Posted by RaiderKarl on March 20, 2001 at 13:53:48:
In Reply to: "Wet steel" a no-no.....why? posted by AADIVER on March 18, 2001 at 23:18:34:
AA-Diver if youre diving with me, my Zeigle Tek B/C has 65 lbs of lifting capacity. I wear 32 lbs of weight with any of my steel tanks, from the 65 to the 120 cu ft. [Hint: I also wear 32 lbs when Im freediving for abalone without a tank on.] Therefore, if I were your buddy, and your B/C failed, I should be able to save your life by hauling your old tired rump back up to the surface using my own B/C.
I would definitely want to be paid a king's ransom by you afterwards in that event! And I prolly wouldnt dive with you again for wearing such shoddy equipment like a B/C that could fail without warning. On the other hand, if your wife was really beautiful and young, I might just leave you on the bottom, however!
Now, if you ditched your weight belt, you should be able to kick up to the surface yourself, even with a partially full steel tank. If that didnt work, then you should be able to take a few deep breaths off your regulator, then ditch your tank and B/C too, doing a freediving ascent as you very slowly humm to allow air to escape your lungs.
You would definitely want to flair your arms and legs to slow you down as you approached the surface, and humm really loud during the last 20 feet of your ascent. Afterwards, we could all tattoo "polaris missile" onto your "johnson" for you.
If you were diving with a pony bottle, you could detatch it when you ditch all your gear and ascent breathing off it. I highly recommend pony bottles for all divers. It allows you to rely less on someone else to save your life.
You may want to think about carrying a marker buoy with about 100 feet of line attached, so that you could deploy it attached to your gear before ditching it, so that we could help you retreive your gear after you are discharged from the decomp chamber.
Hmmm, there, I think I have thought of everything.
The owner of the dive store where I am D/M-ing happens to believe in the no-steel rule for tank rentals to his customers, just like Mike K. suggests. This owner feels that his best chance of getting is rental aluminum tanks back is when they float to the surface with their diver attached to them, after the tank has been bled almost empty of air. He himself dives with steel, but the store only carries aluminum tanks for rental.
/s/ RaiderKarl the Deep Stroke with the Pony Bottle