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I use a lifting bag attached not to a reel but to 40m (130 feet)
of one-inch webbing.
The webbing is folded neatly into a weighted pouch, (it has an
ankle weight sewn into it), which I carry on my harness. The pouch is
about 10 inches high and about 6 inches in diameter.
The webbing has plastic D-rings sewn in at 5m intervals. From 24m
upwards they are at 3m intervals.
To deploy this, I: 1) detach pouch from my harness.
2) open the pouch and inflate lift-bag, allowing
the webbing to unfold loosely through my hands until the bag is at the
surface.
3) clip on to the webbing and hang.
4) close pouch, with any undeployed webbing
inside, and clip pouch to the line also. It hangs weighted on the line.
5) as I ascend to my deco stops the line hangs
below me. I clip on at my stop and then leisurely coil in the webbing,
which is placed in the pouch (when it appears) and then closed (velcro).
6) By the time I surface ALL of the webbing is
back in the pouch.
7) Signal O.K. to the boat then deflate lift
bag, wrap it up in itself, then it too, goes in the pouch which is
clipped back to the harness.
It is a flexible system:
If the need arises, a support diver on the surface, can
attach a buoy to the lifting bag to give extra buoyancy. Stage cylinders
can then be hung to be used later by the diver below.
On occasion, when diving a wreck in less than 40m, I
have attached the webbing to "difficult" (yet attractive) pieces of
wreckage which have then been pulled up from the surface.
This system has been worked by the Tech Divers I dive with, for
over three years. It is extremely simple to use, believe it or not :-)
and has never tangled, even slightly, in over 150 deployments.
I think that it now produced commercially in the U.K. by
"Bowstone".
--
Ian Balcombe
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