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>My excuse is the atrocious holiday weather that we now come to expect in
>England.  Gale force winds blowing across the country & persistant rain 
stops
>even the most hardened diver...

But surely you can't complain about Friday and Saturday?

>what people on your side of the Atlantic are normally using for O2 deco 
??  

In the US a steel 72 cu ft (filled to 2000 psi) seems a common choice. 
Yes, if you're wreck diving, you need to carry all your gas supplies with 
you, since you cannot rely on the boat or the shotline being there at the 
end of your dive. You could get swept off the wreck, need to do an 
immediate ascent, or simply not be able to find the line again.

This is a major difference between wreck diving and cave diving, where 
you can _usually_ rely on your stage bottles being where you left them. 
Usually in cave diving, if you don't come out the way you went in you are 
not going to need your stage bottles at all (IYSWIM). In wreck diving, 
you _must_ carry enough gas to handle all emergencies.

This may mean you need to side-mount additional 'full-size' cylinders. 
It's not difficult, and just takes a little practice. Take a look at some 
of the pictures in aquaCorps and some of the tech diving books.

The question of how long have you got at a PO2 of, say, 3 ata is quite an 
old chestnut. If you can get hold of a copy of 'Oxygen and the Diver', by 
Kenneth Donald, I can highly recommend it. It summarises most of the 
experimental work on the subject, much of which has never been repeated, 
nor is it likely to be. The party line is "don't go over 1.6", but it's 
not as simple as that. All I can say is, in an emergency you want 
everything possible working in your favour.

Sorry about the long post.

Andy.

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