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>  Richie, the only reason I know this is from lobster diving - one too many
and 
> you're out of air. You must be cool, drop the weight belt and relax the big 
> muscles, which means use your hands to swim until the bc takes hold, and then 
> ride it up, rebreathing it like you said. Without gear, I can do a lot
further 
> than that. 

I can't tell you how many times I've made it to the surface when I run 
out of air.  That's a piece of cake because you know it's coming about a 
half dozen breaths in advance (several dozen breaths in advance if you 
know how to listen to the ring of your tank). What I was talking about 
was a reg failure forcing an unexpected abort to the surface. How often 
do you suppose these come immediately after a full inhalation, during a 
low exertion point of the dive?  These do not come with any warning, so 
you're left holding your Johnson with whatever air happens to be in your 
lungs (and your BC).  Now, since only a total stroke runs out of air on a 
deep dive (except commercial harvesters, like lobster and aquarium fish 
collectors), then the only reason to do a free ascent is in response to a 
reg failure.  Unless you're way over-weighted (thus allowing you to dump 
a ton of lead, and also meaning you have a bunch of gas in your BC), I 
doubt you'd make it from 170 without warning.


> 100-120 you can do with out dropping the belt or doing anything 
> funky- the gas in your lungs expands, and you can let it out, and that
relieves 
> the urge to breath.

Yeah, but as you know everyone overcompensates on the exhalation on 
ascent (huge fear of AGE), so by the time they're at 60, their lungs are 
empty.  That's actually the main reason I rebreathe off the BC - not for 
the extra O2, but to keep the airway open without losing any gas on the 
ascent.  Also results in increasing buoyancy.

Rich

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