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Well, of course you do. How so?do I really need four backplates?
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Well, of course you do. How so?do I really need four backplates?
2K in gear if you don't have a BPW to start with is pretty conservative. I've seen those who wanted to get into tech and didn't have access to good deals or didn't want to buy used gear drop 5 grand to start.
You'll need at a minimum
3 regs
BPW or sidemount rig
Doubles or sidemount cylinders (while you could get by with one set to start, most of us have multiple. I have 6 sets of SM cylinder of various types)
Deco bottle
Drysuit
Lift bags, reels
Lights
Once you start, it becomes a deep hole that you throw money into.
I have a 34 year old married son (non-diver wife) and a 29 year old daughter. They both come down to Florida to dive with me every once in a while. I will keep their gear until I can no longer to get them to dive with me. Diving with my children is one of biggest rewards in my life. I will continue to try to dive with them as long as I can. They both were certified at age 12 on Grand Cayman.I'm just a smidgen younger than you, and right now I'm considering how much gear I should sell. The rugrats are moving out, and since they won't go diving with Dad particularly often, I have a bit of gear which probably is superfluous. But it kinda hurts to sell it; that'll be closing a door.
It's not so much the financial penalty; I bought most of the gear used and will probably recover most of the financial cost. It's mostly an emotional thing.
He calls it tech diver level 1 which is AN/DP/ER
I am curious to know how many advanced divers on SB are perfectly happy to always dive within recreational limits, and who have no plans whatsoever of moving on to more "technical" types of dives ?
Non-technical vs technical has naturally always been a moving target, and has evolved a lot in the previous decades.
So let's say we use these terms as they are currently understood by a majority of divers in 2018.
Please don't hesitate to post any comments to explain your vote.
I'll play Devils Advocate here. Having done the Spiegel Grove multiple times and being a non-deco recreational diver my experience differs from your description in many ways.
1- I don't drive all that distance and wait all year just to dive the SG. I plan a dive trip that will be perhaps 12-18 dives over 5-7 days. I do other things during the trip such as dining out and sightseeing and just plain relaxing so it's not "all about the diving" although it's "mostly about the diving".
2- My dives on the SG average about 40-45 minutes because most of what is to be seen on that wreck is in the 60-80' range. Being aware of depths and maximizing bottom times by staying a bit shallower on average can make quite the difference. 2 - 45 minute dives on the wreck are more than enough for me. On a recent dive we swam from the stern mooring, through the wreck almost to the bow and back again. Yes, on one dive we saw most of the wreck.
3- It can also get somewhat chilly when you're in the water close to an hour or more. I don't mind the SI to relax and warm up and enjoy some time in the sun.
4- I have no interest in hanging on a line for an hour looking at nothing but an occasional passing jellyfish. I bore easily.
5- Totally not worth the expense and extra gear and the weight of the additional tank. Besides where does a technical diver on vacation rent a rebreather or double tank rig anyway?
6- So my bottom time is about 1.5 hours vs your 3 hours. It's not clear to me if you are including deco stops in that 3 hours, if so it's a no brainer that it's not worth the extra trouble to tech dive under those conditions. Even if the deco stops are over and above the 3 hours it's still not worth it. That's a ton of time in the water. Also are the other non deco divers sitting there waiting for you to decompress after the second dive when everyone wants to head back to the dock?
I don't consider myself a technical diver. I dive air (unless Nitrox is free on a liveaboard). I have done numerous deco dives including many to 200 fsw on air, but they were all for a specific purpose. Most of my dives today are well within recreational limits since I enjoy more bottom time for filming.
Going tech? Not just yes, but H**L, yes! Just a matter of time. I have some things I need to work on, like getting more SM dives under my belt among others, before I do TDI SM class, hopefully next year. Diving dry again, so that box is already ticked.
Did my deepest dive to date on Sunday - Milwaukee Car Ferry. 130ft to the sand, deck about 100ft. Buddy and I dropped down to 117ft to see the huge twin props before ascending to the deck. I got nicely dark narced. Gloom, doom, fear. Was kind of dark down there, viz could have been better, 50F water temp. Reinforced my desire to do helitrox as soon as possible after AN/DP (unless I do it in combo). Did the dive on a rented HP100 (I've dived them before) and my AL30 pony. Would have preferred to do it SM, but I'd only dived dry SM twice before and weighting needed to be tweaked. Felt it would have been too much task loading.
I want to do deeper wrecks without having to worry about NDL. I dive my Perdix set at medium conservatism. My backup Geo 2.0 is still set on DSAT from when it was my primary, and it was beeping to beat the band!
Not necessarily deep, deep wrecks, but perhaps to 200ft. We'll see, but that's my thinking right now.