MASS-Diver
Contributor
LUBOLD8431
I agree with you, it's harsh as hell out there this time year and clearly this guy had no place doing a 100' dive alone given his gear and training. And to try to teach under these conditions is just plain stupid.
Gensis, I agree with much of what you are saying. For this discussion I was using 100' as deep because that's how deep the Poling was. I do think the drysuit can be a little bigger though. I'm not trying to say you need 100 dry dives before you are ready to take it deep, I'm just saying that it can take a little while to get used to the feel of the suit, to get your weighting perfect, and, to practice taking off your inflator which could freeze up in these conditions.
I don't think the Poling in the winter is a good place to be doing a DS/AOW combo class, and I think a good expample of that is that donator in this case had bouyancy problems which contributed to the failed air sharing. The reason I brought the whole issue was that it seems from what I've heard from people that knew this guy that he was example of a person who, while he had an AOW card, he did not have enough experince to be on this wreck. He was by any standards a "new" diver and here he is doing a wreck that a guy like LUBOLD8431 with 500 dives who lives in Glouster would not do. It's a problem.
I don't know when 100' got so shallow. My older buddies that dove in the 70s around here always saw 100' as "deep" they considered the pinthis to be a difficult dive. Has wreck gear really improved that much? Sure lots of divers are doing 200-400' dives on MIX, but, has the equiment really changed that much for the average rec diver (using air like this person) that the Poling is an easy dive that can be done alone in the winter? The way I see it training has gotten worse since the 70s and 80s and while the gear is much nicer it makes people overconfident.
I dove the Poling with CAD the day after thanksgving in bad weather (mybe one of you was on board), no one is every going to convince me that this an easy wreck. Heck, you can get worn down just suiting up in those conditions. A guy with a single tank and less than a year of diving under his belt along with a single instructor and his class heads out there on a rough day in Feb; that's called a a foolish lack of respect for the conditions in my book.
I agree with you, it's harsh as hell out there this time year and clearly this guy had no place doing a 100' dive alone given his gear and training. And to try to teach under these conditions is just plain stupid.
Gensis, I agree with much of what you are saying. For this discussion I was using 100' as deep because that's how deep the Poling was. I do think the drysuit can be a little bigger though. I'm not trying to say you need 100 dry dives before you are ready to take it deep, I'm just saying that it can take a little while to get used to the feel of the suit, to get your weighting perfect, and, to practice taking off your inflator which could freeze up in these conditions.
I don't think the Poling in the winter is a good place to be doing a DS/AOW combo class, and I think a good expample of that is that donator in this case had bouyancy problems which contributed to the failed air sharing. The reason I brought the whole issue was that it seems from what I've heard from people that knew this guy that he was example of a person who, while he had an AOW card, he did not have enough experince to be on this wreck. He was by any standards a "new" diver and here he is doing a wreck that a guy like LUBOLD8431 with 500 dives who lives in Glouster would not do. It's a problem.
I don't know when 100' got so shallow. My older buddies that dove in the 70s around here always saw 100' as "deep" they considered the pinthis to be a difficult dive. Has wreck gear really improved that much? Sure lots of divers are doing 200-400' dives on MIX, but, has the equiment really changed that much for the average rec diver (using air like this person) that the Poling is an easy dive that can be done alone in the winter? The way I see it training has gotten worse since the 70s and 80s and while the gear is much nicer it makes people overconfident.
I dove the Poling with CAD the day after thanksgving in bad weather (mybe one of you was on board), no one is every going to convince me that this an easy wreck. Heck, you can get worn down just suiting up in those conditions. A guy with a single tank and less than a year of diving under his belt along with a single instructor and his class heads out there on a rough day in Feb; that's called a a foolish lack of respect for the conditions in my book.
