Diving with Twins 1
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Never mind, have a read anyway - it might give you something else to get excited about.
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Diving with Twins - 1,
Diving with Twins - 2,
Diving with Twins - 3
Kit Config
Twinsets - a learning experience
I've finally had the opportunity to use my twinset. Since I began diving in the UK I've used a 3l pony on nearly every dive, regardless of depth or location (swimming pools aside) - redundancy has always been a prime concern to all my diving - using a twinset is just a natural progression and will enable me to start taking on some of the more challenging dives around the coasts of the British Isles. Having bought a new back plate and harness along with secondhand 12 litre cylinders, manifold and twinning bands back in October 2005 with the intention of putting them to good use as soon as possible I ran into a problem... I started working in London. Commuting there from Staffordshire isn't fun and it also means that come the weekends the last thing I want to do is get up at 3am to journey to Stoney Cove and play around with strange kit. It wasn't a complete loss though, this meant I had more time to research which wing I'd prefer (I finally settled for the OMS twin bladder)
In the meantime I had lots of opportunities to try them on - adjusting the harness nearly every time, moving the twinning bands, changing the position on the backplate etc. etc. What I hadn't done was get them wet, this has since changed.
We (Cate and Keith came along as well) got to Stoney early Sunday morning and whilst mulling over what I was going to be doing and that I would still need to play around with regulator configuration, hose routing etc. realised that I still had a lot to do and that Cate and Keith would probably prefer a quick pleasure dive to watching me assemble and disassemble various bits of kit for an hour or more.
As it was the sarcastic duo went off and saw 4 pike! At least I got some peace and quiet. Once they returned I was finally ready... no not quite... I needed to attach my dry suit hose. This had better be worth it.
During Keith's surface interval we planned the dive; I'd play around the 7m shelf and see if I could get my buoyancy sorted out whilst Keith stuck close to offer support if needed. Everything was going fine so we took a slow descent to the 20m shelf... no drama. Circling around the shelf past the Wessex we ascended back to 7m for a 5 minute bimble before surfacing.
All in all a fairly pleasant 30 minute dive getting used to new kit... not quite - this was all about making sure I'm comfortable in the water at the moment and I've got to say... I'm not.
I had more than enough weight on my back to be slightly negative at the surface, the problem was the location of all this weight, anything above 10m meant that I couldn't inflate the wing sufficiently to give me anything like a decent position in the water so I was constantly fighting being in a head down/feet up position - suffice to say my back now hurts.
I hadn't factored in certain basics; positioning of either LP inflator hose and how to keep them over my shoulder not disappearing behind me... I opted for holding on to the left side and not using the right - if I needed redundancy for my buoyancy I'd use my drysuit. My ability to use the dump valves was seriously hampered. The harness wasn't as tight as it could have been...
The list goes on.
So - next steps...