Kamala
Guest
(I was going to make some fruit-breakage related comment, but this is a family board )
Anyway, I took my first cold water dive at the Langley Tire Reef today! Totally awesome! I'm going to hold off on mocking the dry-suit crew for now because we were only able to get one dive in and it was only about 30 minutes. But I was plenty warm, didn't even get a hint of cold, same when I got out (Akona 6.5mm, only one layer), but I shouldn't leave out that I am somewhat robust.
Of course, as a low experience previously only warm water diver, there were some problems. Nothing off the charts and I think much of the issues will be resolved by having my own proper-fitting gear.
I'll walk through my issues to debrief myself and I'm more than willing to hear any critique/commentary.
1) WAY overweighted. Should have realized it when I did a little test plunge at the first place deep enough (10 feet or so) past the boat launch, but I didn't think anything of it (even though I still had full lungs and hadn't fully emptied my BC (as I recall, I should be at eye level with full lungs and empty BC, correct?)). When we descended for real, I sunk like a rock and had trouble getting my ears cleared quickly enough as a result. No matter how I adjusted my breathing, I couldn't keep off the bottom, so I hit a couple of squirts of air into the BC, which probably lead to later buoyancy problems. Once I added the air though, I was generally ok maintaining buoyancy. Trim was another story, see 2.
2) Rental BC had no tubing/clips, so octo and guages were flapping around. Now I know to ask for these things when I rent. More problematic was the poor fit, which had me wrestling to maintain trim.
3) Need to work on dexterity with those big honkin' gloves. Not so bad on the inflator, but awful getting at my nose. I'll take the thick gloves down to Key Largo and Aruba with me for the wedding/honeymoon next month and keep practicing, even as ridiculous as I'll look in 70 degree water with 6.5mm gloves. :11:
4) After starting to hit shallower water, I went up like a rocket, didn't dump air nearly fast enough and the problem was probably exacerbated or started by having had to add air to keep off the bottom. I started to descend again, but my air was dwindling in a hurry because Air2 began leaking so I again ame up faster than I had wanted to and couldn't do a safety stop. Between my bouncing and lack of a safety stop, we decided to can the second dive as a safety precaution. The coming up too fast was me not dumping BC air quickly enough; lesson learned about how buoyant you get in all that rubber, proper weighting, and dumping air before you think you need to dump air. Dive shop guy asked me if I had given the Air2 a wack to fix it, which I hadn't. Now I know that too, but I'm probably going to stick with an octo setup. (Yes, had both Air 2 and octo. Didn't feel I should go without the octo since that's what I had been trained on.)
Langley was a great site this morning at nearly high tide. No one was up fishing that early and there was no current or waves, so thankfully those conditions didn't add to my task loading. Can't tell you what fish I saw, my buddy and I were busy talking over the dive issues so I could learn from my mistakes. Did see some crab, GIANT (to me anyway) seastars, and what I believe are nudibranches. Visibility was about 20 feet or so. Coming up into the top 10/15 feet or so where there's suddenly light was fairly disorienting for about a second, but nothing awful.
Mistakes and all, I had an awesome time and I'm ready to do some more Puget Sound diving! I'm going to work on getting my own gear (hopefully I'll have the bulk of it before the summer) and getting in some more practice with my buddies, and then I'll be open to diving with all of y'all!
Anyway, I took my first cold water dive at the Langley Tire Reef today! Totally awesome! I'm going to hold off on mocking the dry-suit crew for now because we were only able to get one dive in and it was only about 30 minutes. But I was plenty warm, didn't even get a hint of cold, same when I got out (Akona 6.5mm, only one layer), but I shouldn't leave out that I am somewhat robust.
Of course, as a low experience previously only warm water diver, there were some problems. Nothing off the charts and I think much of the issues will be resolved by having my own proper-fitting gear.
I'll walk through my issues to debrief myself and I'm more than willing to hear any critique/commentary.
1) WAY overweighted. Should have realized it when I did a little test plunge at the first place deep enough (10 feet or so) past the boat launch, but I didn't think anything of it (even though I still had full lungs and hadn't fully emptied my BC (as I recall, I should be at eye level with full lungs and empty BC, correct?)). When we descended for real, I sunk like a rock and had trouble getting my ears cleared quickly enough as a result. No matter how I adjusted my breathing, I couldn't keep off the bottom, so I hit a couple of squirts of air into the BC, which probably lead to later buoyancy problems. Once I added the air though, I was generally ok maintaining buoyancy. Trim was another story, see 2.
2) Rental BC had no tubing/clips, so octo and guages were flapping around. Now I know to ask for these things when I rent. More problematic was the poor fit, which had me wrestling to maintain trim.
3) Need to work on dexterity with those big honkin' gloves. Not so bad on the inflator, but awful getting at my nose. I'll take the thick gloves down to Key Largo and Aruba with me for the wedding/honeymoon next month and keep practicing, even as ridiculous as I'll look in 70 degree water with 6.5mm gloves. :11:
4) After starting to hit shallower water, I went up like a rocket, didn't dump air nearly fast enough and the problem was probably exacerbated or started by having had to add air to keep off the bottom. I started to descend again, but my air was dwindling in a hurry because Air2 began leaking so I again ame up faster than I had wanted to and couldn't do a safety stop. Between my bouncing and lack of a safety stop, we decided to can the second dive as a safety precaution. The coming up too fast was me not dumping BC air quickly enough; lesson learned about how buoyant you get in all that rubber, proper weighting, and dumping air before you think you need to dump air. Dive shop guy asked me if I had given the Air2 a wack to fix it, which I hadn't. Now I know that too, but I'm probably going to stick with an octo setup. (Yes, had both Air 2 and octo. Didn't feel I should go without the octo since that's what I had been trained on.)
Langley was a great site this morning at nearly high tide. No one was up fishing that early and there was no current or waves, so thankfully those conditions didn't add to my task loading. Can't tell you what fish I saw, my buddy and I were busy talking over the dive issues so I could learn from my mistakes. Did see some crab, GIANT (to me anyway) seastars, and what I believe are nudibranches. Visibility was about 20 feet or so. Coming up into the top 10/15 feet or so where there's suddenly light was fairly disorienting for about a second, but nothing awful.
Mistakes and all, I had an awesome time and I'm ready to do some more Puget Sound diving! I'm going to work on getting my own gear (hopefully I'll have the bulk of it before the summer) and getting in some more practice with my buddies, and then I'll be open to diving with all of y'all!