Sidemount from a boat

[phillip1]

I don't see many posts anywhere about sidemounting from boats. My dive buddy & I dive off boats on a regular basis and they range from nice big dive boats, very small 2-3 people Zodiacs to really small ****ty third world fishing boats in all ocean conditions.
I used to dive doubles off the boats and it was a really pain in the a** in every way, however sidemount is really convenient, aside from all the safety of independent tanks etc.. it is super fast to gear up in all conditions and not at all a hassle to hand tanks back up at the end of a dive, in fact anyone having to get the tanks on board would much rather have two separate tanks to get up than a set of doubles.

[JDostal]

I've done it a few times. I sidemount when I go to Cozumel because then I can go cave diving pretty easy. Outside of a few weird looks it works pretty well. I take up more space getting ready on the dive boat but it's not a big deal. I get all my regs on my tank on the way to the reef. I let everyone else gear up first while I put on my mask/bc. When everyone is done getting ready in the back I'll clip my tanks on quick and jump over.

It's really nice getting out of the water. As I near the surface I unloop the tanks from their valves and just let 'em hang. Then I can just quick unclip them and hand 'em up.

I haven't done it with my steels in the great lakes yet. My main dive trip to the great lakes requires doubles as it is for the state of WI so they have set gear standards. I then just usually keep diving the doubles for awhile unless I have a specific cave diving coming up. Definitely looking forward to trying them though.

Not too sure how fun it will be carrying 2 deco bottles + argon sidemount though for a whole dive. I did a stage dive once and it was kind of a PITA. Gotta work on a better way to carry extra tanks.

[Me]

I asked the same question earlier this year. If you did a search, you would have hit on this thread.......

http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7834&highlight=sidemount+boat