Several weeks ago, I read about a Canadian manufacturer who had come up with some clever ideas for dive gear. One was a method of converting a backup light to a form of canister, and another was a spool-sized reel, ideal for shooting a bag or running line short distances. Mike Edmonston, in Florida, was identified as the dealer for the gadget, so I wrote and asked him what he thought of it, and one thing led to another, and I ended up with one.
At first, I wasn't too sure about it, because every dive where I took it down to use it seemed to be jinxed. We had freeflowing regs and flooded dry suits and finally SNOW. The juju on the spreel seemed to be powerful . . . But it wore off, and yesterday, I was finally able to play with it underwater.
I did two bag shoots, and did some spooling up of the line under tension and loose, to see if I could jam the thing, and I couldn't. It was great fun to do the bag shoot and just hold on to the casing and watch the line unspool -- No chance of getting my fingers caught in the center hole as I have done with my simple spools before. It's also trivial to operate the reel when you're regathering the line. Its small size meant it fit in my dry suit pocket just like my spools do, and I did not have any problems working the drag screw with dry gloves.
The only thing I'll have to watch in using it is to make sure, just as one must with a reel, that the line is spooling up evenly, because it looks like it would be possible, if it all ended up on one side, that you could get into a situation where you couldn't spool up any more line, even though a significant amount remained to be collected.
Oh, and I put it to a significant test of the drag, by preloading the SMB and clipping it off to the pocket, and by dragging the thing through the water while holding onto the SMB with the spreel dangling. In neither case did it come loose or unspool on me. This alone makes it worth owning! (I've had several embarrassing occasions where a spool has come loose, fallen out of my pocket, and unspooled line all over the dive site
)
At first, I wasn't too sure about it, because every dive where I took it down to use it seemed to be jinxed. We had freeflowing regs and flooded dry suits and finally SNOW. The juju on the spreel seemed to be powerful . . . But it wore off, and yesterday, I was finally able to play with it underwater.
I did two bag shoots, and did some spooling up of the line under tension and loose, to see if I could jam the thing, and I couldn't. It was great fun to do the bag shoot and just hold on to the casing and watch the line unspool -- No chance of getting my fingers caught in the center hole as I have done with my simple spools before. It's also trivial to operate the reel when you're regathering the line. Its small size meant it fit in my dry suit pocket just like my spools do, and I did not have any problems working the drag screw with dry gloves.
The only thing I'll have to watch in using it is to make sure, just as one must with a reel, that the line is spooling up evenly, because it looks like it would be possible, if it all ended up on one side, that you could get into a situation where you couldn't spool up any more line, even though a significant amount remained to be collected.
Oh, and I put it to a significant test of the drag, by preloading the SMB and clipping it off to the pocket, and by dragging the thing through the water while holding onto the SMB with the spreel dangling. In neither case did it come loose or unspool on me. This alone makes it worth owning! (I've had several embarrassing occasions where a spool has come loose, fallen out of my pocket, and unspooled line all over the dive site
)
