weighting bail-out bottles

Jeff Pack said:
you make the assumption everyone can get rid of their tanks, not everyone can.

If you have the option of clipping a tank off or sending it up the line, then great, but if you don't, you need to carry the swing weight or dump the tank.
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You should have planned the dive and tested the kit on shallow dives before you do anything significant so if you are having bouyancy problems it is because you made a mistake or lost some lead on the dive, either way it should be a very rare event.

In this scenario if you have a lot of deco to do let the cylinder go to the surface, if you lose it you lose it, better than risking losing your life. As someone said earlier, take the regs off, adds a bit of weight to you and cuts your losses.
 
Getting rid of a tank is fine if you are finished with. If not it is a fast ride to the surface and a chamber. I think off setting the possibility of a tank swinging positive makes good sense.
 
This sort of situation and a working setup just needs to be thought through holistically. The first important issue is, like most, I weight myself with NO stages, and ensure I can control my buoyancy while free-swimming all the way to the surface. The second is good diving practices. It gives you the means to take care of so many other little issues this things like stage cylinder weighting becomes a non-issuel

One thing to that appears to be commonly missed is that if you are using your bailout, one needs to take care of their buoyancy - including the counter-lungs which are increasing in size and buoyancy as you ascend. So dump gas from the C/L regularly. On a JJ, 8 litres of gas in the C/l is going to make you rather positive in quick order!

Unless you're in a cave, or diving solo with no surface support at all - as in you've lost your unattended boat, and are doing a blue water ascent :boggle: - sending up a bag / SMB is a must so the surface knows where you are. We have a deco station and a red/ yellow buoy system to alert those on the boat as to what's up. This means you have a place to clip off stage tanks that may cause a positive buoyancy issue... and no worries, about them causing other issues to the SMB line... they ADD buoyancy.

I think that just about sorts it out. Keep your regs as weight by all means, send the cylinders up a line, etc. etc. it does seem that getting weighting right without stages is the important step.

cheers

Andy
 
The simplle answer is dont use Ali cylinders unless you have to.


I use a single Al80 for my Nitrox deco gas and i use steel for trimix. They weigh almost exactly the same full and in the water but the Steel 10 wont get positively boyent when near empty. With 100bar in its a tail up in the air but its not going to drag you up.


All this stuff about sending gas up the line makes me wonder what you do if you have an issue with your next tin? you have sent up your only other gas option so surely your screwed.


Like most ill weight so i can hold 6m with no bailouts. Thats 6m not 3 and ill have no gas in my suit but i can do it if i have too.


Diving like that i find no issues carrying an AL80 with 250 bar 50% and a steel 10 with 275 bar of 18/45 or 13/65

In the bad old OC days Id jump in with two steel 10s both with 250bar nitrox in and twin 15s back gas also steel. We could get down the shot so fast it was like free fall :D

No one cared about diving massivly overweight in those days. It was the only option.

ATB

Mark
 
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