Ditchable or not?

[Jorbar1551]

I currently creating a DIY harness weight belt by attaching D rings on my normal belt ( hard weights) to suspenders. To be able to ditch this weight, I would either have to cut it off, or take off my BCD then take it off my shoulders. While i do feel very comfortable underwater with ditch and don skills, I do feel that in an emergency I might not be able to get it off quick enough.

I do two types of diving:

1) Recreational - Double AL 80's, Backplate and Wing, and crushed neoprene drysuit. I have only used my drysuit once in semi deep water, and I needed about 40 lbs of lead

2) Public Safety Diving - Single 80 with 13ft pony bottle - jacket style BC, crushed neoprene drysuit, and Full Face Mask with coms. we are also always tethered. Due to the nature of the job, and the type of water i'm usually diving in, I'm rarely in water more than 15-20 feet deep. Sometimes we are in 5 feet of water, and we like to be very negatively bouyant so that we stay on the bottom and not bounce up and down.

What is everybody's views on this?

 

[FishDiver]

I would be uncomfortable with 40 pounds of non-ditchable weight with a drysuit. Blow a seal or leave the zipper open a bit and you're screwed.

 

[TSandM]

Well, what you have to do is think through the situations where you might want to drop weight. I think we'd all agree that one of those is at the surface when you are in distress, perhaps with a flooded suit or a punctured wing, or after a freeflow where you have lost all your gas, or because you are injured or ill. The system you describe would make it very difficult to impossible for a would-be rescuer to remove your weights in such a circumstance. There are a lot of technical divers who carry no ditchable weight at all, though. In theory, they have tested that they can swim up their rig with no additional buoyancy, or they are carrying some type of auxiliary flotation, like a lift bag.

People often talk about needing to drop weight at depth, but it's very difficult for me to envision a circumstance where dropping weight would be helpful in a dry suit. We generally plan for one catastrophic failure, and that could be a flooded suit (in which case your wing will hold gas) or a failed wing (in which case you should be able to lessen your negativity with your suit). Being completely out of gas might render you unable to do either, but you should have a buddy nearby so you can get some gas to orally inflate your wing (and the reality is that going suddenly and totally out of gas in doubles is vanishingly unlikely). In addition, dropping significant weight at depth virtually ensures that, absent something to hold onto, you will be unable to control your ascent later, so it really has to be a strategy of last resort.

We all make risk assessments in this sport. If you don't often dive water with rough surface conditions, or if you habitually carry additional flotation, having all your weight non-ditchable may not be a big issue.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I think I would look to try to split the lead between my harness or affixed to the tanks or something and the other 20 lbs on a weight belt or some other ditchable mechanism.

 

[Water Monkey]

I have been in the water with a number of people who have gone into panic mode on the surface both while teaching and just out diving and I can tell you that the last thing on a panicked divers mind is dumping weight. Generally the sequence is, the regulator goes to the right, the mask goes to the left and they start thrashing. I personally believe that diving with the appropriate amount of weight is more important than being able to ditch it. Being over weighted is extremely dangerous. Many newer divers do not understand this and dive over weighted because they cannot control there buoyancy or they are not dumping air properly.

 

[vshearer]

This is one of those cases where a jacket style BC with integrated ditchable weights has it's advantages.

 

[Jorbar1551]

This is one of those cases where a jacket style BC with integrated ditchable weights has it's advantages.

In what way?

 

[Jorbar1551]

Being over weighted is extremely dangerous. Many newer divers do not understand this and dive over weighted because they cannot control there buoyancy or they are not dumping air properly.

1)Minus a catastrophic Drysuit and BCD failure, the reason I overweight myself is because its needed to do my job. We also limit our diving to 20 minutes, have a pony bottle for backup, and have other divers and a Al80 backup bottle within a minute of so of the needed emergency. In addition, most depths we are at, i know that I would be able to swim up to the surface.

I'm still working on the amount of weight needed for my recreational diving. The backplate is around 6 lbs, and i have a v weight, so the amount on my hips should be less.

 

[Diver0001]

I do feel that in an emergency I might not be able to get it off quick enough.

I think you already answered your own question. It sounds like you know it but don't know what to do about it. The litmus test for if something is ditchable is if you could jettison your own weights AND your buddy could do it for you, without doffing anything.

I think you have a neat idea, actually, but it probably misses something in the details. Maybe adding something like quick releases to your suspenders just above the D-rings would solve your problem.

Have you looked at the commercial ones to see how they do ditching?

R..

 

[Mayor]

40lbs sounds like a lot of weight to drop at one time. I would have a hard time with control on that assent. Of course I like having a balanced rig with very little weight on board.