... Our first dive was off of a pinnacle called the Little Angel. I remembered it well from my last trip and listened intently to the briefing. Diving sidemount off of a zodiac would be a first for me, and I was mentally figuring out how to best do it. Mind you, I had slipped on my BC during the brief (no tanks) and was quite comfortable as Mayo (My-yo) told us what we would be seeing. The water was warm, so I wasn't going to use a wetsuit and I was excited! Team A had already splashed, and Mayo told us to get into the zodiac. I grabbed my fins and put them on the bench. I bent down to my left side tank and clipped into the choker. I reached back and clipped into the butt plate as well. Nice! Before I go on, I should mention that if you position the weight just right on the butterfly clips, they will lose the choker. This happened to me twice during the week including right here, but it's quite easy to avoid when you look for it. The process worked just as easily for the right side and I grabbed my fins and sauntered to the zodiac where I found it easy and balanced to step over the side. Once seated, I clipped my inflator, pulled my left side hose out a bit and but my double reg bungee around my neck. I then pulled out a bit of hose from the right side and put that second stage into the other side of my double reg bungee. I took a breath from each and watched the SPGs. Both the tanks were supported by the boat and I felt no stress as I waited for the others to get in. And waited. And waited. Geez, one of the biggest complaints about sidemounting is that it's supposed to take a lot longer. Not only was I the first one in the zodiac, but I had to wait a while before the others started to climb in. At the site, we back rolled into the water and I did it like a somersault, coming out of it pretty flat and in control. I took a breath on each reg and inspected everything for leaks. I noticed a very fine spray of bubbles from the right side tank neck. Nothing to worry about, but I'll tell the crew when I surface. I had put five pounds of weight on each tank and this was AWESOME. As I was waiting for the boat, I reached behind me and unclipped each of the bottom straps. This makes me able to easily float on my back on the surface. I also took the right side out of the bungee necklace and stowed the hose away. When the zodiac came, I unclipped the right side first and handed it to the captain. Before he had that tank stowed, I had the other side's hose stowed and unclipped it as well. I climbed the ladder and took my seat... still in my BC. I watched as the others came up to the zodiac, first handing their weights up and then their BC. It seemed that everything on their BC wanted to snag whatever it could on the hand hold rope that was on the side of that zodiac. Still, the first dive went extremely well. Would the others?

Overall... I'm not sure what I was worried about when it comes to diving off of a boat with sidemount while using a choker system. I was glad I brought a hat, as I was the first one on the zodiac almost every time and usually had a good long wait while the others got their act together. That Sea of Cortez sun is HOT!!! I took the time to recheck my gear and that was really nice. At the end of the week I asked my captain and Dora for their impressions about clients using sidemount and they were more than enthusiastic. By the end of the week, they were using the strap on the tank harness to lift the tanks into the zodiac and then from the zodiac to my station. I asked which was easier: backmounted or sidemounted doubles. There was no doubt with Jorge, that he preferred sidemount on the zodiac. He then said that two side mount tanks are even easier than even a single backmounted tank. I could see right away that he was right. Mind you, it would have been easy enough to change over to a single back mounted tank at any point during the week. Why would I want to do that? I got to go in a few holes where the others could not (mostly just for the fun of it). I even came up with tons of air after every dive and I always got my full hour in. I had redundancy, so I didn't mind leaving the group to check out something deep or them leaving me if they ran low on gas. It was simply fun. Mind you, I have seen a lot of people trying to force a diving system to work and frankly, I was suspicious about that mindset when it comes to sidemount. This wasn't a forced but rather a perfect fit. You can bet I'll be doing this more in the Keys. I think I want two sets of Al60s.

The best thing about this is the way you spent a lot of time figuring out how you could transition into the water quickly...Rather than becoming a floating duck, like so many divers, whether SM or BM.

My gripes have little to do with the getting out of the water, as the dive is over anyway....and it makes sense that on a Zodiac, the SM divers might even have an advantage.
If you can do the dive just like we do( with back mount), then I would have no reason to denigrate SM.

