Safety stop anchor double as a sausage?

[lord.harshil]

My current SMB sucks. A cheap $10 3' tall thing.

Any idea if the OMS 6' SMB tends to close up and not leak air from the bottom as it hits the surface?

 

[Granny Scuba]

... I tied a knot in my SMB line at 15 feet. I shoot the tube from 25 or 30 feet and reel up to 15. Dump some air out of the BC and just hang on the line at the knot. I like it. Keeps me from having to watch my depth gauge and my weight on it keeps the tube vertical. -Charles

Charles understands. While my buoyancy skills certainly need refinement I don’t plan to literally “hang on”. I like the way Charles puts it. It sounds so relaxing.

Truly its not so much about buoyancy…. My original intent was to try to reduce purchases and reduce an array of items hanging off my BC.

Please pay attention to where you are reading your SCUBA information from. I suspect that you gleaned the terms "safety stop anchor" and "hold firm" off of a British diving web site. These are not terms used in the United States when discussing SCUBA diving techniques and equipment..

I am flattered that you think I browse European websites, but I actually first heard about it in a conversation right here in Alabama, several companies make them and they are sold right here in the USA. I guess they could have started as a foreign concept. And no doubt (tongue in cheek) Alabama leads the USA in embracing new things…we are always on the cutting edge.…. (remember we are 46 out of 50 in education)


I am amazed, and thankful for the vast and varying and differing and passionate opinions on this subject. Oh and by the way. I bought each of my family a ScubaMax 6’ nylon sausage….they will do…for now at least.

Blessings

 

[alcal]

Hi i just read all the posts in this thread out of interest and they certainly too and fro backwards and forwards on opinion.

Passed my OW last month so interested in reading other divers recommendations,ive rigged up a DSMB using bright orange(nearly bought a yellow one but was told that can be distress for tech divers),ok anyway its 6ft long has a dump valve so it can`t burst and is open bottomed for inflation and self sealing so even lying on the surface it wont deflate attached to a racheted real of 50 mtrs,cant knot the line as it passes through a feed eye but marked of my safety stop depths in black felton the bright yellow line, i think in British waters we have to carry one as a piece of safety equipment.
Ive copied my buddies and wrote my name down the top half for recognition,went to Portland Head last weekend and did my first sea dives off a RIB boat we let one off between each pair of divers on our accent,on our last `drift dive we set it off once on the bottom,as the first pair back on the boat we watched as a small` weekend jolly boat`head straight towrds us ignoring the dive flag,the boat master could see where the DSMB`s were and blocked the little boat from going straight over one,so much for the safety distance a boat should stay outside.They went off cussing and moaning at us!!!

In my` very humble `opinion dont take the risk of not carrying something that adds to your safety.

Alan
Birmingham England

 

[paddler3d]

I would like to buy only a few multi-purpose items in effort to reduce “stuff”.

My husband said Reels and lines are a pain, so we would like to limit these in our group of 5.

Wow...a lot going on with this thread.

East Coast vs. West Coast. North vs. South.

Anyway, I'm going to disagree with your husband. A good reel is not a pain. Finger spools and cheap reels...they're a pain.

I thoroughly appreciate not wanting to repurchase stuff and not to carry too much stuff.

I do feel that every diver in a group should have their own reel and SMB in an Open Water situation.

I dive a BP/W so I've got a few more D rings. I clip my SMB and my reel to the D ring on my butt. It is out of the way and it does not create any drag in the water.

My SMB is a Carter Personal Float that has 75#'s of lift. It is big. I'm confident that it will be easier for someone to spot in the event I need them to spot it.

My reel is the Manta, Jr.. It came with 185' of line, but I removed 35' and put a knot in the line every 10'. Since the reel is not full to capacity, it has less of a chance of getting fouled. The knots are helpful when wanting to do a quick survey.

Here one why I carry it in OW.

Let say I'm in NC diving on the Dixie Arrow. It is something like 105fsw to the sand and it only has a 10-15ft profile. It is a deep dive. It is a dive that can have current.

It is easy to rack up 10-15minutes of deco.

