lamont
Contributor
FoSheZZie23:I am assuming you havnt dove in tropical waters yet, it really is a whole different kind of diving to itself. With 100ft vis everything is much more relaxed (warm water helps) that the PNW. The free accents is what i would actually make sure you can deal with. I didnt think about them at first, but when i have done drift dives in Maui with a group, they tell you to let the DM know what you are at 1000 and 500psi, then at 500 he tells you to surface. Meaning go up do your saftey stop in mid water w/ current. (sometimes over 100 feet from the othere people and possibly out of vis range) and then when your done with your stop find the boat. This didnt bother me but ic an see how it may bother some to do a saftey stop alone.
You should be surfacing with 500 psi or more, not ascending with 500 psi. You really shouldn't be starting to ascend from 100 fsw with only 500 psi. With an Al80 you should be reserving about 1300 psi to get up from 100 fsw.
You have to plan for an emergency at depth at the worst possible time. Right when you hit 1300 psi you may have another diver who dropped earlier or with a higher SAC rate (possibly not even your buddy) go OOA and grab your reg out of your mouth and knock your mask off. You need to be able to recover from that, get your backup mask on (you have on right?) and ascend with both you and the OOA diver and complete all your stops. And don't rely on the DM to save you, when you need the DM the most, Murphy dictates that the DM will be off task loaded and distracted with some other divers having problems...