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I do however think that there is a point where you can be too conservative.
Ok, I'm all for doing gas planning, but this raises an interesting point. At what point does it get redundant to the ridiculous? To throw the ultimate safety factor into the mix would be to never get in the water in the first place.
Last edited by surfsidedav; May 13th, 2008 at 12:11 PM.
One of the things that comes up in many discussions of diving is that all diving involves risk. What each of us does is decide the level of risk we're willing to tolerate. The problem is that a lot of people are making those decisions without knowing they are doing it, and without the information to make informed choices. There is nothing intrinsically "wrong" with diving to 130 feet on an Al80, as long as you (and your buddy) know the risks you're taking, and assuming that no one else is around to be put at risk in rescuing you if something goes sour. The real issue is that the majority of people diving to 130 on an 80 don't even KNOW anything about gas planning, or the concept of rock bottom. I know I didn't, when I did my 10th dive to that depth in Molokini crater. Everything went fine, but I had no idea how ugly it could have been had things been different.
Keeping a gas reserve to get your companion up from the bottom seems to me to be one of the most fundamental obligations of a buddy. How generous you need to be in calculating those reserves is going to depend a great deal on who you are and what training and experience you have. Technical divers don't always calculate a stressed SAC rate for the entire exit, because once the emergency is solved, they're likely to return to something much closer to normal gas consumption. Recreational divers, who don't practice sharing gas and OOA ascents, are much more likely to remain stressed and need higher reserves. But the bottom line is that you have to decide (with your buddy) how much risk you're willing to tolerate, and plan your gas accordingly. Doing exercises like this one gives you the tools to do that.
Linear Mode
