I was apprehensive about boat diving with sidemount.

[beanojones]

My instructor taught me to clip in the tank neck then pivot your hip to the bench to clip in the rear of the tank. There is no need to lift the tank off the bench and wrestle it into position.

This I think was an advantage of taking the class from a sidemount boat diver.

This is also the advantage of the Ring Bungie system, the almost instantaneous loading of the tanks. It gets a little trickier with four tanks, and even more so with five tanks but slapping a tanks on in a few seconds almost always makes people do a double take.

 

[rick00001967]

anyone here have experience hanging tanks on a line in the water and clipping on the tanks in the water ?? the boat we use here would not be easy to don tanks on board let alone getting back on the boat in side mount doubles. so using a line may be a better solution. i have found a few descriptions of some peoples methods but would love to hear others.

 

[peacock62]

I've modified my Hollis 100 with Edds os bungees and a 1 piece harness. Did my first boat dive last night with sm. Went very well. Took abit more fussing but in and out less problem then anticipated.
Had to unclip my right 2nd stage on the bottom..... got caught up in some other gear clipped off.


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[DevonDiver]

anyone here have experience hanging tanks on a line in the water and clipping on the tanks in the water ?? the boat we use here would not be easy to don tanks on board let alone getting back on the boat in side mount doubles. so using a line may be a better solution. i have found a few descriptions of some peoples methods but would love to hear others.

This is a technique I use occasionally. We mostly dive from speedboats here and it works very well. Mostly, I just remove the tanks in the water and hand them up to the boat staff.

 

[Razorista]

...hanging tanks on a line in the water and clipping on the tanks in the water ??

I found it very hard communicating this to boot crews in egypt.

Nobody was much help finding a good attachment point for the clip-line and when coming back someone always pulled up the line after the first tank was attached and dangled it over my head with me relatively unable to move or duck while holding on to the other tank that was already floating beside me.
Gave up on it on that occasion and will only try it again if communication works better.

 

[AfterDark]

anyone here have experience hanging tanks on a line in the water and clipping on the tanks in the water ?? the boat we use here would not be easy to don tanks on board let alone getting back on the boat in side mount doubles. so using a line may be a better solution. i have found a few descriptions of some peoples methods but would love to hear others.

I think this might go with my question.

When the seas are 4-6 foot swells and the boat is pitching and rolling how does a SM diver get back on the boat?
Also think private boats with less than ideal ladders.

Clip the tanks off on a line?

 

[olphart]

How would a BM diver get back on in these conditions? Pretty much the same. If the boat is rolling and pitching that much, clipping off onto a line could be deadly.

 

[AfterDark]

How would a BM diver get back on in these conditions? Pretty much the same. If the boat is rolling and pitching that much, clipping off onto a line could be deadly.

I tried SM from a shore dive. I cannot envision getting into the private boats I dive from in a SM configuration in anything but ideal conditions. It can barely be done in BM, SM would make a diver so wide there is no possible way to clear the outboard motors using those skimpy boarding ladders!

I liked SM fine but it is not for the type of diving I do. Being a blue collar stiff I can only afford one BCD configuration to do all my diving and BM hasn't let me down yet.

How would say having a buoyed line running off the back of the boat where tanks could be clipped to then hauled in by someone on board, while the diver surface swims/snorkels to the ladder be DEADLY?

 

[rick00001967]

How would say having a buoyed line running off the back of the boat where tanks could be clipped to then hauled in by someone on board, while the diver surface swims/snorkels to the ladder be DEADLY?

this sounds like it could be a good solution. i think i was thinking of a line tied direct to the boat so as said, if it was REALLY rough seas, it could certainly be a problem.

 

[bada3003]

Which bungie attachment system do you use?

I use loop. I dive SMS 100 in cold waters, SMS 50 in warm. The stock bungees are (as is well known) too stiff and ill-designed. BTW, bungees are rarely the bottleneck. You can do them in the water in a jiffy. It's clipping on heavy steels, donning fins (some are easier than others), boat layout, etc. The only place I've found SM's to be advantageous is in Florida springs where you can stand in the water after entry and clip on everything with ease.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2014 at 01:14 PM ----------

Well, that's a tautology, meaning true to everything. What I'm saying, from my limited experience, is that newbie SM divers tend to have a much steeper learning curve when it comes to donning/doffing gear (esp. in boats) than those using backmount. There is nothing wrong with that, but the OP (in my reading) gave the opposite impression which is why I'm chiming in. I'm a sidemount diver, don't plan on going back to backmount. But as in most things there are pros/cons. The cons we should acknowledge as such.

Newbie divers in any config tend to take a while. I've seen newbie backmount-doubles/long-hose divers do a fair bit of faffing when still developing their equipment familiarity and kitting-up routines. Any diver, backmount or sidemount, should be pretty slick and fast once they've built up their processes.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2014 at 01:19 PM ----------

I don't think this trick/technique is new. Benches have different configurations, and space on boats can be very limited. I'm talking about real world environments.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2014 at 01:24 PM ----------

Such a big difference is not a good idea. Both from safety (what if your nearly full tank fails?) and buoyancy. Use a tank equalizer (a $2.50 contraption is discussed by couv in DIY from a while back) which is what I do.

I used the same 2 tanks for both dives. I made sure to exit the water with 2000psi in both tanks for hp tanks and about 1600 for lp tanks. Today I am taking 3 tanks. I made sure to ask the boat first if it was ok. It is today but if everyone did it, it wouldn't work out.

Plan today is to exit with 2000 in one tank and 500 in the other then switch the empty tank. This way I'll have 150cuft for both dives. I wouldn't normally do this bit my buddy has 130s so he had more are than me with 100s. This will make us more even. I'll be sure to watch my Ndls with this much air.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2014 at 01:27 PM ----------

This is a technique I use occasionally. We mostly dive from speedboats here and it works very well. Mostly, I just remove the tanks in the water and hand them up to the boat staff.

Ditto. But if there are decent swells, it's best to have a drop line that's hanging low.