pauldw
Contributor
I gather that for people taking a solo course, the official equipment standard is to have a pony bottle or some such thing. My question is: why? And it's a serious question, I really don't get it.
My own experience a long time ago when I first certified inland and then went home to the NW coast on break from school and wanted to see the subtidal instead of just the intertidal was that if I wanted to see it, I'd best go when the going was good and that meant going on my own. Off a nice sloping rock shelf into nearly flat water on an unusually clear day, one of the days that are very few and far between there. I don't know where I'd have found a buddy. Since I was around 10 to 20 feet, maybe 30 feet deep tops, I figured that if I got into trouble at 10 to 20 feet, I could blow and go quicker than I could either try to find and get to a buddy if I had one, or fix the problem where I was. Now that I'm getting back into diving regularly, and my favorite place to travel to will be those same remote rocky shores, I thought about formally training in solo, but I'm not enthused about having to buy more big and heavy gear. So, why do I need a pony bottle when diving at 10-30 feet? Specifically, if my regulator fails, I have a second. If that fails too, then that would be sad. But how likely is that in real life? If both of them weren't getting air, that would probably mean my first stage had to have failed (unless, I suppose, I was stupid enough to run out of air). Are first stages prone to failure?
Is the whole logic behind the extra air source that someone might run out of air in their cylinder, or is there some other reason?
My own experience a long time ago when I first certified inland and then went home to the NW coast on break from school and wanted to see the subtidal instead of just the intertidal was that if I wanted to see it, I'd best go when the going was good and that meant going on my own. Off a nice sloping rock shelf into nearly flat water on an unusually clear day, one of the days that are very few and far between there. I don't know where I'd have found a buddy. Since I was around 10 to 20 feet, maybe 30 feet deep tops, I figured that if I got into trouble at 10 to 20 feet, I could blow and go quicker than I could either try to find and get to a buddy if I had one, or fix the problem where I was. Now that I'm getting back into diving regularly, and my favorite place to travel to will be those same remote rocky shores, I thought about formally training in solo, but I'm not enthused about having to buy more big and heavy gear. So, why do I need a pony bottle when diving at 10-30 feet? Specifically, if my regulator fails, I have a second. If that fails too, then that would be sad. But how likely is that in real life? If both of them weren't getting air, that would probably mean my first stage had to have failed (unless, I suppose, I was stupid enough to run out of air). Are first stages prone to failure?
Is the whole logic behind the extra air source that someone might run out of air in their cylinder, or is there some other reason?