I buy the best gear and maintain it fanatically. While proper training and good buddies are crucial, I will never understand why so many people buy second rate dive gear. The extra money you spend on good gear is in reality, cheap peace of mind.
Trusting Your Equipment......
- Thread starter McLovinIt
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
I think you have heard good stuff so far, but perhaps this specific point might be addressed.
I once saw a dive master have an O-ring extrude on his first stage at about 60 feet. I guess that qualifies as an example of her fear of a catastrophic failure at 60 feet. He took his BCD off amidst this explosion of air, shut off the air, removed the reg, fixed the O-ring, took one breath from my alternate, put it all back together again, and turned on his air. When he checked his air pressure, he still had enough to contemplate finishing the dive (it was right at the start), but he elected instead to go up and get a new tank.
Now, what he did took a lot of poise and skill, but my point is that if he had time for all that and still had enough air to consider completing the dive, I suspect your friend would have had time to surface calmly and safely instead.
Perhaps telling her this might help.
After talking to the tainted one last night, she assures me that it's nothing to do with her training or even equipment. She just says it's very difficult for her to equalize below about 20' for any period of time. I think she can equalize, but stops back up pretty often even at the same depth (I had the same problem at 30' last weekend and it hurt and wouldn't go away no matter how many times I equalized, but I was still getting over a bad cold). But she still jokes about a failed 1st stage!!
- Messages
- 6,921
- Reaction score
- 25
- # of dives
- I just don't log dives
After talking to the tainted one last night, she assures me that it's nothing to do with her training or even equipment. She just says it's very difficult for her to equalize below about 20' for any period of time. I think she can equalize, but stops back up pretty often even at the same depth (I had the same problem at 30' last weekend and it hurt and wouldn't go away no matter how many times I equalized, but I was still getting over a bad cold). But she still jokes about a failed 1st stage!!
She may not be equalizing early or often enough and won't descend more because of the pressure or pain. Equalizing is actually easier as you go deeper because the pressure change per unit of distance is actually smaller.
She might benefit from some pool time as well as checking out this excellent tutorial on equalization.
Doc's Diving Medicine Home Page
On the other hand, she may just not be comfortable in the water and wants to stay within "easy bolting for the surface distance"
Terry
Herk_Man
Contributor
After talking to the tainted one last night, she assures me that it's nothing to do with her training or even equipment. She just says it's very difficult for her to equalize below about 20' for any period of time. I think she can equalize, but stops back up pretty often even at the same depth (I had the same problem at 30' last weekend and it hurt and wouldn't go away no matter how many times I equalized, but I was still getting over a bad cold). But she still jokes about a failed 1st stage!!
I concur with the post above me. If she can get to 20', she can go to 200'. So if she's having trouble at 20', she isn't getting equalized on the way there. It is critical to start doing your equalization maneuvers immediately after you start descent. If she can get herself to 20' and not feel any squeeze, then everything after that is cake. Honestly.
And I can point to my wife as the proof of this. When we went to Bonaire she had nothing but her OW qual behind her. On her last dive of OW the DM took her to 40' and she blew an eardrum on a rapid ascent because the vis was <5' and she lost control of her buoyancy.
She was very worried about going deep in Bonaire. I explained that if she could go to 20' (she had the same mental wall as your wife) then she could go deeper. Now she didn't have a lot of trouble equalizing (although it was more of a struggle for her than most) as your wife seems to have, but on her very first ocean dive she was amazed when she looked at her computer after the dive and realized that she had gone to 67' and had zero ear problems.
If my water-averse West Texas farm girl can get past this, anyone can. Just equalize early and often. It just gets easier the deeper you go!
OldNSalty
Contributor
After talking to the tainted one last night, she assures me that it's nothing to do with her training or even equipment. She just says it's very difficult for her to equalize below about 20' for any period of time. I think she can equalize, but stops back up pretty often even at the same depth (I had the same problem at 30' last weekend and it hurt and wouldn't go away no matter how many times I equalized, but I was still getting over a bad cold). But she still jokes about a failed 1st stage!!
So how did she get passed her OW class? I assume the checkout dives were below 20 feet.
FRIEND...NOT WIFE!! Anyway...I totally agree with equalizing early and often. I told her I can't go much more - if any - past 5 feet without uncomfortable pressure. What happened with the blown eardrum? Difficult to recover from or just a neusance to get through?
As for her check-out dives...I'll have to find out. That is a good question.
Anyway...I totally agree with equalizing early and often. I told her I can't go much more - if any - past 5 feet without uncomfortable pressure. What happened with the blown eardrum? Difficult to recover from or just a neusance to get through?As for her check-out dives...I'll have to find out. That is a good question.
halocline
Contributor
Here we go again. Spend money, dive safer!
The maintaining part is good, but if you are really fanatical about that you should do it yourself. If you learned about regulator repair and design to the point at which you were competent at working on them, you'd probably realize the folly of connecting scuba gear cost with safety.
For example, I am quite certain that my $50 MK5/R109 is every bit as safe as the "best" (most expensive) reg available on the market today. I also suspect that my $200 (new) MK2/R190 is, in fact, theoretically more reliable than high-end regs.
So actually it's in fantasy cheap piece of mind, not reality, but I guess piece of mind is worth something regardless of reality.
Similar threads
