Personally I like the GUE setup for wreckdiving... not so much for cave diving.
- I'm using 2x 8,5L tanks, and typically at the beginning of a week of wreckdiving they'll be filled to 250+bar. That's on the inital dives almost 2 80cft tanks on your back, readily available.
- The long hose setup is obviously a compromise for mixed team diving. Yes in a full rebreather team you could have scenarios where you would need to share bottom bail out (the one we have on our back), but that would mean 2 failures (both rebreather and the bailout failing).
- I'm diving with the diluent/bailout on the back AND 2x 3L tanks on the back, 1 is oxygen, the other is argon (air) that connects to my wing and drysuit (yes I keep the regular hoses and I have hoses on all my bailout tanks so I can easily switch if this 1 failure punt fails). The positive about this is that I use 5 to 10 bars of the backgas/diluent per deep dive. So after 6 days of diving I'm still at more or less 200 bars. Of course it's heavy, but compared to a D18L it's still on the light side.
- Bailouts are not shared. Up to 75m (depends a bit on the bottom time) we typically would use a 50% and an O2, and sometimes an intermediate deco gas (36m or 57m). So that's typically 2 decostages (sometimes 3) for dives up to 75m en 50' bottom time.
- Why is it convenient for wreckdiving. I'm carrying 2 less stages than my buddy who's diving the JJ in traditional style. Specifically when there is current it's easier if you can jump in more or less with all the stuff you need vs having to scooter/swim back to pick up additional stages. The same deal with handling yourself on a rolling boat, 2 extra stages makes the equipment stress a bit heavier. (yes there are work arounds, etc... ). Next I don't typically drop stages on wreck dives (unless really tight penetration). So having 2 less stages to work with is convenient. In caves these advantages don't play, equipment stress is less of an issue, you also drop your stages.
So while my buddy is carrying 4 stages (in the traditional jj setup, and yes he's a fully blown GUE diver)
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I'll be carrying as stages, just 2.
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On deep deep dives team bailout becomes somewhat of a thing. Meaning the main bailout is always per person, but the intermediate deco gasses might be shared within a team. So the full team would carry a 100%, a 50% and deep bailout, but for example the intermediate deco gasses could be shared (1 carrying a 57m gas and the other a 36m gas, which then can be handed over to the team mate in trouble). But the basics remain the same every individual member should be able to do his full ascend with the gasses he's carrying. Of course in a real world scenario if someone gets a CO2 hit, for sure we'll be handing over tanks to the victim, but it's not plan A, more plan B.
