Quote: (Originally Posted by
Mark Chase)
Shut up moaning and dive a third large tin
There yah go
I dont think theres a magic shortcut. You do the dive - you need the gas volumes.
People often moan about carrying one or two tanks saying what a pain it is - but I suspect if they spent some time organising their tanks better (the way they carry them) they wouldnt mind carrying them so much and their dives would be overall safer (from bailout perspective)
My advice would be get biggest tanks you can and sidemount them*, forget about them. Thats the min baseline. I add to this baseline depending on the dive. Im so used to diving that way I just dont feel the tanks are there at all.
Any additional tanks added to this baseline are clipped off high and tight - no danglies. These are the only tanks I 'feel' and its important to rig them right (high and tight) I feel them because you loose easy access to your chest D rings and feel cluttered. I also preffer if I can to keep one side clear so I can easily clip light, secondary etc off on one clear chest d ring - but thats not always possible.
If diving with more than 3 tanks (so lose easy access to both chest d rings) I often clip my secondary to my wrist so I dont have to dig it out from under the front two tanks and I dont clip off my light to chest d rings
*biggest I have sidemounted so far was 18L steel tanks sidemounted with polystyrene floats attached (as shown to me pre by by Jerome) Nice having 36L of tank vol as a baseline, but usually I use AL80s as min baseline.
Id rather take 10% extra bottome bail gas than 100% extra shallow gas because you can have a long time to alert the surface sometimes before you need the shallow gas and depth is where things go wrong and go wrong fast (additional stress from paranoia about not having enough bottom bail gas to swim back to line increases RMV and/or makes you make bad decisions (such as an imediate ascent when it would be possible to make it back to upline) I think your better off having bags of bottom bail gas so you have time to find your buddies (if diving same wreck same time) get their gas and avoid a solo free floating bailout. If your on the upline you have people around that can help easy for surface support to drop tanks. much safer and again importantly you will be less stressed (lower rmv)
One final point I learnt the hard way is to have spgs on bottom bail tank(s) the reason is simple. when you bail to OC you will (if your anything like me) imediately start to worry you will run out of deep bail gas before you reach the depth you can switch. That stress can encourage you to do silly things like an imediate ascent instead of swimming back to the upline (where that possible), or ascending, or turning dive (cave) before alerting your buddy(s)
Lets say youve just bailed and signalled your buddy (who is leading cave dive) he hasnt noticed, hes still swimming away from you quite a distance now- do you 'waste gas' catching up with him to alert him youve bailed? One part of you is screamming you should the other is screaming GET OUT GET OUT!
Stress/paranoia about running out of bottom bail gas can encourage you to do the wrong thing and not catch up with him. (I was quite surprised when I turned around and found no buddy
) Of course if you do 'waste' some of that gas to catch up with him you benefit far more because now you have access to his gas too! Not having an spg adds stress as you will get paranoid (i did) the stress can also increase your rmv!! If you have an spg you can see how much volume you have how much your using and that will help you I believe keep a little calmer. Anything that will minimise your stress and hence rmv is critical if you want to survive a bail