Recreational Sidemount Diving: Is it still the Boss?

[The Chairman]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Please stay on topic and keep it friendly. This is not rec.scuba.

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[DaveC]

How can it still be "boss" if it never was? Vast majority of divers use jacket bcd or backplate/wings.

 

[Mendigo Diver]

Open water sidemounts only real advantage is that the cylinders can be removed quickly and easily to facilitate moving around on land/boat. It offers less redundancy than manifold twinset and has a cluttered configuration. Independent twins can be made up by traveling divers with cambands, this requires you to bring less hardware than with sidemount.
As was previously stated, sidemounts huge surge in popularity was a trend that seems to have died off a good bit.
Having said all that, if you like sidemount in open water then good for you, enjoy it, personally I think its a ridiculous rig for OW diving but there you go

 

[MichaelMc]

Yes, my tiny manifold doubles are similar to single backmount and they let me practice valve shutdown drills. But their DiveRite Rec. doubles wing and the normal backplate and harness are more to travel with than sidemount is. More importantly, they do not give me the flexibility of movement that sidemount does.

Also, in OW, having two independent air sources is enough for me. I don't need to access gas in both my bottles to get back to the surface. Though many times I could access both if I feather the valve at my side that had the problem.

The sidemount cylinders kit is small. I'm not sure how an independent doubles kit -- with four cam bands, connectors for them in pairs and bolts -- would be smaller.

I don't have a tropical sidemount rig, but I love that it can be as simple and small as a harness and the DECO wing. An XDeep spine weight pocket and some trim pockets handles weights.

DECO - Dive Equipment Company - Sidemount - BCD's (Plus shoulder loop bungees and wing bungees.)
That is much smaller than my doubles wing, backplate and harness.

But the big gain is that I'm really flexible in the water in sidemount.

 

[ScubaWithTurk]

Isn't everything on the internet titled to get you to click on it? You'll have to forgive us though as we're learning this as we go along. We're a team of just regular dive pro's living in a tiny island in the Caribbean which has been in complete shutdown for 4 months. We're not allowed to open the shop yet, we're not allowed to go diving and there are no tourists here at all. The premise of the videos was to:

a) Give us something constructive to do as in the first 6 weeks of total shutdown a malaise set in and we were all starting to get very depressed
b) A teaching aid for the new instructors, help them to learn about elements of diving and how they can effectively present these
c) Try to do something positive to promote the business.....
d) Have some fun in these terrible times.

All of our videos echo our British sense of humour, and when we create them we're really not taking ourselves too seriously. There are many people out there on internet-world who are Uber-serious, so we chose to take a much more light-hearted, almost parody approach. Some people will love it, some will hate it.... but for all of the reasons above, we're going to carry on doing this (as the alternative right now is do nothing).

Thanks for your feedback, and thanks also for you patience as we learn more about 'presenting'

I appreciate your wanting to make videos during a difficult time for the industry. I was not trying to be cruel at all. I know I posted some blog pieces when I first started that used the same tactics and I took a bit of a hit for it. I learned from that criticism to make my titles strong but also be sure to not make them misleading.

Keep making videos and I will continue watch them.

 

[Colliam7]

As was previously stated, sidemounts huge surge in popularity was a trend that seems to have died off a good bit.

I tend to agree. The bloom appears to have faded a bit. At one time, I thought SM would sweep through the industry, and many backmount doubles users would convert. Hasn't happened, and probably never will.

Open water sidemounts only real advantage is that the cylinders can be removed quickly and easily to facilitate moving around on land/boat.

That is definitely an advantage, and one that I appreciate. Would I rather climb a boat ladder with double 100s on my back (or even my double 80s for that matter), or would I rather hand my cylinders up to the mate, one at a time, and climb the ladder with just my harness? That's a no brainer. SM all the way. For the entry, do I prefer to walk to the stern with cylinders on my back, or down at my sides? Well, I prefer to have them on my back. What I really prefer to have the cylinders put over the side on a short line, then I jump in with just my SM harness, and don the cylinders in the in the water. Maybe, that's too cumbersome for some, which is fine. Works for me.

There are other advantages for some divers. Frankly, a well-tuned sidemount rig may be a bit more stable in the water than large BM doubles. A SM rig is stable like a pontoon boat. With my double 130s, I know I constantly engage in a slight degree of perhaps subconscious 'station-keeping' with my fins, simply because the 130s want to roll me a bit - they are big, wide heavy 8" cylinders. I don't find it to be a problem, but I know it goes on. Putting those 130s down along my centerline is inherently more stable.

I don't see any material differences in the redundancy compared to manifolded doubles. Both configurations afford good redundancy, for me. And, I have never found trying to assemble a set of independent BM doubles while traveling to be particularly functional. If someone else does, great. My SM rigging (2 cam bands, with a couple of pig-tailed boltsnaps for each cylinder) travels quite easily, and set-up is quite quick. I can rig my cylinders in about 60 seconds, then put the regs on and check them in another 60s, and I am ready to go. If there is a difference in efficiency that favors BM on shore dives, it is in the fact that I will generally carry my cylinders to the waterline one at a time - two trips - while I can walk my BM cylinders down in one (back-straining) trip. Of course, when I am walking back up that hill after the dive, I am thinking, 'D#$%, wish I had gone SM on this one.'

I think what we've learned over the past 5-7 years, as the commercial explosion of SM gear evolved, is that SM is not a universal panacea for bad backs, or bad knees (any more than split fins might be). It is not the one and only scuba 'truth'. I don't think it was ever 'the Boss', simply something new and intriguing. For the majority of (single cylinder) recreational divers, BM is fine and SM is little more than an extra expense, and a possible 'try it' amusement. For us gearheads, it may be 'the Boss' simply because it is yet another rig to tweak. I dive it. I like it. I teach it. At the same time, I dive BM, I like it, I teach it.

 

[Subcooled]

The only benefit I see for either system outside of preparation for tech diving is the ability to do extended rec dives

It would really suck to carry a rigid steel cylinder (or two or three) on the back. The spine is flexible for a reason. Sidemount lets us move. Freely.

Two sidemounted cylinders also guarantee a better balance (not affected by roll).

Sidemount diving usually means two cylinders. This means that when the rec diver runs out of gas, he or she will only run out of gas in one cylinder.

 

[Addison Snyder]

or would I rather hand my cylinders up to the mate, one at a time, and climb the ladder with just my harness?

Sounds great hypothetically, but I'd be super nervous about dropping a cylinder in the ocean.

 

[ScubaWithTurk]

Sounds great hypothetically, but I'd be super nervous about dropping a cylinder in the ocean.

I always hand my cylinders up to the boat and have yet to drop a cylinder. I push from the bottom, the boat crew grabs the valve and informs me they have it and I let go. Like in all things diving, good communication is the key to prevent any issues.

Now that I think about it, I actually have to hand my cylinders up twice for each boat trip. We wade out to the boats here so I hand them up prior to climbing aboard and then post-dive. Never an issue.

 

[Colliam7]

Sounds great hypothetically, but I'd be super nervous about dropping a cylinder in the ocean.

Certainly i wouldn't want to drop mine either. One solution that is in use on some boats -drop a line, with a bolt snap on one end, over the side. have the diver unclip, and re-clip to the line, which is then pulled up, with the cylinder(s) attached.