Losing your weight belt--Let us count the ways.....

[nolatom]

The "Have You Ever Ditched your Weights" thread got me thinking of the much more common experience (to me, anyway) of just plain losing your weight belt to Davey Jones and his locker.

I guess I'm on my 4th weight belt, in about 250 dives and almost two decades:

First belt--lost it after a couple of years. I forget exactly, but it came off while I was reboarding a boat for last dive of the day, off Pensacola. No one felt like diving for it, so Sayonara.

Second belt-- This one at least had an interesting story. It was at the end a night dive way offshore on a liveaboard. I towed a panicked diver on the surface (she lost the end of the the ladder trail line in rough seas after removing her fins, and drifted away bicycling hard, finless, and wide-eyed, but still reg-breathing). I was close so I came alongside to tow her--didn't really know how to tow so I guessed at it and came alongside her and hooked arms. Which must somehow have opened up the clasp on my belt, and zoom! Gone. I watched it go, since I couldn't let go of her. It probably wasn't that long a tow, but it sure felt like it against the seas and current. I have never breathed that hard through a regulator, before or since. But got her to the line, and the boat crew pulled her up the ladder. I was completely out of breath and almost out of air as it turned out when I finally sat down, exhausted. But she told me (after she had stopped crying, she really had panicked), that I saved her life. I doubt that, since she was buoyant and had air, but it was nice to hear.

Looked for my belt the next morning, couldn't find it. Found another belt, though-- but it turned out to be hers, she may have lost it when I lost mine. Maybe we hooked clasps open while briefly turned toward each other. C'est la vie.

Just after that (back in around 2002), I took Rescue and learned how to do a surface tow more gracefully. And didn't lose another belt for a long time, 'til...

Third belt!!. This was just in the last year or two, I kept having to tighten it. Why? Didn't realize the clasp had become worn-down and the fabric (only fifteen or so years old, dammit!) was slipping, or it just wouldn't stay fully closed. But it was. Bye-bye.


Your stories?? ;-)

 

[MaxBottomtime]

In nearly 2500 dives I've only had my weightbelt come off once. I was swimming back to shore along the bottom when my buckle snagged on a rock. I began to ascend feet first but was able to grab some kelp. I could see my weightbelt in the sand too far away to swim to so I hung upside down until my wife caught up with me. She saw the weightbelt and looked up at me and began laughing. Finally she brought it to me so I could put it back on and continue swimming to our exit.

 

[Compressor]

Never lost it.

 

[Chris H]

I lost a weight belt, inside a wreck, 22 years ago. That is the only one I've had issues with in the water. One other time I dropped a belt overboard while I was getting back on a boat. I have since changed up my rig, and I try not to need a belt.

 

[GreggS]

I've told this before but...

First dive trip after getting certified, diving on the Sherman out of Little River, SC. I had not bought any of my own gear, other than fins, mask, and boots, so had to rent everything else. I'm a big guy so had trouble finding a weight belt that was long enough. Finally found one that would go around me when the weights were added but it was actually a bit too long. 2nd dive, I was at the bottom (50 FSW) fanning the bottom looking for artifacts. Suddenly, I realized that the weight belt was sliding off my waist. I don't know if I had not gotten it closed properly, if the clasp was worn out, if I accidentally caught it on something that released it, or a combination of these things. Anyway, just as the end came off my waist, I was able to grab it.

So there I was, upside down in the water hanging onto the weight belt, hyperventilating like crazy. I quickly assessed my predicament, got my breathing under control, and got the weight belt back around my waist. However, it was so long that I couldn't bet the end of it back into the closure without losing balance. I looked around and of course, my insta-buddy was nowhere to be seen and neither was anyone else. After a couple of unsuccessful tries to get the belt back into the clasp, and unable to see the dive computer, I slowly went to the surface by holding the belt around my waist and watching my bubbles. Fortunately, by doing that, I suffered no ill effects from the ordeal.

That was the last time I used a belt. When I did buy my BCD, I went with weight integrated. But I would have most likely done that even without this experience.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I told this on the other thread: I lost one and have no idea how it came undone. I saw it sitting on a ledge of the wall I was diving. I was particularly motivated to swim really hard down to recover it (I did) because I had marine biology students on the dive and was supposedly supervising them.....

 

[rhwestfall]

I have the image permanently ingrained in my memory of my wife with her weight belt slid down to about her knees, with her lower legs flared outward holding her weight belt from dropping while drifting along in the St. Lawrence River mid-water column (around 30-40')...

Made for an interesting ascent.......

Other than that, in our combined nearly 60 years of diving, there are no other stories to tell regarding weight belts...

Yeah, boring.....

 

[Chavodel8en]

I have never lost one, but unfortunately contributed to someone else losing one once, in a Keystone Kops type situation.

This was in Key Largo (Molasses Reef?), maybe 12-14 years ago. There was a very large gentleman in the water, on the surface at the end of a dive and apparently his belt was loose.[BTW, he was a flailing mess underwater] He had asked several other folks to tighten the belt for him. Im not sure why he couldn't do it himself. But several folks had failed.

So I dove underneath him to try to do it. I figured it wouldn't be that hard, the other divers were probably just incompetent. But he kept flailing around, constantly rotating back and forth in the water. I just couldn't do it. Finally, the belt slipped off his waist and went to the (shallow) bottom.

To compound the situation, I couldn't swim up his belt (it had a lot of weight on it - probably ~20 lbs). I could barely get off the bottom, and I refused to use my BC to float it up. Then the smallest woman diver I had ever seen dove down, grabbed it and inflated her BC to the surface. On the surface she instructed me that I had to use my BC to float it. Fun times.

 

[Tom_Ivan]

I refused to use my BC to float it up.

Why?

 

[Marie13]

What weight belt?