Winding up reel / spool on deco ascents

[divezonescuba]

i was recently introduced to a new method of winding up the reel / spool on deco ascents. Basically, you ascend to your next step and while on the stop pull up the line to you, making a loop. You can put a double ender on the line to make sure the loop does not present an entanglement hazard. You never have more than 10 feet hanging down. Once you get ahold of the reel / spool, you recover the line until the next stop.

This does have the advantage of concentrating on the ascent and using possibly otherwise unoccupied time with recovering the line.

Comments?

 

[RyanT]

Leaving slack line seems like a receipe for entanglement.

 

[divezonescuba]

It is actually not slack as it is taut from the reel on one end and the double ender on the other.

On the other hand, when you reel in on the way up, the line may become slack if you ascend faster than you reel in.

Or, you put the double on before you ascend to the next stop, but keep the reel with you without winding it up. Once you get to the next stop and are stable, you begin winding in. The key is avoiding the entanglement issue.

You could do this without the double ender if you have a heavy stopper ball or a lead egg weight already on the line.

 

[rjack321]

The poll and your posts assumptions are too simplistic to answer...

In heavy current/wind waves you better keep reeling between stops because you wont be able to pull the bag/line back to anything close to vertical and eventually its going to be streaming back behind you due to stratified differential currents or wind. (1)
In bad vis you don't want any free loops of line out there. (1)
If you shoot the bag from the bottom you might want to ascend faster than you can reel so you leave it until the first stop (2)
At the shallowest stops it might not matter and if there's a ton of water moving around you might want to just leave the extra line out and deal with it later (2 & 3)

 

[ChuckP]

Why mess around? Keep it taunt.

 

[RyanT]

Why mess around? Keep it taunt.

Yeah, it's just not that hard to wind as you ascend.

 

[hroark2112]

There are tons of ways to skin a cat.

None that the cat will enjoy.

Most things in diving depend on conditions to some extent. This is one of them.

 

[RainPilot]

I use the winding as a way to confirm my ascent rate. If I get slack, I have probably sped up for some reason. If I find I am putting weight on the line then I am slowing down.

6m/min is 1m per 10 seconds, my reel circumference is around 20cm so one wind turn every 2 seconds. Its what I would use if I had a DC failure and had no way to gauge ascent rate with a buddy (massively unlikely but still)

When in a team, if I am on SMB then someone else is monitoring the ascent rate, the winding speed gives me a secondary indication of what they are doing.

 

[tomfcrist]

I shoot my bag from the bottom...and wind it up the whole way. Really not a big deal...even from 300+ft

 

[RainPilot]

I shoot my bag from the bottom...and wind it up the whole way. Really not a big deal...even from 300+ft

Sucks when you drop a spool from 5m that you have wound up from 50. Ask me how I know.....

Spoiler: 50m of line on the deck of a small boat is WAY less fun than it sounds...