SmileMon,
First, it seems like those who would talk you out of solo diving are not being too successful
Second, you do seem to lack a bit in the experience area. Third, you are going the DIR route with equipment, which has its good points and some not-so-good points for the inexperienced. Having three completely redundant systems may seem like a great idea, but if you are diving in less than 30 feet of water, without overhead hazards, the redundency can cause problems as well as solve them. Each piece of equipment needs attention, and it is the attention to the detail of your equipment before and during a dive that determines whether you will have a successful dive. Remember, "A man in armour is his armour's slave." (Glen H. Egstrom, Ph.D.
Effect of Equipment on Diving Performance,
Human Performance and SCUBA Diving Proceedings of the Symposium on Underwater Physiology, April 10-11, 1970.
I have solo dived since the 1960s, and was in fact taught how to do it in the USAF when I was a Pararescueman. When we jumped parascuba, we were in fact solo diving. We could not depend upon anyone else to help us out. So our equipment, while simple, was also vital. We needed a functioning, reliable regulator. On many of my current dives, I dive solo with a single regulator, either a trusted double hose (Mistral, for instance, the old one), or a single hose regulator. When I dive with a single hose regulator, I've been known to vintage dive (when a single hose reg is just a single hose reg), but I also have two sets of doubles which can accept two independent regulators. So my feeling is that the equipment can be somewhat variable, depending upon the circumstances. In very difficult environments, I will opt of redundancy. In shallow water, especially in rivers with current, I take a minimalist approach. Both have their places.
The main thing for solo diving is to be independent, and to be very, very comfortable in the water. If you have a water background (and being in Florida, it would be easy to come by), have been in the water a lot, snorkel a lot, swim a lot, then diving can actually be safer than snorkeling or swimming solo. That's because of the obvious, you have an air supply.
There are two things no one has mentioned. The first is the book
Solo Diving, The Art of Underwater Self-Sufficiency[/I] by Robert Von Maier. This is an excellent text for the beginning solo diver. The second is that I have not heard anyone mention the necessity of carrying a good, sharp knife. You talked above about having an "instructor" wrap you up in rope or something to see how you would react. First, it's not a good idea. Second, if you carry a good, sharp knife with both a sharp regular blade and a serrated edge, you can get out of almost anything.
Entanglement is a fear for most divers. In our LA County scuba class in 1963, one of the last skill tests was for an instructor to drop a fishing net over a buddy pair, and watch them get out of it. They had to help each other out. I went through the US Naval School for Underwater Swimmers, and their last pool session was to do anything to get us to surface. This included turning off our air supply, taking off our masks, etc. My buddy and I, when they approached the first time, handed them our masks, and did the rest of the exercise without a mask (they couldn't take something off that was already off). We then basically guarded each others regulator and manifold, and they never forced us to surface (we were using DA Aquamaster double hose regulators for this exercise). The point was not to get entangled, but to reinforce the buddy system. But because of the amount of monofilement line in the water, it is important to have a good, functioning, sharp cutting tool close at hand.
In solo diving, there is no buddy system, so no need to reinforce it. Here are some of the exercises I do:
--I swim and dive a lot.
--I test all my gear in a pool before taking it into open water.
--Because I still dive the vintage way, I do a lot of doff-and-don exercises in the pool. Some of this is for my own skill-building, and some is to test concepts (such as the myth of not being able to breath off a flooded double hose regulator). I sometimes post these exercises an the website: http://www.vintagescubasupply.com
--flood my mask and clear it underwater.
--snorkel dive and breathhold dive in a pool, especially when the weather in too yucky for diving.
Hope this helps.
SeaRat
