When to start diving a DPV in OW?

[kathydee]

I still have some things I want to sort out before shopping for scooters.

But if I find myself on familiar ground, with an experienced partner & a loaner - I can't see the harm in having some fun in the shallows, while learning a thing or two .

 

[lamont]

I still have some things I want to sort out before shopping for scooters.

But if I find myself on familiar ground, with an experienced partner & a loaner - I can't see the harm in having some fun in the shallows, while learning a thing or two .

Yeah, I'd advise taking a DPV workshop / DPV cert course, but there's no reason not to start diving scooters once you have basic fundamental skills in place. If you can run line in cenotes, you can probably start learning to scooter.

 

[ucfdiver]

Yeah, I'd advise taking a DPV workshop / DPV cert course, but there's no reason not to start diving scooters once you have basic fundamental skills in place. If you can run line in cenotes, you can probably start learning to scooter.

Agreed, it's not rocket surgery.

I would suggest finding a qualified mentor to discuss/practice-

• Handling a runaway scooter
• Gas planning on a scooter (ensure you can either be towed, or swim back home)
• Team positioning (side by side when possible but realize that when single file is necessary that you need some distance to remain out of each others propwash)
• Light communication (crossing beams gives each diver maximum time to react to obstacles)
• Stowing a scooter (depitch the prop, secure whatever method is used to operate the scooter...trigger pin on the gavin or lock down on the SS)
• Proper care and upkeep (leak testing, burn testing, etc)
• Air sharing on a scooter (I prefer towing in a cave, but side by side is faster when it's an option)

Really scooters aren't that difficult. My biggest struggle when learning to ride one was communication. Remember that if you're riding a 200fpm scooter, you can be 100ft away from your buddy in 30 seconds, where as swimming it'd take at least 2 minutes to get that far away.

 

[rjack321]

Yeah, I'd advise taking a DPV workshop / DPV cert course, but there's no reason not to start diving scooters once you have basic fundamental skills in place. If you can run line in cenotes, you can probably start learning to scooter.

+1 on the class.

Buddies/mentors can help you avoid the getting seperated level of issues. But class helps with stuff like sharing gas, runaway scooters, towing, and stuff that.

 

[rjack321]

Really scooters aren't that difficult. My biggest struggle when learning to ride one was communication. Remember that if you're riding a 200fpm scooter, you can be 100ft away from your buddy in 30 seconds, where as swimming it'd take at least 2 minutes to get that far away.

Around here, potentially out of visibility range in 6 seconds.

 

[lamont]

Air sharing on a scooter (I prefer towing in a cave, but side by side is faster when it's an option)

side-by-side seems like such a bad option to me. a scooter covers the 7' hose length in just over 2 seconds...

still thats why you take the course to learn about towing and to be able to form your own opinion on side-by-side OOG...

 

[ucfdiver]

side-by-side seems like such a bad option to me.

I believe both methods should be attempted so the team can make an educated decision on what they'd rather do. I've personally done it from about 3,000ft back in a cave with zero issue (as a drill, not "real"). It sounds a lot harder when you think about it than when you attempt it in the water, at least to me.

Remember that you're still holding onto the buddies right arm and the long hose with the left hand, so it's not really possible for him to take off and get distance on you. I found keeping the scooters away from each other and not colliding, as well as scootering on one light the most difficult part of that exercise. However, it did get me out of the cave much faster than when I experimented towing a diver.

Perhaps fortunately and unfortunately at the same time, I have zero experience with real OOG situations in "real life", so if I were to imply that I know how everything goes down in a real emergency I'd be lying. Unless you're entirely too slow with valve drills, you're never going to have to share gas on exit anyways. On even bigger dives, you're not touching back gas, so 3 stages could fail and you'd still not be sharing gas. I hate to debate this too much because proper skill and dive planning cause it to be a situation that will realistically never happen.

I could see it being an issue with single tank shore dives in heavy current, where surfacing is undesirable. I don't have experience with those, so rather than implying I do, I'll admit to not knowing how to plan one. If I were in that situation, I'd treat it like a cave dive with my gas, but I have a feeling those of you who do it often could teach me a smarter way.

 

[mikemill]

side-by-side seems like such a bad option to me. a scooter covers the 7' hose length in just over 2 seconds...

still thats why you take the course to learn about towing and to be able to form your own opinion on side-by-side OOG...

I've only done it in the class but side by side was fast, easy, and comfortable. Towing was not. I think the touch contact (donater grabing donatee's arm) addresses a lot of the issues. I would like to do a longer run side-by-side one day just to find any issues we didn't run into during the class.

 

[TSandM]

I certainly don't think you have to be T1 to scooter. I don't think you even have to be in doubles. You DO have to have good basic skills, and some experience with dive planning. The biggest danger with a scooter is that it can get you INTO a situation where, if the scooter fails on you, you can't get OUT. KMD recently posted a map of Lobos where he marked the distances you could cover on a Sierra if you are diving thirds on battery time, or halves -- of course, if you dive halves on battery, nobody can tow you home (or they can only tow you part way, and then you swim, and if you don't have enough gas, you swim on the surface). And of course, in Monterey with scooters, you quickly get into depths that give you either very brief bottom times or mandatory deco. That's not true for a lot of scooterable sites around here, so it's somewhat area-specific.

one of the more important considerations is situational awareness and teamwork. Basically everything happens 3 times as fast on a scooter. So if you are using most of your bandwidth to do a task (like keeping track of the team, navigating, whatever) without a scooter, you will probably be screwed with a scooter.

I could not have put this better. And in low viz, the problem is worse.

So -- no need for T1, but good skills, good planning, and high situational awareness. And a class would be very useful.

 

[kathydee]

I still have some things I want to sort out before shopping for scooters.

But if I find myself on familiar ground, with an experienced partner & a loaner - I can't see the harm in having some fun in the shallows, while learning a thing or two .

I should clairfy.. by "experienced partner" -- I mean "mentor" .

But when I feel ready to pick up a scooter, starting with the DPV class sounds like the way to go.

I really appreciate the advice, thanks!