My best friend just recently got OW certified in Colorado. Having all of 4 open water dives under his belt he decided that he was need of a diving fix. Out to Seattle he comes. The only gear he owns is a mask, fins and gloves. Good thing I have plenty of gear. While doing his instruction he did get nitrox and drysuit certified.
At any rate since he had to borrow all my gear including a reg setup he was forced to use a long hose.
We dove throughout the week starting shallow and going progressively deeper as his skills allowed. One of the hardest things for him to achieve was proper buoyancy control. After four days of intensive diving with a couple of open water ascents and 15' stops without a line to reference, I felt he was ready to do some boat dives.
Uncle Pug invited us to join he and Shane for a couple of dives on a recreational site that I had never been to. Depth was 40' - 80'. I knew my friend was ready.
He had a BP/W (which he loved after trying out two other back inflate BC's) Apeks 200's, SPG, single PST 130 and drysuit. He had been using this configuration throughout the week. We had done modified "S" drills a couple of times.
We dropped down for our first dive into a little bit of current. There was all sorts of structure to look at and ultimately finding the anchor toward the end of the dive was not to be had. We swam this way and that, the whole time time my buddy was hoovering. When he got to 500 psi and no up line in sight I had him take my long hose. Since I had over 2000 psi left I wanted to conserve his back gas. We kept looking for a few more minutes and decided to do an open water ascent. Mind you the whole time Mike was shoulder to shoulder and swimming with me. We did a nice slow ascent from 55' and held a 4 minute 15' stop. During the stop we faced one another so I could look him over and make sure everything was O.K. This was a text book air share with a diver doing his 13th dive. We finished the dive with 1100 psi in my tank and 500 in his.
After surfacing he started comparing how the drills went in OW class on the short hose. He loved how we were able to swim side by side and then face each other. Needless to say he won't be going back to using a regular octo configuration. Long hoses aren't just for tech diving anymore.
At any rate since he had to borrow all my gear including a reg setup he was forced to use a long hose.
We dove throughout the week starting shallow and going progressively deeper as his skills allowed. One of the hardest things for him to achieve was proper buoyancy control. After four days of intensive diving with a couple of open water ascents and 15' stops without a line to reference, I felt he was ready to do some boat dives.
Uncle Pug invited us to join he and Shane for a couple of dives on a recreational site that I had never been to. Depth was 40' - 80'. I knew my friend was ready.
He had a BP/W (which he loved after trying out two other back inflate BC's) Apeks 200's, SPG, single PST 130 and drysuit. He had been using this configuration throughout the week. We had done modified "S" drills a couple of times.
We dropped down for our first dive into a little bit of current. There was all sorts of structure to look at and ultimately finding the anchor toward the end of the dive was not to be had. We swam this way and that, the whole time time my buddy was hoovering. When he got to 500 psi and no up line in sight I had him take my long hose. Since I had over 2000 psi left I wanted to conserve his back gas. We kept looking for a few more minutes and decided to do an open water ascent. Mind you the whole time Mike was shoulder to shoulder and swimming with me. We did a nice slow ascent from 55' and held a 4 minute 15' stop. During the stop we faced one another so I could look him over and make sure everything was O.K. This was a text book air share with a diver doing his 13th dive. We finished the dive with 1100 psi in my tank and 500 in his.
After surfacing he started comparing how the drills went in OW class on the short hose. He loved how we were able to swim side by side and then face each other. Needless to say he won't be going back to using a regular octo configuration. Long hoses aren't just for tech diving anymore.
(all in fun)
