How often do you need a 400ft primary reel?

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The only time I have actually needed more than half of my Larry Green reel with 350-400' of line on it in any cave environment to date has been exploration/virgin cave. For those situations I started carrying the orange reel from home depot pictured below with pre-knotted 10' increment line to quickly respool the Larry Green reel on site. One thing I would personally recommend just as good practice, put knots in the line every 10' in your reels/spools because ya just never know and it's also helpful reference when exiting a silted out cave with limestone dinner plates and silt raining down from exhaust gas bubbles
 

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The only time I have actually needed more than half of my Larry Green reel with 350-400' of line on it in any cave environment to date has been exploration/virgin cave. For those situations I started carrying the orange reel from home depot pictured below with pre-knotted 10' increment line to quickly respool the Larry Green reel on site. One thing I would personally recommend just as good practice, put knots in the line every 10' in your reels/spools because ya just never know and it's also helpful reference when exiting a silted out cave with limestone dinner plates and silt raining down from exhaust gas bubbles

Here's a good video on how to knot the line- although I've never tried it myself, I enjoyed watching the video:
 
@flymolo that's the easiest way to knot line for sure. On my spools/reels that go in the ocean, the first 70 feet are knotted with a sequence of knots. I.e. 20ft has 2x knots back to back, 40ft has 4, etc. This can roughly give you the ability to complete decompression without a depth gauge. It obviously can't factor in scope of the line though, so you have to gauge that with current and approximate with experience by shooting the bag/buoy and seeing the scope and validating against a depth gauge. It's not usually a whole lot unless the current is ripping and you're tied to the anchor line.
 
Here's a good video on how to knot the line- although I've never tried it myself, I enjoyed watching the video:

or you use the knotted line purchase as an excuse for a trip to Mexico. At ZeroGravity they have a "line knotting machine" and sell pre-knotted line at a reasonable price :wink: Let me know if this reasoning works for any of you to convince their better half why the Mexico cave diving trip is an economically sound proposition :D
 
@tbone1004 I do that with my SMB spool for that exact same reason.

@1atm If they sell it by the spool I might have to pick up a couple of spools. I would like to redo the line on my primary and safety reels, but I am a bit lazy to do hundreds of feet of knots, the 50ft of knots on my SMB was a huge pain in the rear.
 
@tbone1004 I do that with my SMB spool for that exact same reason.

@1atm If they sell it by the spool I might have to pick up a couple of spools. I would like to redo the line on my primary and safety reels, but I am a bit lazy to do hundreds of feet of knots, the 50ft of knots on my SMB was a huge pain in the rear.

They sell it by the meter, so you can buy and re-spool as much as you like. The spool in the shop that has the knotted line on it is humongous
 
They sell it by the meter, so you can buy and re-spool as much as you like. The spool in the shop that has the knotted line on it is humongous

I was thinking of getting enough to respool my spools at home. But I think just build the line knotting machine.
 
How often do you need a 400' primary?

You need 2 or 3 - for all those times you need to scoop a bunch of virgin cave.

Knotted line? Naw, you can get more on without the knots.

And be sure to not survey...
 
Get 400ft, as others said 250ft pretty much works in all the Florida tourist caves (and non-tourists too that I can think off). There have been a few caves I have dove in Mexico that ~250ft was not enough.

If you haven't experienced this already it sucks to be running a reel and run out of line ~10-15ft from the permanent guideline.

As other mentioned if you start doing some deeper ocean dives a 250ft reel is not really enough if you're shooting a dSMB at ~200ft+ with current. It ends up being not enough scope in some cases.
 
I picked up a 400ft classic reel, saw one of CL. I also have a bunch of REMs, because apparently those are common in Mexico. Going to need a Mexico navigation primer when I arrive.

As far as the ocean, the last time I went ocean diving it didn't turn out too well. :vomit:

We will see how the final weekend of my AN/Helitrox course turns out next weekend.
 
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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