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Before we quit using deep air in our dives, we had some weird things happen. For instance. JJ and I did a dive where we used nitrox travel gas to a dropoff at 170, and then went to mix. When we got back to the bottles, they were off the line, on the floor in a crack with the regs still turned on and the hoses just lying free - a death sentence if we had come back to this point with a problem and either could not find the bottles, cound not get them out of the crack, or if they had lost their gas. Both of us do this kind of dive as a matter of routine, and we turn off our stages, park the regs, and clip them to the line facing out of the cave - always, but not this time. Why? . One of our top divers went the wrong way in the same cave. He has 50 dives in this cave, and went ten minutes the wrong way before he hit a restriction, and he tried to go through it the wrong way until he got up to 100 feet and figured it out. Why? During the same dive, in which Brent, Rat and I were diving together, Rat had to take one guy out who had screwed up, Miner had to take another, and Brent and I looked into the cave for the lost guy, went all the way back to the entrance, Brent held while I broke stops and went to twenty feet looking for him, did not find him, and scootered ten minutes wide open back into the cave, and then checked another spot, only to find him back at the sink hole. He was not even diving with us, but we had three dive teams all get screwed up. Of these same players, all but one had never and has never had a problem in any deep cave on gas - only at this 140-170 spot on air or nitrox. The one who has problems everywhere is one who refused to follow the gas rules, so we booted him out altogether. On another dive wtih JJ and Todd where we had 140 before a deep drop, on the way out I switched stages, not clipping the upper clip, only the lower one. I put the reg in my mouth and turned it on and went. For thousands of feet I was furious at myself for being so slow and feeling so awkward, and could not figure out why. I thought of eveything that could possibly be wrong with the scooter or my trim. Finally, I hit a shallow spot and realized I was dragging my stage bottle sideways through the water. Deep air is for strokes - anyone can be a stroke with deep air. It is just luck that I lasted so long without geting killed before I found this out - others have not been so lucky, and then we still have idiots out there recommending this practice. Take a good look at these people, like the Slob, and look at what they have (not) done, and look at their track record. Either there are a lot of bad divers out there who hang around with these guys, a lot of guys with bad hearts, a lot of guys with bad luck, or these jerks are full of shit - what do you think? One more thing - when I took my PADI "deep diver" course to 130 feet, I remember the mouthpiece came off of my regulator. It is a good thing I can hold my breath for a ridiculous amount of time, since it took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out what the problem was. It was also a good thing that I was deep on air, because I didn't give a shit, either, and knew I could swim up, or at least thought I could at the time - maybe not, problably not, and certainly not by the time that became my only out. Maybe I am just not the diver that the strokes are, but then , you can't tell by the results, now can you? Or can you? -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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