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A line is perhaps a good idea in some instances. When wreck diving in the North East I feel it is a good idea for newer divers to deploy a line due to it being very easy for inexperienced divers to get lost on a wreck. My sometimes unpopular belief that no penetration lines should be run into a wreck stems from my feeling that you should not count on that line being there to guide you out. Someone might cut it for any number of reasons, it might be cut on the wreck or you may lose it in poor visibility or due to malfunctioning light(s). I think that progressive penetration is the only way to safely explore a wreck. It does take time and dedication. You need to learn all you can about the wreck, study deck plans. other's drawings and you mostly need to develop skills that will help you identify wreck layouts and landmarks. This way no matter what happens to your line, you can find your way out of the wreck and back to the anchor line. Mark Welzel ---------- From: Anthony DeBoer To: techdiver Subject: Re: My goodness! Date: Thursday, January 09, 1997 9:14PM Richard Pyle <deepreef@bi*.bi*.ha*.or*> wrote: >... A cave is linear - it has one dimention. The >ocean is much more volumetric - it has three dimentions. What does this >mean? It means stage bottles are one HELL of a lot harder to find in the >ocean than they are in a cave. That's why we clip them off on lines. >Come to think of it, don't you guys clip your stages on lines also? It >seems to me that the only difference is that your lines are horizontal >and always within your reach, while our lines are vertical and must be >found with other forms of navigational skill. I would consider it extremely reasonable to always have a continuous guideline back to anything that you _must_ find, be it the end of the cave that the light shines into, or any gas supplies you're not physically wearing. On a wreck dive, especially in low visibility and when the wreck is partially broken up, it's much much too easy to take a wrong turn and not find the mooring line, as happened to myself and another member of this list a few months ago. This isn't a huge problem if you're set up to send up a bag and do drifting deco and you're carrying your deco gas. Even if you did have a guideline back to the main line, the weather can change and the mooring can break loose. The Great Lakes can kick up really quickly, too. For openwater dives, I feel a lot better about carrying everything I need to finish the dive safely. If I was on a multi-dive expedition far from sources of supply, I might consider hanging a larger bottle in-water, or more likely long hoses from a tank in the boat, but still carry a contingency bottle. If the boat is where I'm looking for it and I deco on its gas and save my bottle for next dive, all the better. If there is a problem and I do have to use it, then I can safely deco but I have to refill it (possibly meaning hopping into the truck for a trip back to civilization if O2 pressure is getting down), but as long as I'm unbent it's not a huge problem. Out in the Pacific, with visibility from here to next week and probably a weather system with more inertia to change, your situation may of course be quite different. -- Anthony DeBoer http://www.onramp.ca/~adb/ adb@he*.re*.or* (here) adb@ge*.co* (work) #include "std.disclaimer" -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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