Bristol Channel Divers
Web Rants
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Bristol Channel Divers |
When you go diving, are you free to concentrate on the dive and enjoy the experience? Does all your equipment fall to hand when you need it? Can you operate all your kit without a second thought, smoothly and efficiently? Or...do you spend half the dive adjusting your buoyancy, clearing your mask, bashing your torch to make it work or re-clipping that dangling hose? Is the whole dive more of a kit battle than a serene meander through a majestic underwater landscape? Worse still, do you enter the water already exhausted from the struggle to get into all that kit? If so, then perhaps you should take a long hard look at your kit and it's configuration to see what you can do to make life easier for yourself. After all, we dive for fun not as a precursor to entering Gladiators!
As
an example, a used an Ikelite RCD50 pistol style torch. Whenever I did
a stride entry, I was concerned that it would swing up and bash me. The
problem is that this torch has only one place to attach a lanyard/clip
so it always swings around from its d-ring. I put up with this for years
before finally deciding "enough is enough". Sitting down with
my harness and the torch, I though, "what would be the ideal attachment".
It soon became apparent that all I needed was an extra clip somewhere.
The lanyard would clip to the chest d-ring and another clip to the waistband
d-ring.
So, I added an extra snap bolt which is tied to a cable-tie around the top of the handle as you can see on the left. This clips to my waistband whilst the original lanyard clips to the shoulder. As a side effect, if the torch is turned on accidentally, I can see the beam in the water due to the way it hangs.
So, what's the moral of this? It's that you don't need to put up with less than ideal kit configurations especially if they are spoiling your dives. Sit down with your kit at home and think about which bits of it cause you problems in the water. Here's another example and it's a classic.
Do
you find that your BC inflator hose disappears up over your left shoulder
during the dive making it difficult to find when you need to adjust your
buoyancy or start your ascent? Normally, this is annoying but it could
prove dangerous. If you can't dump air you could end up with an uncontrolled
ascent. Here's what I did about it....
A piece of bungee elastic is fixed to the shoulder strap and the direct feed corrugated hose is passed through it. This maintains the inflator in a position where I can always reach it but at the same time allows it to be raised above the head for dumping. If you look carefully at the picture, you'll also notice that I've secured the direct feed hose to the corrugated hose using a couple of pieces of bicycle inner tube. Keeps it tidy and reduces the risk of its snagging on a bit of wreckage.
So, why not take a look at your kit, think about your diving and see if there isn't something simple you can do to make your diving easier and more enjoyable? Of course, you need to be careful modifying your kit, you don't want to compromise its purpose or make the situation worse. If you're not sure about anything, please ask someone in the club or e-mail me. I'll be happy to discuss kit configuration issues or put you on to someone who is better able to help.
I'll leave you with something you may like to consider...The dive knife - where is yours when you're diving? Could you reach it easily if you get entangled in some fishing line? Have you ever tried? If you can reach it in a stressful entanglement situation, what happens if you do manage to get it out only to drop it? And, if it is within reach and secured to your kit with a line, will it cut monofilament line? When was the last time you tried it? If you carry scissors or sea-snips, when did you last check that the hinge hadn't corroded away - it's happened - in this club!
Respect Our Wrecks!
