Kev Gurr called me last night after doing his first dives on the new Hollis Explorer rebreather. It totally exceeded his expectations. It is the product of years of his design and engineering efforts and he was still blown away by actually diving his own rig. I had the honor of being the first person to dive it after Kev. Needless to say, when he made the offer, I drove to Blue Grotto as fast as I could.
The Explorer is an SCR but if you ever owned a Drager, this is a completely different ballgame. To begin with, it only needed a couple of pounds of trim weight in a wetsuit (I think I used about 25 pounds on the old Drager). It intelligently adds gas as needed, carefully monitoring the O2 with three sensors. It barely burps (unlike the old Drager). All checks are automated with the onscreen checklist. It won't breathe at all unless the sorb canister is properly inserted in the unit. It has a gaseous CO2 monitor, integrated BOV, HUD and wrist computer. It is put together in minutes without tools and has an integrated black box for download (will offer blue tooth download). It recharges through a simple port and that part of the rebreather can be taken in your hotel room at night for recharging rather than the entire unit.
The diving experience was incredible. It trimmed perfectly and swam like a dream. The projected price will be far below anything else and will bring rebreathers to a whole new subset of diving. I know recreational divers will love it, but you will be seeing me at Ginnie with a pair of sidemount bailouts using this in the future! The pic shows Kev in the standard BC but it will also ship with a ted harness for those that prefer.
All good!
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