simbrooks:
Penetration wreck diving with only 16-50 dives???? Swim thrus are one thing, but tying off a line and attaching your snorkle too it does give me both an amusing visual as well as a bit of concern.
All things in due measure: I want to dive locally in Chicagoland, and wrecks are a lot of the diving.
Thus, I take the entry level training, for which one does learn penetration, which we keep very conservative as we continue to learn. Towit, a whopping 3 rooms into a diver-prepared wreck has been the most, and that was with the instructor on the training skills demonstration dive in nice, warm Cozumel. One does have to learn somehow, and learn by doing as well as training, and there are a few nicely diver-prepared wrecks out here that will afford the opportunity to do so in a well-graduated manner.
I presume your concern was based on the fear that we would end up in an incident report having perished in the Milwaukee Car Ferry or some other venue clearly beyond our experience and readiness ... hope I have cleared that up!
There are also wrecks you can shore dive to hereabouts, definitely good to have the the snorkel for (200 yards out, face down looking for the wreck, you see). Those who don't have pocket snorkels certainly don't want to take them into the entanglement hazard area, so clipping them to the reel anchor point seems eminently sensible, and also serves as just one more clue for the clueless that might happen by that the line is active and not a souvenir to take home or something to play with.
It's not that hard to do, and if I didn't have the dexterity and buoyancy control to do this with the snorkel, I expect I should indeed practice more before going inside with a reel
. It certainly is a good entry-qualification test ...
Cheers,
Walter