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Wise Spoken!!

I totally agree with Kent

Manos Manoli

Kent Lind wrote:

> To follow up on what Jim is saying,
>
> You guys who are planning to ditch your big weight belt while wearing a
> drysuit.� Are you REALLY positive you can lose your weight belt at say 250
ft
> in open water and not end up in a ballistic missile ascent?� Are you
positive
> you can dump gas fast enough from your drysuit to bring a buoyant ascent under
> control?� Can you burp your suit through the neck with the gloves and hood
you
> are wearing?� You better be sure you can.� I though Wrolf had a story on
his
> site about some such horror.
>
> Johnny Mack obviously knows nothing about cold water drysuit diving.� Iff
you
> follow his advice and you wear a weight belt heavy enough to be neutral while
> wearing a drysuit, heavy thinsulite or fleece, hood, and dry gloves, you will
> end up with a weight belt in the 20-30 lb range minimum.� Which of course
> means you will need to dive with your wings massively inflated to balance out
> your tanks, manifold, light, and backplate.� In fact you are guaranteed to
be
> overweighted if you start out a technical dive with a weight belt heavy enough
> to make you neutrally buoyant while only wearing the drysuit.
>
> Now when you are having your personal cluster at 250 ft and you go to pull
> your rig off because you know you can.� Are you positive that you won't
> mistakenly grab the wrong buckle and drop your 25 lbs of weights instead?
>
> In fact, are you positive that there is no way you can accidently lose your
> weight belt under any circumstances?� I have personally witnessed at least
> half a dozen divers either lose their weight belts at depth or nearly lose
> their weight belts.� It's not a fun thing to deal with in a drysuit.
>
> For doubles I dive with drysuit, steel tanks, v-weight and no weight belt at
> all.� I can take my rig off underwater without major problem.� With the
> drysuit hose attached the rig is not going anywhere.� I would not want to
try
> it in mid-water but on the bottom it's not a big problem.
>
> Am I worried about ditchable weight?� Not at all.� I can always ditch my
light
> but would never plan to.
>
> I am positive that my wings provide way more than enough inflation to deal
> with a flooded drysuit.� How do I know this for certain?� Because my wings
> have enough lift to float my entire rig on the surface and I know for certain
> that no matter how much I flood my drysuit I will still be positively buoyant
> with the thinsulate and trapped air.� I don't care how much you flood your
> drysuit, you won't end up negatively buoyant because water is neutrally
> buoyant in water.
>
> Likewise, I am positive that I can get enough inflation out of my drysuit to
> accommodate a wing failure at depth.� How do I know this?� Because I have
> tested it.� It's a simple thing to dump your wings completely empty at depth
> with full tanks and see if you can get enough lift out of your drysuit to stay
> neutral.� Everyone should try this just to see.� If you need to do this
for
> real it helps to tighten down the exaust valve on your suit and then deflate
> manually.� You can get more gas in your suit that way.
>
> If I have such an unbelievable cluster that I lose both my wing and my drysuit
> I can still get some serious lift out of my jet fins.� I can swim my doubles
> rig up with full tanks and empty wings and drysuit.� I know because I tested
> that too just out of curiosity.
>
> On top of that I carry 2 lift bags.� Either one of which can be used for
> emergency backup buoyancy.
>
> By my count, that gives me five independent sources of buoyancy when I'm
> wearing my doubles.� On the other hand, I have absolutely zero ways to add
> weight in mid-water if I happened to find myself positively buoyant through
> accidental or intentional loss of a heavy weight belt.
>
> Kent Lind
> Juneau, Alaska
>
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