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G. Irvine <gmirvine@sa*.ne*> wrote:
>  If you  ( not you , Kevin, you anyone) can not see your bottle
>markings, how could you swim 15 feet away and come back to them and put
>them on the right side? ...

I'd expect IANTD expects you to run a line from your stages and reel back
to them, in order to do the blind doff-and-don.

When I did the exercise, I laid my bottles on a section of railway track
and followed the rail with one hand while I swam a distance that felt
more like 50 feet and back.  I may have cheated just slightly by
remembering which one I put on each side of the rail, but I was still
able to distinguish them by touch.

> ... This section you quoted is obviously some kind
>of mixup - it is clearly not usefull, and demonstrates exactly what I
>was saying: that the instructional community does no practical diving,
>and makes up things like his to again try to create a solution to a bad
>practice or self-created problem. 

Some years ago, when I was involved in helping teach NAUI courses, the
instructors actually said that some of the exercises (eg. take off the
tank, swim around the pool with it under your arm, and don again) did not
necessarily represent real-life situations, but were used to build
confidence and problem-solving skills.  It's impossible to teach every
situation ever faced by a diver, or to cover new ones that might happen,
but knowing how things work can help in solving a new situation.  I'm not
saying IANTD is using that logic, but suggesting maybe they might be.

>  The correct answer is to mark the bottles to the maximum operating
>depth.

The prudent man doesn't trust his life to just a single safety factor;
being able to see which bottle is which is #1, with MOD clearly marked,
but I still intend to be able to tell them apart by feel as well.

-- 
Anthony DeBoer                                  http://www.onramp.ca/~adb/
adb@he*.re*.or* (here)
adb@ge*.co* (work)                             #include "std.disclaimer"
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