Travel Realities

Yesterday I flew from Hong Kong to the Philippines to finally go diving with my Classic KISS. After a spell of rock climbing and OC diving (urgh), I tried to cut down on all the crap. So I had the following packed into two medium sized bags:

• KISS with light CF 2 litre cylinders, lightweight Oxycheq wing, plastic BP
• Two deco regs - another so I could dive twins if necessary
• A few tools
• Jetsam Booster with hoses and fittings, gauges etc
• Jetfins (too bloody heavy)
• 3 mm wetsuit
• 2 masks
• A few spares - O-rings etc
• 2 spools
• 1 small reel
• 2 SMBs
• 5 t-shirts
• 2 pairs of shorts
• Small towel

This lot weighed 58 kg on the check in scales… eek!

Not to mention, my carry on which was some point/ shoot camera stuff and chargers, and an HID with two lightheads (they were trying to enforce the 7kg carry on that day; I had 10 kg)

I am by myself, so there was no one else to spread the load onto; usually on tech trips people are giving stuff to me!

I guess I'm just fully appreciating just how equipment orientated my diving has become, and that I need to travel with this much stuff, going to places that sometimes don't have much infrastructure to support technical diving (actually the Philippines is pretty good)

Now I'm definitely thinking about a lighter rebreather for travel because that’s where a lot of the weight is.

I can hire deco regs, but prefer to use my own. Of course, most of the time I will not even be using them, unless I bale out, or get sick of doing the last stop on the unit.

So all this lot is going to Australia and NZ over Christmas. It's definitely going by DHL; Qantas will crucify me with excess baggage charges