How Much Gas is Enough - Running on Empty (Ainslie)

[RN]

Lynne, you can read his article next weekend when you're here.

[netmage]

Andrew,
A big thanks for writing this up... I truly feel they are thousands times more to be learned and reinforced in the everyday near misses that never get mentioned vs. the fatalities under the microscope...

I can certainly see how some exploration situations call for solo legs... but I can't help to think some degree of support back in main conduit would have helped stop the snowball...

-Tim

[diverdarren]

I totally agree with Skip,and I always dive with Al, never use him to extend penetration, and count on him to solve all the what ifs. I also think that is how all full cave divers should be trained. I don't CCR dive but I believe the same bailout considerations should be applied to OC. Is this too conservative? Is there such a thing as too conservative? "The only real emergency is out of air " is not a cliche. IMHO

[aainslie]

Huh - sorry I was AWOL on this thread for a while.

James and others on solo- I would love to take anyone willing to go with me on some of these dives. Seriously. But I genuinely cannot. Plus long sections of them are narrow and you cannot communicate much. Last I have to turn the dive early about 30% of the time because of a problem - with 2 divers you end up turning awfully early awfully often.

Exploration just is a sorta solo game for many of us. I now have a side mount rebreather working quite nicely. These things are sorta rare. So I get to play on my own much of the time.

Skip, totally agree. But it takes a lot of self control to do this. When you're repeatedly diving the same section then it's inexcusable not to stash an oh **** stage or two along the way.

[Sludge]

I always dive with Al, never use him to extend penetration, and count on him to solve all the what ifs.

Let me see if I can remember how this goes. Oh, yeah.

"I love AL. He's my favorite buddy. But he's pretty much worthless for anything other than giving you extra gas."

[NEON]

Is there a chance that the article will become available on-line?

[FW]

Is there a chance that the article will become available on-line?

Way back at the beginning of this thread this was posted:

...I'd like to honour NACD's copyright for a while before posting it online...

[skip]

how long is "a while" when it comes to honouring copyrights? I bet if andrew asked nicely, that the NACD would post the article online at their website. they have done so with other articles in the past.

skip

[aainslie]

As promised...

www.asainslie.com/documents

Look for "Rethinking bailout..."

Regards,

Andrew

[LiteHedded]

great article andrew. glad everything came out ok.