Minimal or too much?
I hope you weren’t too bored with my last series of articles. Today I would like to talk about minimal or too much. By that I mean the equipment that a diver has on their body to go diving with that you have seen on a dive boat.
You’re all packed up ready to drive to the dive boat for a day of diving. You arrive at the boat and you load your dive bag, a lunch or snacks and possibly your favorite non alcoholic beverage. If you are a novice diver (15 dives at the most) you start to set up your equipment on the tank that you have chosen to sit with. You get out your BCD and attach it to the tank, then your regulators. You carefully open the tank valve to slowly pressurize your regs to check the tank pressure to make sure you have the 3000psi. You then turn off the tank valve and as a novice diver you purge the regulators.
You get out your skins or thin wetsuit, your fins, and mask. You set your empty dive bag under the seat and place your fins on top of it so they will not be in anyone’s way as the boat gets loaded with the other divers. You then will help your dive buddy to make sure they set up their equipment properly. After you’re done the captain will start the briefing. Once that is done they start the engine and off you go to the dive spot. While en route the divemaster will usually give a briefing on any recall device, the placement of the lines to be used or any other pertinent features of the boat.
I would say that that is a basic minimum of equipment to use on your dives. Now let’s look at what the maximum amount of equipment to have on your dive. You are a very experienced diver (100 plus dives) and you board the boat. You pick out the tank you’re going to sit by, you take out your BCD, regulators, your small torch, SMB, reel, dive computer, your spare depth gauge, dive tables in your BCD pocket, and your analog timing device. All this is because you know by your experience that you and your buddy might come up in a bad surface current and be pulled away from the boat so you connect your reel to the SMB and deploy it so the boat can see you to pick you both up after they get the other divers on board.
The other scenario is you’re diving at the wreck and you look at your computer and it is blank. Your experience tells you that when you entered the water you set the dial on your dive watch to let you know how long you have been underwater. You have your depth gauge attached to your BCD so you can see how deep you are and your SPG will tell you how much more gas is in your tank. With all that information you can look at your dive tables and know with the time that has lapsed and the depth and available gas when you should head back to the anchor line to start you ascent to your safety stop.
That, my fellow diver, is about the maximum amount of equipment you should have as an experienced diver.
To me as an instructor that is the minimal amount of equipment. The more dives you take you will get more training and add more safety equipment to your diving as needed.
Keep making bubbles.
Russell Miller #59999
