Underwater Wakulla

Side mount practice in the pool.

By RUSTY MILLER

Good news, I was able to get into the pool with my side mount gear on Sunday. The bad news is it was really cold outside. The outside temperature was 46 degrees and the wind was blowing steady about 20 miles per hour so it made it even colder. I will say that once you get into the pool it warmed up very quickly. The water temp in the pool is 82 degrees. Once I got my 5mil wetsuit on, then I had to get my harness set up and put on, I was ready to quickly get into the pool. Over the last couple of weeks I made some adjustments to my harness so it would make it easier to attach my tanks by moving a couple of attachment points away from my sides. I also added a couple of double-ended clips to the bungee straps that run under my arms to bring the top of the tank closer to my upper body.

For those of you who use side mount systems you know what I’m talking about but for the rest of you the best setup of a side mount system is to bring the tanks as close to your sides as possible. Once I got the tanks attached and the bungees around the tank valve it fit almost perfectly. My instructor asked me to go to the bottom and make sure everything fit me comfortably and it did.

She then told me to swim around and just to get used to the way things felt. I wasn’t as graceful as my instructor but I was moving forward. I was digging it the whole time but I did notice that I still wanted to go head down and that my buttock wanted to go up. I surfaced and my instructor said to move the weight that is on the inside back of the harness down to the lowest weight pocket and try it again. It worked great. My body leveled out horizontally and this time when I would frog kick I went straight ahead with no feeling of being head down, I was awesome. I also noticed that when your body is in the horizontal position that it doesn’t require as much effort to move smoothly thru the water.

Now it was time to really test my wings and swim a circuit around the pool without stopping to make any adjustments. To most of you swimming around is not difficult but consider I really only have my right foot doing most of the work and my left stump just trying to act like a rudder. It was the turning part that was very difficult. My instructor noticed that when I would want to turn I would flutter my left or right hand to move me in the direction I wanted to go. I surfaced and she said I needed to not gold fish turn, if you watch a gold fish they use their little front mounted fins to turn with. She knows my limits with my left stump so she gave me several suggestions to try and the one that really worked well was to over frog kick with my right foot then use my left one as a big rudder instead of trying to frog kick with it and it actually worked. I think with more practice it will become more natural.

We went to the shallow end of the pool and she said it’s time to try to unhook the bottom of my right tank and swim with it extended out in front of me. The first time I tried it was with an 80 cubic foot aluminum tank that had a 5lb lead weight attached to the bottom of it at Peacock 2 and it was a disaster. The difference is now I have a 50 cubic foot steel tank plus my weighting and balance is much better. I was mildly successful this time - by that I mean I was able to actually swim forward and keep my body level and fairly horizontal, I still need to practice that skill more to make it comfortable for me.

All in all it was a much better session with the side mount rig than when I first started. My instructor was very happy for me and gave me some suggestions on adding some more D rings in various locations on my harness to aid in my adjustments. It’s like all new skills and equipment– you get it set to your liking and the rest is technique.

Keep making bubbles.

Russell Miller is the manager at Wakulla Diving Center in Medart. NAUI Instructor #59999