Mailing List Archive

Mailing List: techdiver

Message Display

At 08:56 PM 8/9/98 +1000, bdi wrote:
>One of the more pro-active things a skipper can do is to 
>advise newly arriving divers of the suitability or otherwise 
>of certain equipment levels and configurations and to enforce 
>minimum equipment levels for the dive. (redundant gas, long 
>hose, lift bag and reel, etc.)

Sigh. I sure hope this doesn't happen on the boats we (my
wife and I) dive from (NJ). Look, we're not capable of
serious "technical" dives yet. We are doing our best to dive
our brains out within our limits so as to be able to extend
those limits. Right now, a long dive at about 130 or less with
some mandatory deco, sometimes with O2, is about where the
limit lies (EAN and air, no mix certification). We've had some
cave training, too, but its far easier to dive near home in NJ
than it is to get to Florida right now.

The problem is, the boats that we have found to run the best
operations for our purposes and that go to the wrecks we dive
are primarily oriented to recreational divers. The captains
seem to tolerate my wife and me bringing on doubles and
the long hose and doing these dives, and we in turn tolerate
snide remarks from the mates and other "big time" divers who
think WE are the idoiots. If the captains started insisting
on what they considered the "proper" equipment for diving
on these trips, we would be forced to get on different boats
(or technical trips on the same boats) where the dive objective
is more likely to be beyond our capabilities, or we'd be the
least experienced divers on board and therefore dive sites
would have to be selected to suit our needs, which wouldn't
endear us to the more capable divers on the boat with us.

I'm not saying these captains are stupid. They seem to
recognize what we are trying to do, and they make allowances
for us. But we are in that "awkward" stage, almost like being
adolescents all over again. It's different, gearing up like
the big boys should but diving more like the kids.

Safe diving,


Art Greenberg
artg@ec*.ne*

--
Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.

Navigate by Author: [Previous] [Next] [Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject: [Previous] [Next] [Subject Search Index]

[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]

[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]