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At 08:03 AM 10/08/1998 -0400, Art Greenberg wrote: >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.) > > 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. Art, when I wrote "enforce minimum equipment levels" I meant only minimum: In certain conditions a reel and lift bag are essential for return to the surface through a deco obligation. So no diver should dive without. Similarly, any penetration dives or deco dives or dives with doubles should make the long hose mandatory. As far as diving configurations wich may be 'overkill' for the dive, that is not at issue. The only way to be familiar and comfortable with the gear is to dive it and dive it and dive it. So you end up doing shallow dives in doubles. 40 metre dives with multiple slings. You have to feel it out. Most (probably all) skippers understand this. The sniggers, as you have pointed out come from elsewhere. > >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. My buddy and I have done plenty of shore dives in doubles where we just head straight out to sea (east) for an hour then turn around and swim west. It's a hoot! I think I've always dived like the kids. rgrds billyw -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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