In mixing with other divers, I think you need your SM buddy, and we need our Back mounted buddy...and this could create a 4 or more person underwater diving group....Too many, if not most back mounting divers will not know how to help an SM divers with "many" of the challenges a SM diver could face underwater..challenges that would be non-issues for a 2nd SM diver. As an example, one of the PADI instructors that is a regular at BHB was trying Sidemount...she had been using it for a couple weeks....she was having trouble knowing which tank she was breathing out of, and on one BHB dive actually sucked one tank down to zero, because she had switched to the wrong tank....In her case, she had a piss poor instructor...and I don't know that she is a "natural" diver... I think she is the kind of diver that does need a skilled instructor. And it appears SM is much less intuitive than BM...with the gear configurations. As bad as the average diver is in being sloppy with their BM configurations, this puts a huge underscore on the need for a HIGHER LEVEL OF INSTRUCTOR for SM, than is the "norm" in the training agency universe. Also, I think there is justification for Side Mount divers needing the DIR concept of Rule Number One, in a big way..your choice of buddy could be far more limiting to you, as there will be so many SM divers that had piss poor instruction, or none at all.
Net Doc, I have no doubt you are good on this, and that you have at least a couple of highly skilled buddies on SM. I would love to get you and a buddy on some of our Palm Beach dives like the Mispah and Juno Reef, and maybe Pauls, to showcase proper SM along side proper BM....It would be a good article in sfdj.com and on scubaboard. Wouldn't hurt to have your Do's and Don't in it, as well

** Mispah is full of huge Jewfish now....and is a great video op for penetrations dives...
Juno Reef is your big , power ledge, huge structure and big current. Lots to move around...
Pauls is the delicate and beautiful coral reef in shallow water.

 

[beanojones]

Someone who runs out of air (unintentionally) does not need better (continuing education) instruction, and the fact they run out of air does not reflect on their (continuing education) instruction. There is something more going on that is largely inaccessible to remediation in any continuing education course, whether it be a sidemount course, or any other course past Open Water, when someone fails to check their gauge, or gauges. That's like not checking your watch, computer or depth gauge.

Students like that don't need a higher level of instruction; they need to retake open water from a decent instructor and pay attention. Divers having that much trouble with the basics usually are still having problems with their buoyancy and/or have never actually gotten their basic body positioning mechanics down, and are still doing things like hand swipes, so their brain cycles are being consumed by that.

Being an instructor does not mean they have these things down.

If the diver is not having buoyancy/hand swipe/body control issues and is still unable to keep monitoring gauges...

 

[danvolker]

Someone who runs out of air (unintentionally) does not need better (continuing education) instruction, and the fact they run out of air does not reflect on their (continuing education) instruction. There is something more going on that is largely inaccessible to remediation in any continuing education course, whether it be a sidemount course, or any other course past Open Water, when someone fails to check their gauge, or gauges. That's like not checking your watch, computer or depth gauge.

Students like that don't need a higher level of instruction; they need to retake open water from a decent instructor and pay attention. Divers having that much trouble with the basics usually are still having problems with their buoyancy and/or have never actually gotten their basic body positioning mechanics down, and are still doing things like hand swipes, so their brain cycles are being consumed by that.

Being an instructor does not mean they have these things down.

If the diver is not having buoyancy/hand swipe/body control issues and is still unable to keep monitoring gauges...

She was checking her air, but her configuration was so convoluted ( at least to me), that apparently she thought the hose she was breathing from was to the tank with more gas in it.
Of course, at BHB, where she was diving for Nudibranchs, in 10 feet of water, many divers don't spend lots of time looking at their pressure gauge. What I could see, is that with all the wrapping and stuffing going on in her kit, a buddy would be hard pressed to have been able to see which tank she was breathing off, unless they got her to stop and went hand to hand down the hose from her 2nd stage to the bottle. I am blaming this on the instructor, and I am blaming the frequent bad configs I see at BHB with new SM divers on bad instructors, where the tanks are at 45 degree angles, instead of horizontal as in the pics of Net Doc...as they should be.
BHB is a place no one with skills and correctly configured gear should be dragging gear or tanks in the silt and sand...yet with poor instruction, this has become commonplace.

 

[The Chairman]

Good thoughts,

I rarely get to buddy with a side mount diver. There's very little difference in how we handle emergencies, except my tanks are WAY easier to get rid of. If you want air, either second stage pulls easily out of my necklace so take your pick. Heck, I can even unclip the tank you're on and hand it over to you like a stage. We don't even need to be connected!

