Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Whitecliff Scooter Dive - 18/07/2010

I was super excited when the latest addition to my diving equipment arsenal arrived: the HDV-T16!

http://www.halcyon.net/hdv

An underwater scooter isn't an essential piece of gear by any means. However, my philosophy is to get gear that I'll be using later sooner, so as to get a lot of practice time on it before it becomes more of a necessity. With technical training sometime next year, having those scooter skills in place will make things a lot easier.

The T16 is a very very nice machine. I was surprised at how small it was compared to the old Gavins. In fact, it was standing next to a Gavin in the shop when I saw it for the first time. All I could think was "wow that's small!". The Gavin scooters are at least twice the weight and twice the size. I was very impressed with the quality of construction and features of the T16. It's 48 pounds and about waist high. I still need to test its run time, but it should be around 100 minutes.

I was lucky enough to get Alan Johnson to take me on a check-out dive on Sunday evening at Whitecliff. It was pretty crowded, and taking the scooter down to the beach was pretty cool. I know there were some jealous divers looking at it!

Once we got in the water, we ran through scooter skills. The T16 was supposed to be neutral, but it sank slowly. No big deal, there was a weight plate to take out that should fix that. It was surprising as the scooter was weighted for salt water. Taking the plate out would fix it for fresh water. Alan speculated that the salinity of the water was lower than where they tested it. Not a big deal, it certainly wasn't dragging me down in any way.

At first I just circled around under the surface. There was a surprising amount of force exerted on the right arm that you hold the trigger with, even with the tow cord attached to the crotch D ring. But, it's just because I'm not proficient at scootering yet. It's not as easy as just hanging on and pressing the trigger!

Underwater we ran through stowing the scooter behind you with a leash. It was and interesting exercise to attach the leash, clip it off to the crotch D ring and push the scooter down between your legs and behind you. It felt very awkward. But good practice managing big things underwater. I can only imagine what adding 1 or 2 stage bottles to the mix will be like! By that time though, the scooter will be second nature, which was the whole goal.

We covered a lot of ground on the dive, but no surprise there. We went from the bay all the way around the left island and back, and then messed around in the bay. It was about an hour long dive. Things happened a lot faster while scootering, since you were going faster. I had been used to keeping track of depth, time, compass heading and pressure at a certain rate. Now that all changed! I'll get used to it, but it was a challenge.

Maintaining a set depth level was a challenge too. You really had to keep the scooter pointed properly otherwise you were going up or down. I didn't have my legs out straight enough either. But that was contrary to the regular position of legs up. It makes sense though, as you need to be more streamlined. I also noticed how much a difference in your position behind the scooter made. If you are too low, you get in the prop wash and you go slower. That's easy to feel though, so that's good.

Alan bumped into me one time on purpose for fun. That was a surprise! I didn't crash into anything, which was good too. There was one time where I accidentally engaged the set-screw that locks the trigger on, so for a few seconds I thought I had a runaway scooter problem. I realized what happened quickly and fixed it though.

At the end, it was an awesome time. With a scooter, you can do all the various parts of Whitecliff park in one dive. But, you have to be spot on with your compass navigation or you won't get far!

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