To weight or not to weight

[Gudu]

I am gonna print this one out-------------------------:cool2:

Okie Newbies, I as a fellow newbie have been rather morbidly obsessed with the A&I thread (accidents and incidents) . . and I've noticed a disturbing trend.

We newbies have too much weight on us when we dive. AND

We newbies don't yet have it ingrained in our habits, when or how to ditch that weight in emergencies. THUS

We die.

So, I've been working on getting my weight down and for me there have been a few key areas of focus. I share them in the hopes you too will focus on the weight issue. Since I am no expert, not even close, I can't offer you advice on how to do these things correctly. But there are several threads on each topic that offers much advice. PLUS you can ask your instructors. Yep, call 'em up. I don't care how long it's been since your OW cert. Call them. Frequently. I'm blessed with a great instructor. I even emailed him while at ITK with my 'newbie stupid question of the day'.

Ok, here goes my two cents on what we newbies need to focus on early on:

1) Buoyancy, buoyancy, buoyancy . . . now, my dive buddies will tell ya that I have NOT mastered this. But 20 dives into my journey I continue to work hard at it every dive. I analyze why it sucked, and then try to fix it in the next dive. I think my learning curve is shortened because of this focus. I have a long way to go but it is an important skill. Buoyancy is affected by several things. See the next few items below.

2) One of the reasons we have trouble with buoyancy is weight (are you seeing the trend here). Since we are overweighted, we try to use the BC to compensate. For me, it was the fear I couldn't hold a safety stop. So I weighted myself too much. But now I've gotten my cold freshwater/7 mil/steel tank weight down to 10 lbs. It took learning how to RELAX at the surface and then to time my letting out a breath of air at the same time as deflating my BC, then either duck diving or going into the horizontal hover during my descent. It works. Trust me. Try it. We newbies do the feet first thing cuz it is what we are taught, but please try the other methods. I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that my ears actually clear better when I am horizontal then when I do the feet first, PLUS I can see what or who is below me as I descend. AND since I only have 10 lbs now, I use my BC far less often to 'keep me off the bottom'.

3) BREATHING . . . we have to learn to master our breathing. Not just air consumption but actually using our lungs as a sort of BC . . . I'm definitely not there yet, but it's getting better. PLUS, the less often I have to pump air into my BC means more bottom time for me so for 'air hogs' the sooner you can master the weight/buoyancy/breathing issue, the sooner you will win the air war.

4) With less weight we won't get as tired as fast, won't breath through as much air, AND have a better shot at letting our BC work for us in an emergency. IF you have an OOA situation and happen to actually remember to orally inflate your BC at the surface, BUT you have too much weight, your BC may not have enough 'lift' to hold you on the surface.

5) Finally, KNOW HOW TO DUMP YOUR WEIGHT. Practice it. It kills me to read how often divers make it to the surface but because they can't or don't remember to dump their weight they end up drowning.


Ok, I'm off the 'don't die' soap box for the day.

Veterans - please add your comments. Don't hesitate to flame me where needed. Let's face it . . my two cents isn't worth half its value so I'm not offended by having better information posted.

P.S. For those with weight integrated BC's, consider splitting your weights between the BC and a weight belt. If you should unintentionally lose the belt, or a weight integrated pocket, you will only lose a portion of the weight. (Veterans: Please chime in on any concerns about the difficulty ditching 'multiple' weights might be in this scenario).

 

[jewelofnile69]

This thread has helped a lot from just last weekend. My hubby and I dove for the first time in our 7mm's in a cold WI quarry this past weekend. We both had quite a bit of weight because we were initially having problems getting down...but then probably looked like accordians under the water because once we got under (to about 17/18ft) we dropped like flies and had to inflate the BC's to get back up...but then we would go shooting right back up the minute we'd get around 15 feet...it was fun. I thought our bouyancy was pretty darn good in the carribean. Very different experiences. We are going back to the same quarry on Saturday to dive again and to practice a bunch of skills as well since I want to feel comfortable with a number of things in that quarry before we do our AOW in early August.

Anyway, I think we were both definitely over-weighted and since I'm logging dives right now, I'm going to ensure that for each dive we write down the amount of weight and the issues with bouyancy at each weight. Glad this thread is here. Thanks!

 

[TheSmurfinator]

Just wanted to say a quick thanks for this thread. As a complete newbie - just done my OW cert - this is the stuff I am concentrating on most right now.

 

[otterfox]

Fantastic insight! :luxhello: I am also pretty new to diving and have been working on these things as well. For me, being weighted "correctly" has been a challenge. As I do not own my own BC yet, every time I dive they put me in a different rental with different weight distribution. Moreover, people keep trying to tell me what kind of weight I need or where I need it because I am a "newbie" and because I am a girl ( I assume because we have a lower center of gravity). I have decided to just dive with what I think is comfortable and decide what I like from there. I am not yet taking on long, or particularly deep dives so I'll just learn how I should be weighted as I go. (Also, buying my own BC should help too.)

Thanks again for the insight!

 

[1_Scuba_noob]

I was pondering the very points you are making. Seems like the equipment alone would is enough to make you negatively bouyant. Why add a bunch of weight except for trim purposes?

 

[Trance]

I have enjoyed reading this thread post per post, thank you to all of those who have contributed! I am soon taking beginning course for the first time, and one of the items I said that I wanted right off of the bat was my BCD. That way, I was familiar with my very own from point #1. Being in chilly Minnesota, I have a few months before OW is offered, and in the mean time I would like to make routine practice sessions in the pool to strictly work on my buoyancy/breathing and mask removals/clearing seem like a great idea too.

 

[Steve_C]

As somebody who dives some while traveling I would like to reiterate the importance of a log book where you have a list of all suits, tanks, salt or fresh,and weight and if it is ok. Given I dive fresh and salt, a 3/4 in the summer and 7 in the winter (but have rented others), normally use either an AL80 or HP100 but have rented LP95, high density aluminums, AL 100s, and a few other tanks, there is no way to remember them all. So I just look it up. At the end of the dive if there is a little air left after the safety stop and it is a new configuration, before the ascent I will take it down to 500 psi and note in the log book whether weight was right or needs adjusting.

On deeper dives I carry an AL19 pony. It is slung and there are scenarios where I might hand it off so I just accept the over weighting it gives me.

 

[GoRemote]

I got OW certified this Tuesday, and I am adding this to the top of my priority list to practice the next few dives (next to ripping my mask off at least once every dive..)

I have to admit, this is not something I have been thinking of practicing..., until now..! Thanks!

 

[MeraSonnet]

Very helpful: keeping up your dive log from Dive 1 onward. This includes recording the specifics of the dive, including the kind of suit used (or not), and the weights used and how they felt and affected the dive. Diving for the last 3 years for me has been Caribbean drift diving on vacations, so there is a lot of time in between dive trips. Always open up the dive log the night before the 1st dives of the trips and review the weight previously used to the best effects, and any other "lessons learned" recorded in the log while they were fresh. Stragies for descending and ear clearing that work really well get written down in the log that day. Also, at around my 8th dive after Open Water certification, an instructor took me through the PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy lesson, which was very helpful in cinching down some weighting and neutral bouyancy understanding. I was much more relaxed by then, and had already been experimenting with how I could use the air in my lungs and my breathing patterns to adjust to changing terrain, and not fiddle with the BCD.

 

[ExploreScuba]

Good post. I agree, very important to practice ditching weight. Also, doing a weight check will make sure you are properly weighted.