As for confusion about which reg to breathe off of, this is a problem of BM divers trying to continue their BM ways. Both of my seconds are on 5 ft hoses and like I said: I don't care which one you grab. Both of my seconds live in my bungee necklace and here's where it gets hard and non-intuitive. You see, I put the left tank's second stage on the left, and hide the right tank's second stage right beside it, but on the right and right where you can see it. Since I use a left feed second for the left side, neither of the hoses go around my neck. However, in order to keep the confusion at an all time high, I keep the left tank's hose on the left side and the right tank's hose on the right side. Yeah, I know, it's all backwards as hell but it seems to work for me. [/just having a bit of fun]

Srsly, here's a couple of pics that shows\ both regs in the necklace and how no hoses go around my neck. People clipping off the RH reg (even on the necklace) just cause issues for themselves. The key is to simplify and to stream line. Normally, I dive with swivels on each hose which makes them even more manageable. These were brand new regs (first dives) so I hadn't put the swivels on them yet. Consequently, they seemed to pull a bit, but nothing major. I put the swivels on as soon as I got home!

 

[ScubaSteve]

Question here from a non-SM diver. The bungee looks like it would be very annoying in this picture. Is it always that tight? I am not sure if I could get used to that.

 

[The Chairman]

FWIW, my regs are separated by a piece of rigid plastic tubing used for supplying water to ice makers. It's the bigger of the two that you can find at Lowes or Home Depot.

 

[The Chairman]

Question here from a non-SM diver. The bungee looks like it would be very annoying in this picture. Is it always that tight? I am not sure if I could get used to that.

It's not really "tight". If you notice, it's only the one side that has any tension at all. I didn't notice it at all until I looked at the pictures. That being said, the swivels make all the difference as they don't pull the reg you aren't breathing on near as much. The hoses follow my harness fairly closely when I have the swivels.

 

[beanojones]

She was checking her air, but her configuration was so convoluted ( at least to me), that apparently she thought the hose she was breathing from was to the tank with more gas in it.
Of course, at BHB, where she was diving for Nudibranchs, in 10 feet of water, many divers don't spend lots of time looking at their pressure gauge. What I could see, is that with all the wrapping and stuffing going on in her kit, a buddy would be hard pressed to have been able to see which tank she was breathing off, unless they got her to stop and went hand to hand down the hose from her 2nd stage to the bottle. I am blaming this on the instructor, and I am blaming the frequent bad configs I see at BHB with new SM divers on bad instructors, where the tanks are at 45 degree angles, instead of horizontal as in the pics of Net Doc...as they should be.
BHB is a place no one with skills and correctly configured gear should be dragging gear or tanks in the silt and sand...yet with poor instruction, this has become commonplace.

Someone diving doubles in 10 feet of water is maybe not doing it right, whether it is BM or SM. Not being able to handle an OOA situation in 10 feet of water is not doing it right, whether BM or SM. Unless they are intentionally working out of the bugs and learning from doing stuff. Which is fine too, but they maybe should be doing that solo.

Not being able to handle monitoring gauges though, beyond all that, shows a real problem. It has nothing to do with gear configuration when someone runs out of air unintentionally in 10 feet of water, because, unlike in 100 feet of water, that means there is a brain-lock going on for near 20 minutes. If she had the 'wrong' reg in a check of the gauges would have alerted her to that. But she did not check, and in order for that to matter in 10 feet of water, she had to be brain locking for a good long time.

Perhaps the level of brain cycle theft is higher up the ladder than hand swipes, but IME people with situational awareness, add numerous checks when they are in new gear and new gear configs. And IME people without situational awareness are fighting buoyancy and trim issues. Until buoyancy and trim issues are sorted (and OW class is the place where they get sorted), no additional training is going to help, sidemount or otherwise, because there foundation is so shaky, new behavior patterns are just not going to stick. I can show a nervous person how to something and they can parrot it endlessly, but they never internalize it

The fact that you say "got her to stop" is the sort of hallmark for describing someone who is still working out basic buoyancy issues. What would someone who has buoyancy down need to "stop" doing if they were doing a nudibranch search in 10 feet of water? Anyone who has their buoyancy down, is already stopped, so they can find the nudibranchs. And then in that case, even if they ran out of air, the noticeable change in breathing would give them lots of time to switch to the other reg. At 10 feet, it's a minute or two before "empty" means "cannot breathe".

Something is stealing brain cycles from this diver and it is not the sidemount config. That's just regs, hoses, and gauges. This is not a SM instructor issue; this is an open water diver training issue.

Unfotunately, I imagine this diver sucks in single tank BM too.