Hi everyone:
This may be a dumb question, but I'll ask it in the spirit of "the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask...":
I've done 15 dives, most from a boat, but recently starting relatively shallow shore dives in the 35-50 foot range. When I was shore diving today, visibility wasn't great...a few feet at the end...enough for me to see my buddy and not much else. We ascended slowly and stopped for our safety stop. We managed to hold somehow at 15 feet for about 90 seconds, but then drifted up a bit, then descended a bit, but then a bit too far (20-ish feet), then back to 12, and around there. We did that for 3 minutes and surfaced with no issues.
I'm wondering...is there an easy way of holding at a depth for a safety stop without an anchor line or even a visual reference (other than my buddy)? Our buoyancy at the bottom was fine...we were down for 40 minutes without issue. It seems we botched our buoyancy in the end, or it might have been that our tanks were more buoyant. For full disclosure, this was in the Pacific, with a bit of surf, a bit of surge, wearing a 7-mil wetsuit...with about 5-10 feet of visibility.
Definitely appreciative of any ideas out there. Thanks a bunch!
This may be a dumb question, but I'll ask it in the spirit of "the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask...":
I've done 15 dives, most from a boat, but recently starting relatively shallow shore dives in the 35-50 foot range. When I was shore diving today, visibility wasn't great...a few feet at the end...enough for me to see my buddy and not much else. We ascended slowly and stopped for our safety stop. We managed to hold somehow at 15 feet for about 90 seconds, but then drifted up a bit, then descended a bit, but then a bit too far (20-ish feet), then back to 12, and around there. We did that for 3 minutes and surfaced with no issues.
I'm wondering...is there an easy way of holding at a depth for a safety stop without an anchor line or even a visual reference (other than my buddy)? Our buoyancy at the bottom was fine...we were down for 40 minutes without issue. It seems we botched our buoyancy in the end, or it might have been that our tanks were more buoyant. For full disclosure, this was in the Pacific, with a bit of surf, a bit of surge, wearing a 7-mil wetsuit...with about 5-10 feet of visibility.
Definitely appreciative of any ideas out there. Thanks a bunch!