Begone wretched BCD

It seems to be something of a running joke in the scuba diving industry that the gear you get sold after you’ve done your ‘Open Water’ is the gear you will soon enough learn is absolute rubbish and you need to buy all new gear. So while I wish I knew then what I know now, I’m in considerable company within the sport. In particular I’m talking about BCD or boyancy compensator devices. These being a sort of jacket thing you put on that has inflatable air pockets to control ascending and descending underwater, as well as being loaded with pockets and generally some sort of integrated weight pocket system too. The thing is, they’re bollocks and everyone knows it.

The proper way to dive is to use a backplate and a wing. It’s so simple it’s ridiculous. A wing is just the air bladder thing itself with an inflator hose on it and a dump valve. This bolts onto a ridged metal backplate and a simple strap harness loops through it all over the shoulders, around the waist and under the crotch. It’s modulator, so you can change any bits of it as required, it removes all the clutter from your chest and it’s infinitely better for trim – that is to say staying horizontal in water, with the air compartment right next to the heavy scuba tank(s). It costs the same as a BCD, but it’s better in every way.

So why do people buy BCDs? I think because they’re a whole unit. As a shop you can just sell something off the shelf. A BP/W set up needs to be sized up, have straps cut to length… even so, it doesn’t seem hard to do. Technical divers have some other techniques within the so-called DIR mantra which are useful takaways, like having a very long hose to your primary reg so you can donate it in a hurry to someone in a confined space. Meanwhile you just grab the secondary which is bungied under your chin. Standard BCD stuff has a short primary and a short secondary, and the secondary hands around on a clip at your waist and bashes into everything you swim over, frequently gets dislodged from it’s holder and is generally bollocks.

I would have moved sooner but I was umming and ahhing about whether to make the jump to twin manifolded tanks. I haven’t because it’s more money than I wanted to spend. It was expensive enough to have to buy some extra bits to make it all work but I’m very happy with it. Now I’m staring down the barrel of the Victorian winter and feel properly equipped for diving when the weather permits. The dry suit and wing set up is  a fantastic way to dive. Looking forward to going back to Tasmania in a couple of months, it’s a spectacular place with some legendary diving. So good on the last trip we had to do it again…

This time, however, I’ll endeavor not to do 48 meter deco dives on a single tank…