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So to review: Keep all your gas with you until its too small for backmount anyway. 
Staging practices
- Thread starter zaberman1
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as Trace mentioned - beating up the Rouses now is a bit lame. Helium use for untethered diving was new back then. Very few of us were doing it. There were 3 maybe 4 guys in the country doing training for it. Billy, Tom, Wings, Sheck, and I think Ed Betts. Diving air was commonplace. It's what was done. We have better methods now.
I've commented earlier how I manage my decompression cylinders on various dives. But what I believe would be a "best" method is to manage them as you do for a cave dive by not taking the bottle deeper than the MOD. The only change to this would be to leave them at your entry/exit point on the penetration. You don't want to leave them at the anchor, that's too far from your penetration you want them available the moment you exit so should you need to you can shoot an ascent line.
Unless you plan to enter the wreck one place and exit another there is no reason to carry the cylinders with you.
Cheers
JDS
I've commented earlier how I manage my decompression cylinders on various dives. But what I believe would be a "best" method is to manage them as you do for a cave dive by not taking the bottle deeper than the MOD. The only change to this would be to leave them at your entry/exit point on the penetration. You don't want to leave them at the anchor, that's too far from your penetration you want them available the moment you exit so should you need to you can shoot an ascent line.
Unless you plan to enter the wreck one place and exit another there is no reason to carry the cylinders with you.
Cheers
JDS
I was not dissing the Rouse's if the dive was in the last few years I would be. I realize that He was very new at that point and air was the norm. I have great respect for the guys doing those dives back then and have learned a lot from there mistakes.
Reading the Last Dive is what got me into diving.
Ah, but there is the rub. Entering one place and exiting another is much more possible to happen penetrating a wreck than in a cave. Of course that probably means that something went wrong and the dive plan wasn't followed, but still...
I still like the "keep your gas with you" option when wreck diving, but I'm not doing the degree of penetration on them that some of you are either.
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If the plan is going majorly sideways already, not having your deco gas (on you) is not gonna help matters.
I agree, I do things in a cave in temrs of stashing gas that I would never even consider in a wreck.
Absolutely. If a diver is going to consider leaving deco gas on a wreck as a requirment of making a penetration in tight spaces, they need to ensure they have a really generous back gas reserve over and above the normal requirement in order to handle any reasonable delay as well as the ascent and the longer deco required in the event they could not get back to the deco gas.
And it is still a long way from perfect. The main problem with that strategy is that hope springs eternal and divers can become indecisive about what to do if/when that happens. For example, they get off plan, exit away from the gas then can't locate the gas (low viz, etc), or alternatively cannot reach or locate the upline in areas with high current and low viz situations in areas where the surface conditons argue against the guarenteed surviveability of getting blown off the wreck during a long deco. In both situations, there have been divers who have used their reserve to search for the gas or upline AND in the process then extended their bottom time and greatly extended the deco requirement - to the point where it exceeds their ability to make a safe ascent with adequate deco on back gas only.
In short, if you are not carrying all your gas all the time on a wreck, be prepared to do the deco on backgas and be prepared and configured to start the ascent when you need to ascend. And most importantly, be prepared to commit to that rather than gamble by using the reserve to try to put the pieces of the original plan back togther.
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Agree. Giving up looking for your now missing deco gas and leaving the bottom in a timely manner before you've cut into your ability to do the deco another way (get up to a safety diver, O2 hung from the boat, backgas, etc) is not an easy thing for most people to do. We talk & think about it here, but its still damn easy to "overlook & overstay" on the bottom in this situation.
Definitely. This runs along the same lines of the recent discussion on how long to search for a missing buddy before it's time to head out. Different scenario, but many of the same considerations apply when calculating gas supply to surface safely.
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