All weight on back? Or some on belt?

[Orlando Eric]

Some ditchable weight is highly recommended.

Bubbles in your blood can be treated better than lungs full of water.

You of course can swim your rig up if you are properly weighted. What if you are in no condition to swim? You could have broken legs from the fight with the Giant Octopus.

Or got your leg stuck in the giant clam. I have seen this happen even to John Wayne!

You could get skew'd in the leg by a passing narwhale.

I prefer to have ditchable wieght so that I can drop off SOME ( 1~3#) and get positive. Hopefully being able to keep within the old standards of ascent. None of this would be necessary if I had the air I should, the dive went the way I planned, and nothing in the 1,000,000 to 1 happened to hit me today.

You also never know when Murphy and Finagle are going to be diving with you.

 

[OE2X]

Here is my take on this:
I like having my ditchable weight be slightly greater than the negative weight of a full tank. In my case with a single 130 that is about 10 pounds. I can swim that to the surface and then ditch my weight to remain positive.

 

[cool_hardware52]

My goal for single tank diving is to be neutral at the surface (eyelevel) at the start of the dive, with no gas in my wing, and a full tank.

With an 80 cuft tank you will typically breathe down only 4-5 lbs of gas. Even a 3 mil wetsuit will compress and loose at least a few lbs of lift at 15 ft., this compression of your exposure suit will allow you to hold a safety stop when the tank is lighter. If you are too light at 15 ft drop to 20 for your 3 minute stop.

Assuming you are properly weighted, the requirement / usefulness of ditchable weight is a function of your exposure suit. If you are diving cold water, i.e. a thick wetsuit, that can compress alot, and loose a lot of buoyancy, ditching some weight might make sense.

If you are wearing very little exposure suit you aren't much more negative at depth anyway, and can likely swim up.

The key is to be properly weighted, not over weighted.

Tobin

 

[Scuba_Steve]

Scuba Steve,

Did I say something wrong?

Nope.

Just making the additional point that the guy would be dumping only part of his weight as it stood from his description, so it's not a total blow-and-go and shouldn't be too scary or out of control

BTW, the last 7 posts are seriously redundant

 

[lamont]

you can easily dive without ditchable if you follow a few rules:

1. do not run OOA
2. do not get separated from your buddy
3. do not overweight yourself

worst possible case, you swim it up, breathe off your buddy's tank and cut yourself out.

if you are overweighted and suffer both buoyancy failure and run OOA at the same time (struggling to swim up with elevated SAC rate?), you will have issues. even if you manage to swim it up, you'll need to kick to keep your head out of the water and breathing, while at the same time trying to get out of your gear.

going to all non-ditchable is an advanced gear configuration that assumes that you've got your weighting correct, and got your gas management and buddy skills down to the point where you're always going to have a breathable regulator available.

 

[cool_hardware52]

going to all non-ditchable is an advanced gear configuration that assumes that you've got your weighting correct, and got your gas management and buddy skills down to the point where you're always going to have a breathable regulator available.

Nothing to disagree with here, well said.


Tobin

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

going to all non-ditchable is an advanced gear configuration that assumes that you've got your weighting correct, and got your gas management and buddy skills down to the point where you're always going to have a breathable regulator available.

Yes, this pretty much sums it up. Although I'm a dry suit diver myself (Never been in warmer waters than 60F...) I'm still not there, quite yet. That, and for the sake of I'm using a neoprene dry suit with pretty much the same ability to compress at depth as a wet suit, I'm carrying 8 lbs in a regular weight belt a part ditchable weight. It's hardly noticeable at all. Steel doubles, SS BP and 5 lbs p-weight adds up to the rest.

Part of the weights ditchable is a good idea for wet suit diving, as long as I don't see any any velcro or quick snaps on your rig. It should come loose when you want it too, but ONLY then.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

The question is: Should I fly extra stainless steel in my luggage or rent (for free) a belt with 2 or 3 weights on it when I get to my tropical destination?

The answer seems pretty simple to me. Save the weight for flying home cheap Kaluha in your luggage!

Plus I really would like to know how cold water wetsuit divers (makbe the "advanced ones") seem to think they can swim up all their weight from depth with a complete BC failure. In cold water, I snorkel with 22-24 lbs of lead and add 3 -4 pounds for scuba with an aluminum tank so I can comfortably dive shallow. When I'm down 80-90 feet, my BC is very nearly full. I know that I can't swim myself up without dropping lead. I'm easily 18-20 lbs negative at depth and I'm NOT over weighted.

And another thing...why does it seem that people seem so deathly afraid of losing a weight belt with 10 or 12 lbs on it because of the asumption that an explosive ascent will occur, but also feel that they can safely swim up a rig that has a similar negative bouyancy after a BC failure? Is this just my perception, or do people really think like this?

 

[lamont]

And another thing...why does it seem that people seem so deathly afraid of losing a weight belt with 10 or 12 lbs on it because of the asumption that an explosive ascent will occur, but also feel that they can safely swim up a rig that has a similar negative bouyancy after a BC failure? Is this just my perception, or do people really think like this?

I tried swimming up my gear from >30 fsw with ~2500 psi in my double 130s. it was not that difficult and as I ascended the gas in my drysuit expanded and it got much easier...

I've also tried swimming down against a stuck on inflator (simulated) with a 55# wing and that was tough but i could hold it long enough to hit the dump valve, which made holding depth more managable...