Skills to practice during a dive

[LI-er]

It's rare that when doing a boat dive there is any line to control an ascent. Not had a line to ascend in my last 14 years of diving.

Many, or even most of my boat dives (with the exception of drift dives such as in Cozumel and SE Florida, diving off a zodiac from a liveaboard) are moored, and the instructions are to jump in, grab the line and pull yourself to the bow and descend on the mooring line and reverse the process on the way back. On my recent 3 day Liveaboard trip on SOF in Cairns Australia all dives were directly from the mothership which was tied off to a mooring ball on the reefs.

In the Maldives you spend your safety stop watching Tiger sharks swim around. Also due to swells you do not want to be underweighted. IT's fine to say get your weight to a minimum with an empty tank in calm water.

There are dives when the weighting rules don't apply, and I did say it may be better to be slightly negative.

Also when your mask is off put your face down and put an air bubble in your eye socket. Allow you to see at least when looking down.

I gotta try this.

 

[Soloist]

At one of the dive sites there are walls that poke up through the ocean. The entry areas are like a washing machine and the water is very foamy. You need to get below the foam quickly. Extra weights help with this. Instead of diving using 8kg I will use 10kg. Sometimes you do negative entry into an upcurrent.

The "additional weight" sounds like something the crew may recommend when preparing for a negative hot drop in strong currents to a deep wreck or specific site with unusual conditions or size, however, if you are properly weighted additional lead should not be necessary. It's a challenge for the captain to determine the drop zone when considering current and/or the overall experience level of the divers. Know why they suggest additional weight? Because they don't want to have go pluck you from the surface and re-drop you!

OR maybe there is more to this sea "foam" green than meets the eye...

 

[TMHeimer]

Absolutely it shoud be practiced...regardless of the configuration of BCD or exposure suit one dives. I never said it wasn't challenging...I just said it can absolutely be done with relatively neutral buoyancy and without "popping to the surface" or being contact with the bottom.

Just because you don't/can't do it, does not mean it can't be done.

60 degree water is quite balmy considering the areas I spent the last 12 years diving.

There is no reason to practice donning/doffing one's kit while touching the bottom of whatever body of water one is in. Imagine being entangled in fishing line, a fishing net, kelp, or some other material in the middle of the water column, if one practices everything only while on the bottom, one will be up sh!ts creek when they experience an issue when not on the bottom.

Again, if I agreed with you, then both of us would be wrong.

-Z

Good points. I found the doff & don skill-- in the pool on the bottom-- to be the most challenging one for me. In fact, my poor showing with it held up my DM certification. Whereas some of the other skills like all the mask stuff, etc. didn't seem to be even a "skill" for me. Like, "no mask breathing" is a skill......? The doff & don skill is the one with the most things to remember, so the most things that could go awry.

 

[sea_ledford]

Doff and don can be done neutrally buoyant in any bc/wetsuit/dry suit combination. You just have to keep the weight close to your center of buoyancy. Of course if you are in a dry suit or a 7mm wetsuit with 25 lbs of lead in your bc and you hold your bc at arms length in front of you, you'll go feet up. Don't do that!

You can just be hovering horizontal, get out of the shoulder and waist straps so the rig is just sitting on your back (holding you down effectively), then spin under it so you are now face up. Your gear is still holding you down, it's just now on your front, rather than your back. You have access to whatever you need on your bc at that point. Then just spin back around to put it back on. Bonus points if you get your right arm into a strap as you spin, then you are 1/3 way done!

It does take some practice, but it certainly doable.

 

[Soloist]

I have practiced doff and don exercises in the open water of the Clackamas River, and those practices came in handy when I had an actual emergency. I was using a new-to-me BCD, which was a jacket that was attached to the tank, when during the dive the tank came loose. Here’s a video I was shooting that day of the event.


If you haven’t done this recently, the doff and don exercise in open water is a valuable learning tool.

SeaRat

Probably a good thing you were not diving a double hose that day Searat. Do you have an octo connected to your double hose configuration or is that even a possibility on vintage DH systems? Cheers

 

[TMHeimer]

Doff and don can be done neutrally buoyant in any bc/wetsuit/dry suit combination. You just have to keep the weight close to your center of buoyancy. Of course if you are in a dry suit or a 7mm wetsuit with 25 lbs of lead in your bc and you hold your bc at arms length in front of you, you'll go feet up. Don't do that!

You can just be hovering horizontal, get out of the shoulder and waist straps so the rig is just sitting on your back (holding you down effectively), then spin under it so you are now face up. Your gear is still holding you down, it's just now on your front, rather than your back. You have access to whatever you need on your bc at that point. Then just spin back around to put it back on. Bonus points if you get your right arm into a strap as you spin, then you are 1/3 way done!

It does take some practice, but it certainly doable.

I believe you. The only time I've ever done this was on the bottom, pool or ocean. I wear 42 pounds of lead in my 7 mil wetsuit (yes I need that, all instructors agreed). When I was assisting on OW courses I asked the instructors to have me demonstrate all the skills except that one. Now, with your description of how to do this neutrally (especially with a lot of lead), you mention that it can be done, but it does take some practice. Yes I believe you for sure-- but -- this seems to go against all those in the know who say it's easier to do ALL the skills neutrally than on the bottom. I would say planted on the bottom may not be the best way to do this (nor the most practical for real emergencies), but think it is probably the easiest, no?

 

[Blackcrusader]

The "additional weight" sounds like something the crew may recommend when preparing for a negative hot drop in strong currents to a deep wreck or specific site with unusual conditions or size, however, if you are properly weighted additional lead should not be necessary. It's a challenge for the captain to determine the drop zone when considering current and/or the overall experience level of the divers. Know why they suggest additional weight? Because they don't want to have go pluck you from the surface and re-drop you!

OR maybe there is more to this sea "foam" green than meets the eye...

No they don't want you on the surface and being taken into the reef walls which will injure a diver.

Sure you haven't dived there so do not know the conditions. I don't need the crew to recommend. At my normal weight head down finning down I could still have issues as sometimes you have up currents. So a little extra weight helps with that.

There is a reason the dive operation is called Wild Scuba Indonesia