Rapid ascent

[Kevin1963]

I am an advance diver and I switch over to using a dry suit. I took a class for its use and have about 7 or 8 dives with it. The last two dives have been terrible. Visibility was terrible and my buoyancy is out of control. With each dive I experienced issues with the amount of air in my drysuit and BCD. I had two or three rapid ascents on each dive from 30 feet or so. My computer hates me. I'm worried if this continues I may do harm.
Does anyone have suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Kevin

 

[rongoodman]

Are you using the dry suit or the BC for buoyancy control? I'd try running the suit with as little air as possible to avoid an uncomfortable squeeze until things settle down. The bad viz certainly isn't helping with your awareness of where you are in the water column, but there might not be much you can do about that.

 

[Trailboss123]

You will got lots of debate on this topic, but my opinion is that you should have the minimum amount of air in your drysuit as possible. Just enough to keep the squeeze from being unduly uncomfortable and then use your BC as your primary buoyancy control device. Too much air in the drysuit can be problematic due to its inability to vent as quick as a BC can. You may be overweighted and as a result, may be needing to add too much air to compensate, so make sure you have your weighting properly dialed in. Make sure the dump valve on your drysuit is fully open and remember that air travels to the highest point. So, you need to be properly orientated to allow that air to escape easily, when necessary. Good luck and hang in there.

 

[Landau]

Also keep the valve all the way open and spend some time practicing dumping air from the suit. It took me a while to get good at dumping air and I am still working on the right body and arm position.

 

[fmerkel]

Do a bunch of practice 'squares'. Shore dive. Drop in chest deep water. Stay there until you are neutral and trimmed out.
Swim down to 10' > stop and hover-stay until you are completely stable.
Turn right or left, swim ~20' > stop and hover-stay until you are completely stable.
Turn toward shore, swim up dumping as necessary to stay in control. In chest deep water stop and hover-stay until you are completely stable. If there are problems, surface and deal with them.
Repeat until you can do this without problems. DO NOT GO DEEPER UNTIL YOU CAN.

Then start adding depth at 5' increments. Do not go deeper until you can complete at least 1 circuit without issue.
By the time you get to ~30' you will be adding enough air that you have to deal with it coming up.
Shallow dives in drysuits are more challenging than deep. But consequences for screwing up are much less. Practice shallow before you go deep.
Once you have that down you should try some inverted (feet full of air) and other issues at shallow depths until you can deal with those.

Remember, you have a SUIT, and a BC, and your LUNGS. You have to deal with each/all of them to maintain buoyancy. Remember to breathe out. You may be inadvertently holding a big breath concentrating on the task.

There is debate on WHERE to put your buoyancy air. Ultimately you have to figure that out for you and your kit. Where ever you put the air, you have to deal with it.

If you are over weighted the extra air bubble in the suit is going to give you grief. much worse than using wetsuit and BC alone.

 

[EricTheDood]

+1 on the shore diving. Master your setup in shallow water.