trob09

I stopped wearing ditchable weight a long time ago. I think the risk of losing it and blowing deco is greater than the risk of having excess negative bouyancy. It does require that you spend the time to get your weighting right (not to much or too little)

Somewhere along my tech training path I had to demonstrate that I could maintain bouyancy using only a lift bag. This was wearing heavy steel doubles (pressed steel 104's) and several (3 I think) stages. I haven't done empirical testing, but I can't believe that a flooded rebreather is more negative than that.

In this test we had to swim a course that had several depth changes and ascend to the surface with multiple simulated deco stops (the stops weren't required for the dive). This was done with all gas removed from the wing and suit. We did the same exercise using the drysuit as the only source of bouyancy.

If my wing alone wasn't enough to compensate for an unrecoverable loop flood, a lift bag or the drysuit could be pressed into service to get me to the surface safely.

T