Shrimp boil, easy boat recipe

Diving with stage bottle

I have seen many articles and talked with divers who utilize a side mount scuba tank for many applications.   Exclusively as side mounts, bail out bottle and stage bottle are some of the applications I have learned about researching this was of carrying tanks.  I have wanted to try a side mount to learn the buoyancy  and trim required.  The first challenge was rigging the tank to carry it on my harness.  I asked for some help on the google plus SCUBA board and got some great suggestions.  One site has a good pictorial on how they set up the side mounts.  There are numerous variations that I am certain all have applications.  If you can tie a knot the setup is easy.  The most challenging was finding a car inner tube to make a band, most tires are tubeless these days.

 

 

I have a set of twin 80's on my back so getting in the water with a side mount was a bit daunting for the first attempt.  I rigged a line in the water and clipped off the additional tank.  There was quite a bit of current, I was a little nervous when the tank was trailing behind the boat like a flag in the wind. 

 

It was much easier than I thought clipping the tank in place while in the water.  I found it extremely comfortable and little change in buoyancy.  I didn't really notice the 4 additional pounds a full aluminum 80 cylinder adds.

 

The dive wasn't the best, conditions were pretty lousy, lots of current and surge.   Southern California diving can be challenging even in the warm summer months.  The water is much colder than one would generally think.   I enjoyed the opportunity to try the stage bottle.  I am anxious to get some additional training and take advantage of the additional air when I return to Mexico to go cave diving again.



Playa Del Carmen Mexico, Cave Divers Paradise.

  The underground rivers beneath the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico provides some of the most spectacular cave diving in the world.  My son, Ray, and I recently spent 4 days exploring just a few of the cavern entrances to this cave system.  In my experience this is some of the most beautiful water in the world and I wanted Ray to see this first hand.

 

 

    I contacted Gabriel Gasca Rubi of Advanced Divers Mexico to schedule a technical cave diving scuba course.   Gabriel suggested the IANTD Essentials course as a good introduction.  The full cave course is demanding and rigorous.  I received my cave diving certification a year and a half ago from Gabriel.  I wanted this trip to be fun for Ray. Perhaps I have planted the seed and he will continue technical training and pursue a cave certification in the future.

 

 

 It was a pleasure to watch his skills improve as the training progressed.  I found it challenging once again finding buoyancy and trim in depths constantly changing between 5 and 40 feet.   Holding neutral buoyancy at 10 feet and performing a valve drill is always a challenge.  It was good some of the training took place in the open water pool of the Cenote Ponderosa.   I found myself on the surface after trying the valve drill in 8 feet of water.  I have been a certified diver for 19 years but the demands of technical diving have brought an entirely new challenge to this activity.

 

 

 

    This is a short video of Ray trying the backwards kick for the first time.  He caught on pretty fast, much faster than I did.

 

  Gabriel is an IANTD instructor.  I do not want to even consider a discussion about which certifying agency is the best.  There are enough divers who like to argue these points.   You will learn from any and will gain as much as you want depending on how badly you wish to learn.  I will say Gabriel is not an instructor who just gives out a card at the completion of a course.  Diving is serious business, 45 min into an over head environment markedly increases the potential danger.  Being unprepared is nothing more than simple ignorance that can and does result in deaths.

 

  It was a pleasure meeting divers from other countries.  Germany, France, Holland, the UK and Canadian divers frequent the caves of the Riviera Maya.  I enjoyed visiting with a team from Toronto Canada.  Both experienced cave divers and were there to train more.  Technical divers seem to always have a desire to improve. I like thinking there is no such thing as a perfect dive, always room to improve.

 

  Ray and I are already planning our next trip to Playa del Carmen.  I asked Ray what he enjoyed best of the experience.  He could not pick one thing specifically, the overall beauty, the challenges of cave diving the incredible cave formations were all things he mentioned and many more.  For myself the answer was simple, I love the beauty of the water.

 

  Here is a video of the last dive on our trip.