August 17, 2013

This is going to be just a short post to document another training dive with my dry suit.

Jimmy The Bagman met me around 8:30 AM to go on a dive, and I also gave him back his doubles that I had picked up after getting them a hydro – well, he paid, I was just the courier.

A few days ago, carrying those doubles on my back from the parking lot to my ghetto apartment, was enough to make me think that anyone who beach dives in doubles is a psychopath.

Some lady that I met in the elevator when I had the tanks on, asked me, “Are you spraying for bugs?”

“Uh, no, these are just air tanks,” I said, as she could hear my back cracking from the excessive weight.

We geared up at Vets – this was just going to be a single tank dive with my dry suit and then training at a pool on doubles.

I had my dry suit on, had my regulator assembled and went to get my weight belt – hmmm….

Where the fuck is my weight belt?

I usually leave it in my truck, so it must be there somewhere…

Well, I left it in the Duster while I had the truck serviced a week ago and didn’t put it back.

Luckily, between Tony from Dive N Surf , Jimmy The Bagman and the eight pounds of soft weights I had in my “save a dive kit,” we could came up with the weight that I needed for the dive.

Thank you Tony and Jimmy for saving my dive!

I unzipped the pockets on my BCD and dumped a mixture of soft and hard weights into the pockets and zipped them back up.

Jimmy asked, “How do I get the weights out if I need to?”

I replied, “It’s weight integrated with my BCD, just unzip the pockets and take them out.”

“That is not weight integrated,” Jimmy responded.

Anyway, the dive was on.

I got out of the surf zone and put my fins on without issue.

I had made sure that I actually zipped my zippers up all the way on this dive.

I heard an air leak, and Jimmy confirmed it was coming from my first stage.

Well, we went forward with the dive, as I wasn’t losing too much air.

Logged SCUBA Dive #441

Dove With Jimmy The Bagman
Veterans Park, Redondo Beach, California, USA

In With: 2900 psi
Out With: 700 psi
Max depth: 71 feet
Waves: Pretty flat with rollers at the surf zone
Visibility: 15 feet, 20 over the shelf
Water Temperature: 54 degrees at depth, 68 at the surface
Air Temperature: 72 degrees
Total Bottom Time: 35 minutes or so

The dive was really uneventful – we saw the typical yellow crabs, shrimp and small fish.

A few times I had to arch my back so the air bubble would float from my feet to my chest.

We surfaced 35 minutes later to a semi calm surf zone.

I thought I would make it out without falling.

No problem with the waves, but I couldn’t get over the sand step – if you have dove Vets, you know what I mean.

I fell on my stomach, Jimmy took my fins, and I was able to get up om my own.

I was dry, all was good and another dry suit dive was under my belt.

Jimmy gave me a lecture on the theory of the redundancy of doubles – we were not quite ready to train in the pool with the lack of my weight belt.

That will be later.