Sidemount- Specialty or the new normal?

[next gen]

I just want to see what it is like. A couple weeks ago I switched from a bc to a backplate and I love it for open water.

[Greenwood_60]

They are all tools. BM is just the 10 lbs sledge hammer of cave diving. It's a great tool to have when you need to bash open a bedding plane.

[next gen]

They are all tools. BM is just the 10 lbs sledge hammer of cave diving. It's a great tool to have when you need to bash open a bedding plane.

[next gen]

I think easily in the next ten years I will need to dive doubles just for the gas and redundancy needed in deep diving but not too deep.

[victorzamora]

So, I think there's one thing we can learn from 16 pages of this thread. The question was: Is sidemount a specialty or the new normal? I think the answer is "neither." Sidemount has its fans, and sidemount has people that hate it. Backmounted doubles has its fans, and backmounted doubles has people that hate it. It's not normal in the sense that it's normal instead of backmounted doubles, but it's normal in the sense that people accept it alongside backmounted doubles.

[kwinter]

As sidemount becomes more the norm, I fully expect PADI and the other agencies to develop certification programs for backmounted doubles. You can't take away a revenue stream and not expect them to turn the tables on you. Clearly anything you have to be certified to do and pay a fee constitutes a specialty.

[SlowDiver]

I stopped by the dive shop this morning to see how how the dives went this pass weekend at Panama City and one of the students was there cleaning up is new Dive Rite Nomad LT Cave sidemount reg. Not knowing much about the reg. I asked how he liked using it off a boat. He mention it did fine using two alm. 60's but wished it had a pull dump valve on top of the BC for when he goes vertical but other that that he loved it, and is it ever small. If he had gotten the bluewater version I noticed the power inflater is on top and a pull dump on the bottom. Any way it looks like students are going sidemount and boat diving at the same time.


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[victorzamora]

As sidemount becomes more the norm, I fully expect PADI and the other agencies to develop certification programs for backmounted doubles. You can't take away a revenue stream and not expect them to turn the tables on you. Clearly anything you have to be certified to do and pay a fee constitutes a specialty.

I think that people should seek training in doubles or sidemount before approaching harder dives. Training doesn't have to be formal or through an agency, but proper mentoring. That, or signficant experience. I think that training/mentorship cuts down on mistakes, the learning curve, and the danger of trying a different setup.

[phillip1]

I got trained in cave diving in doubles then dove for a while not even knowing SM existed being in the DR we are very isolated here, then discovered SM and Thomas my dive buddy and I learned on our own. We explored a lot in SM and thought we knew something about trim etc.. and then we took a cave diving trip to Mexico where we discovered that in fact, although safe, we really sucked.
I think if you are a trained cave diver learning SM on your own nowadays is way easier as IMO SM already is or is fast becoming the new normal, there are now many SM harnesses available and multiple videos on trim etc... but you will save a lot of time by finding a good SM instructor and taking a SM course.

In reverse bovine cave training it would the about the same as if you were a trained SM cave diver and were having way to much fun in a comfortable, redundant and flexible configuration and wanted to put limitations on your diving, decrease the fun level and redundancy while at the same time try to appear more "serious", well having only ever dived SM, if you took a BM course you would save about the same amount of time as if you learned SM on your own coming from a BM only background.

[Sludge]

Well, since you have SO MANY dives in Florida caves, we should all listen to you about dives such as Manatee, Devil's, Jackson Blue - no, wait, you've never even seen these caves, right?