For computer users only... safety stops.

[abitton]

Good point. I also agree that 3 is a minimum, and as redhawktwo mentioned, I dive to dive, not to hang around on a boat!

It's nice to just hang around, breathing, relaxing. As long as you have enough air!!

 

[Diver Dennis]

If I dive with a group, I'll do their 3 minute stop and wait until the last couple of people are getting on the boat. If solo, most of the time, I'll either spend 5 to 10 minutes at a depth of 18' or shallower or if in deep water do at least 3 minutes or until the boat sees my SMB and comes over.

 

[TSandM]

Pete, I agree that people can and will dive their computers right up along the NDL line. Wouldn't it make more sense to teach some kind of graduated stop procedure, rather than a direct ascent to 15 feet and a longer time there? That would come closer to matching what an actual deco plan would be, and would have the second advantage that monitoring time and depth for shorter stops keeps your mind busy enough that you don't maybe get bored and decide to blow off the rest of the stop time -- which would be easy to do if you were hanging for five minutes with nothing to look at, doing a stop you've been taught is optional anyway. Just a thought.

 

[speedhound]

Pete, I agree that people can and will dive their computers right up along the NDL line. Wouldn't it make more sense to teach some kind of graduated stop procedure, rather than a direct ascent to 15 feet and a longer time there? That would come closer to matching what an actual deco plan would be, and would have the second advantage that monitoring time and depth for shorter stops keeps your mind busy enough that you don't maybe get bored and decide to blow off the rest of the stop time -- which would be easy to do if you were hanging for five minutes with nothing to look at, doing a stop you've been taught is optional anyway. Just a thought.

Just posted about that in NetDoc's other thread :

One idea I'd heard from a PDIC instructor was to come up progressively slower, the shallow the diver got_ 30ft/min to 30ft, then 20ft/min to 15, down to 15ft/min or less as you surface. The idea being to counter the proportionally greater effects as you come through the last 30'. I've never tried it, but it makes some kind of sense. (Thanks Perrone!)

 

[djanni]

How many of you do a FULL FIVE MINUTE safety stop if you are diving a computer? Why or why not?

We use Oceanic ProPlus II's - Our rule is to always do the stop for 3 minutes unless we're near RED in the NDL display. If we are we'll hang until we're only 1 dot into the yellow and that's usually in the 5 minute range. So in that situation time doesn't matter... only those little black dots matter.

 

[LiteHedded]

3 minutes for me

 

[divingjd]

I typically do a full five minute stop. It is part of my pre-dive check with a buddy. I tell my buddy I like to do a five minute stop. I just like to add any margin of safety I can. I can't recall ever having to cut it short because I didn't have sufficient gas. On deeper dives (deeper than 80 feet), I have recently been doing a deep stop in addition to the five minute stop at 15-20. For Carribean reef dives, this usually means making it a multilevel dive. On wreck dives in the Great Lakes, it's straight down the line to the wreck, and straight back up, so it's really a square profile. On those dives, we are usually doing a stop for three minutes at 50-60 feet.

 

[Charlie99]

Depends upon what sort of dive. By the time I've done deep stops on a short, deep wreck dive, 3 minutes of safety stop is more than enough.

OTOH, if I've just finished off the 2nd tank on a pair of long drift dives in the 60-80' range, then in addition to a couple of deep stops at 40' and 30', I'll end up hanging in the 20' to 10' range for the 6 to 10 minutes it will take to get my Oceanic computer bargraph back into the green.

 

[The Chairman]

Wouldn't it make more sense to teach some kind of graduated stop procedure,

It makes AWESOME sense and is actually what I teach! See my thread on Deep Stops.

This comes from a recent class I taught... no one knew about the deep stops and they were thinking in terms of "three minutes and surface" rather than going the other way. To me, that represented a %100 misunderstanding of what stops were all about: adding to our safety.

In my OW classes, I really push that ALL computer users need to do a five minute safety stop in addition to at least one deep stop. Fer instance, if I do a 110 ft dive, then I will spend at least a minute at 60, at least a minute at 30 and then at least 5 minutes at 15/20. Then I take at least a minute to get to the surface after all of that.

 

[MrConclusion]

My safety stop is normally three minutes only.

If I'm coming straight up from much deeper than 60 feet (as opposed to gradual shallowing late in the dive) I try to stop at about 30 feet for 1-2 minutes.