If for some reason I get blown off the wreck, I can simply blow my bag and do my necessary stops as I ascend. Hopefully the boat saw my bag and they know they have a diver a drift. When I surface, I already have my SMB out for all to see. If there are any other boats in the area, hopefully they will see it and not run over me.

One of my buddies has an SMB, but no reel. If he gets blown off the wreck, he can't let anyone know where he is until he surfaces.

I guess that he hopes we'll get blown off together.

That is why it is wise for each diver to carry their own.

While where at it. A signal mirror and whistle are one of those items that I carry in a pocket and hope I never need.

Good luck!

 

[String]

I've never heard of anyone deploying a SMB for a safety stop, it's kind of pointless.

I can only assume your diving experience is concentrated on a very small area of the world and have no experience of how the rest of the world operators. How is it pointless? It means the boat can find you and be waiting by the time you surface. That is actually useful. It can also stop boats going directly overhead divers who are very near to the surface. If you send it up from the wreck/bottom before starting ascent its up there 10 mins or so before you are giving the boat even more chance of seeing you.
Thats how it works in most of the world.

If you get blown away from the boat and don't feel comfortable doing a safety stop underwater without the boat by you......then surface. It's a safety stop. It is NOT mandatory.

If you get blown away by the boat you want that bag up ASAP to be found by it. Every minute delay takes you further from it so you want it up from depth as soon as possible especially if surface conditions arent great. Also why would you NOT do a safety stop if you have the gas to do one? Its ridiculous to skip it for no good reason.

Not charter boat in the UK is going to allow any diver to dive off it unless he has a DSMB and knows how to use it and that applies to everyone from 4 dive only OW divers upwards.

 

[HowardE]

Finger spools and cheap reels...they're a pain.

Best finger spool out there. Not a pain.

Tobin (Deep Sea Supply) makes a good finger spool... not cheap plastic crap, and easy to use - even with dry gloves.

 

[Tom Winters]

I have a bunch of Delrin spools from different fabricators. They're all pretty tough - like backing a 5-ton boat trailer over one and having no damage.
The metal spools are gorgeous, but the Delrin spools spin out neutrally and just hang in the water column with you when you fire off your DSMB or lift bag at a given depth. Plus I probably paid as much for 5 Delrins as one nice fancy machined steel spool would run.

 

[cool_hardware52]

I have a bunch of Delrin spools from different fabricators. They're all pretty tough - like backing a 5-ton boat trailer over one and having no damage.
The metal spools are gorgeous, but the Delrin spools spin out neutrally and just hang in the water column with you when you fire off your DSMB or lift bag at a given depth. Plus I probably paid as much for 5 Delrins as one nice fancy machined steel spool would run.

Tom,

The DSS spools are formed from sheet, not machined in the traditional sense.

That allows for pretty thin sections, and the resulting spool is not hugely negative.

Wrap it in ~100 ft or more of near neutral nylon line and you have spool that will sink if you drop it, but so will a delrin spool.

Acetal is has a specific gravity of ~1.55, delrin definitely does not float.

Cost? It's pretty easy to spend $30-40 for a delrin spool vs $55 for the DSS 100 ft SS finger Spool.

Tobin

 

[D_B]

SMB .. I always carry one and a spool but the only time I've deployed it underwater though was on a trip to the Dry Tortugas, live boat, drift dives, it was mandatory that you had one, but you did not have to deploy it till on the surface .. but doing so underwater on your stop makes the boat captains job easier .. I also put my initials on it black marker .. DB
.. I just think that it makes sense to take one, especially off of a boat where you cant be sure that you won't ever need one

I don't know if this helps with stowing one, but here is what I came up with after seeing one on a friends BP/W ... seems to stay tucked out of the way and is easily deployable

Tip on deploying it underwater ... the captain on the Dry Tortuga boat suggested this ... first couple of times you might want to do this at the END of your safety stop, just in case you go up some while deploying it , um yeah
Something I learned ... while rigging it underwater, do so out of the corner of your eye, while watching the particulate matter in the water , it gives you very direct and immediate feedback on whether your rising or dropping in the water column

 

[lord.harshil]

...while watching the particulate matter in the water...

What if I dive in 100' vis in the waters off a warm sunny island?

*ducks for cover*