Do you actually see people diving with pony bottles?

[rek_diver]

@TheFife On the two Great Lakes boats I've been on, it's easy enough to just shove your pony bottle under the bench. Of course, you can only do this with slung ponies. I greatly dislike sharing a bench with a diver who has a pony attached to his main cylinder, as it takes up too much room.

I don't find my tank mounted 19cf takes up much room on the tank rack, and if it's tight I put my second tank next to the pony bottle so I don't take up any other space. I just put the whole rig into the rack slightly turned, it works out just fine.

 

[shoredivr]

Agreed, exceptionally rare, and totally impractical for anyone who has to fly commercial airlines for their dive vacations. I'm very much a scuba gear-head, and even I don't bother with the travel weight/hassles involved.

That's why I carry either sidemount gear or rigging and regulator to make an Alu 80 into a stage bottle for deeper warm water dives.

 

[shoredivr]

I am primarily a vacation diver. I travel to dive and bring all my own gear (minus tanks+weights). A pony doesn't fit size or weight wise with my current luggage arrangement. That means that I need to rent a pony (just like I rent a standard tank). The problem is that most dive ops I have been to, do not rent pony bottles. I don't get it. It seems like a source of "easy" money for them, as guys like me would gladly pay $10 a day for a pony rig that costs them very little. They could make their money back easily. Even if very few people rent the pony, the shop would be out almost nothing as the investment is so small.

So that leads to the question: Why don't I see pony rigs on the rental list of most shops I visit?

Nobody has marketed it to them yet.

 

[Colliam7]

Just curious if you've ever actually tried a CESA from 60 feet?

Bob, this is, for me at least, a very thought-provoking comment. I previously made a statement in the thread to the effect that I was 'comfortable that I could execute a CESA from a greater depth (e.g. 60 ft)'. But, I have never actually tried it, even under non-emergency conditions, from 60 ft. So, rather than hope I could (after all, 'hope is NOT a strategy'), I will now test the hypothesis, that I can do it, by practicing the CESA from one of our 60 foot platforms. Thank you.

 

[kelemvor]

There is a time and place for everything, including pony bottles - just not on your recreational no decompression limit vacation dive boat.

To each his own, I guess. In my opinion that is the only place a pony should be used. If you're doing something more, you should be carrying doubles. I guess you could carry a pony with your doubles, but it seems a bit superfluous to me.

I bought my pony for recreational diving in the warm waters of Roatan, Honduras.

 

[kelemvor]

There was a fatality caused by a poorly configured pony bottle configuration in one diving club where I was a member for a while. Most of the members quit using pony cylinders after that.

Can you share any details? I wasn't aware they could cause problems. I can't think of anything that seems reasonable other than someone using it as a stage to extend a dive and getting bent. What happened?

 

[Lorenzoid]

I am primarily a vacation diver. . . .
So that leads to the question: Why don't I see pony rigs on the rental list of most shops I visit? Are they an irritant when regular tanks are lined up on the boat?

I don't think renting tanks is a major profit center for a dive op. There is a lot of work that goes into handling, filling, and maintaining tanks. It's easiest for a dive op to handle tanks that are the same size. I think the dive ops that do rent ponies and other odd-sized tanks (that is, other than the ubiquitous aluminum 80) do so because they are catering to demand, not because they are so profitable to rent.

As for demand, I suspect the demand just isn't there at most vacation-type dive ops. Sure, a pony can add redundancy, but there are the costs/hassles mentioned above for the dive op. Incidents involving running out of air while on vacation-type dives (typically led by a divemaster, etc.) are already so infrequent that the cost-benefit analysis doesn't warrant it, in either the opinion of the dive op or most vacationing divers. I have seen divers run low on air, and the DM assists them with that.

A pony is not considered part of the standard equipment set for a recreational diver because the standard single Al 80, especially on DM-accompanied dives, is enough to keep the vast majority of vacation-type divers from running out of air, and today's training philosophy and the associated standard equipment set is (in my opinion) geared toward that kind of diving.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Can you share any details? I wasn't aware they could cause problems. I can't think of anything that seems reasonable other than someone using it as a stage to extend a dive and getting bent. What happened?

I will share a recent experience that didn't cause a problem, but very well could have. I was on a dive trip recently where I was doing a lot of solo diving, and had brought my AL40 (aka, "my little buddy AL") to sling while diving a single tank rig. Being in limited space and in somewhat of a hurry to get into the water I asked the crew member to clip my bottle in for me. She somehow managed to trap the second stage in the process. I didn't even notice till the end of the dive, when I was removing the rig. But if I'd needed to use that bottle at any point during the dive, I'd have been unable to deploy it without first removing the bottom clip from my harness ... and I'm not sure that thought would've occurred to me. It would've been ugly in any case.

My bad for not checking it prior to descending, but there was a current running, and it never occurred to me that she could trap the reg like that. Moral of that story, trust but verify ... always.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

A pony is not considered part of the standard equipment set for a recreational diver because the standard single Al 80, especially on DM-accompanied dives, is enough to keep the vast majority of vacation-type divers from running out of air, and today's training philosophy and the associated standard equipment set is (in my opinion) geared toward that kind of diving.

I wish I could believe that, but when you've got DM's routinely taking barely certified divers to places like Devil's Throat and the Blue Hole I'm not so sure. I've seen too many people on the DM's tank, or doing their safety stop from a hang tank, to think that an AL80 is an adequate size tank for some of the places that highlight a deeper profile on their signature dive sites.

Newer divers simply don't belong below 100 feet on an AL80, no matter if they do have a c-card that says they're "qualified" to be there ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[kelemvor]

I've seen too many people on the DM's tank, or doing their safety stop from a hang tank, to think that an AL80 is an adequate size tank for some of the places that highlight a deeper profile on their signature dive sites.

Hang tanks are something I've never seen before. Well, I've seen them in videos on youtube - but I've never seen them in person. Same for hang bars at the safety stop.

Maybe it's a regional thing.