I certainly didn't mean to sound harsh. But yes, if that bulk is mainly fat, and not muscle, then a weight loss programme and fitness plan is the way to go.
Hi No offence taken, I’m not a snowflake and it’s clearly a relevant point. More tissue needs more air to feed it! Regardless of a lack of exertion when I’m diving my resting air consumption will be higher as I’m bigger, and my spare tyre compounds that. I’m actively working on this, but given my wife is the size of a borrower I am always going to have a higher SAC rate I think... So I need a long term solution. as suggested by Wibble this sidemount option looks interesting because of the flexibility and ease to move between doubles and singles for reef or deeper dives as needed. is it common to dive side mount using a BPW set up? Looking at these back late wings it appears to me that air distribution will be more even with a donut wing compared to a tear drop sidemount wing and therefore help maintain trim. Pure speculation but can anyone confirm or refute this? Thanks for the wisdom all,
A BPW - backplate and wing - is for backmount. In the early days of sidemount before the advent of the specialised harnesses, some people would sandwich a wing between two backplates as a make-do sidemount rig. Dedicated sidemount harness + buoyancy tends to wrap around you with the weight down the spine. The back is then pretty clear and the cylinders hang off the waist belt or possibly from the back. It's worth having a nose at sidemounting.com. This video shows them going through some skills and demos in Gozo. Found this vid (in German!) which nicely shows the XDeep Stealth being set up. And this one showing a load of skills in a pool. Note how generally calm the person is (easy when in warm, clear water with no gloves!) Sidemounting's just a suggestion that could be useful for you. It would need to be tweaked to be able to use rental Ali80s and you'd need to put in plenty of practice. But that's half the fun of diving. Sidemount is often a tool for a job. It came out of cave diving where you can get through places that backmount / CCR divers can't go (ad demonstrated in the first vid). Where it really comes in is its flexibility when you've a compelling reason to use it. That could be that you can't lift heavy tins, can't do a twinset shutdown, or as a moderate augmentation to gas supplies. Aside from that, sidemounting's brilliant because it's so stable; way more than any backmount configuration.
Whenever I’ve faced this same sort of issue I went with the bottom stage option. Breathe that down before switching to backgas to continue/finish the dive.
Bottom stage is the easiest and cheapest way to do it. SM is more polished but much more expensive. Either will require proper gas planning.
Bottom stages need work too. They're very dangly and prone to turning bottom up when empty. Kit wise it's the regs + the cam-bands. Your BCD will need chest D-rings and two belt D-rings (a rear one for when the cylinder's full, a forward one for when it's empty and floating)
It is probably worse if it is muscle as muscle has a higher metabolic rate and therefore the requirement for food and oxygen is higher than fat for an equivalent weight of tissue. hence the wife and daughter have such a low sac rate because they are small. If you are very active swimming against the current then absolutely fitness comes into play but for a lazy diver in a drift dive fitness should mean little as your exertion levels are so low one your in the water! Just a theory but makes sense to me, I am going to give a stage cylinder a go in the pool with my jacket style BCD and a borrowed regulator and see how it goes! Seems a reasonable potion in the short term for extended my deeper dives. off to the gym to try and lose this spare tyre. cheers SS
20 is pretty decent for 40 dives, I'd say (although nice clear, warm water does help). Women and youngsters do tend to be light breathers, you can't keep up with them and, as others have said, shallow dives will often result in NDLs longer than a single tank will accommodate. Final point (which someone might have addressed) if you're doing 3+ dives a day, racking up to the NDL on the first couple will probably see your later dives getting severely curtailed, especially if there's any depth to them, so maybe think about that aspect, rather than carrying loads more gas. In the UK, most people will only do a couple, maybe 3, dives in a day (yes, they'll be a flood of contradictions, but it's true of most). M
