Northwest Dive Club

We're getting ready to replace the gear we had stolen last month and I am looking for some opinions. We had HID lights which we liked quite a bit. However I want to consider an LED option for replacement. Anyone have practical experience with both? How much less effective are the LEDs in local waters?

Oh - for those who say you should understand NDL theory to be a diver, I would argue that you're more likely to need to understand the mechanical operation of your regulators than NDL theory, and nobody teaches that: the TECHNOLOGY THAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE is not considered "important" to teac...

My biggest problem with my PADI certification (through Rescue) was that they taught NDL plans, not gas plans. I feel this is THE biggest issue in dive training today. After more than 200 dives, all over the world, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have run out of NDL. 99% ...

My storage unit is inside the parking garage of my apartment complex. The parking garage is secured with key-card entry. The storage units are inside an interior space that requires and old-fashioned metal key to open. The storage unit itself was secured with a padlock. Around 19:00 on Wednesday I e...

Bad day at the gear rack. :( Regulator Scubapro Mk25/ G250 stage G250 info: P/N 11.264.000 S/N 0400200448 DIN connector, 22" second stage hose, SPG on 24" hose, 24" drysuit hose, 24" BCD hose, 7ft second stage hose, Vytec Wireless Transmitter (* Note: second stage on 7ft hose is ...

A diver in trouble at Edmonds UWP is going to be a really sad story. You have to swim SO FAR to get to the diving areas that I'm usually a little tired when we get to the buoys and just want to rest for a few before descending. I can only imagine coming up with a distressed diver and looking at that...

We miss everyone there too! You have NO IDEA how great you all have it, being able to do great open water, ocean diving any time you want with just a few hours prep time. In Atlanta we're really not that far from the ocean, but any ocean diving activity requires a lot of planning, substantial expens...

Sigh.

You will all rue this day when I finally get to dive the Oriskany!

RyanD

The first thing I would do is grab a buddy and head over to Cove 3. Gear up, and go out to where the water is at about 15-20 feet deep. Now learn about your drysuit. Learn how to dump air from it by moving your arm. Figure out how much air is too much, how much makes your feet "floaty", wh...

Do any of these computers really "penalize" for deep stops at rec depths? I dive with a Vytec and I often take a deep stop of a minute or more when ascending from a 100fsw dive, and I've never had it chirp at me at all. Usually even with a slow ascent when I reach the planned stop depth I'...

I dive a Suunto Vytec and love it. I am gas limited rather than NDL limited for most of the dives I do around the PNW (and you probably are too, if you do your gas plan rationally). I took a liveaboard in the Carib once and did 14 dives in 4 days and it never so much as chirped at me - plenty of dow...

You were saying....

Forecast for Reykjavik:

I think you should be able to get a rec Nitrox card by passing an on-line test. You should still have a card, because you should at least demonstrate some fundamental knowledge of oxygen toxicity & MOD before you do it, but I don't think it requires classroom instruction or "experience dive...

I am interested in checking out the I-beams out at cove-2 but all I have right now are single aluminum 80's In general, I think the 60-100fsw dives off Cove 2 are a fantastic training ground for dives all over the Puget Sound. They should not be attempted without the right training, the right gear,...

We've had snow on the ground, more or less, since the day before XMas. Yesterday the temp hit -10C (that's 12F for those of you in the USA). At one point we were well over 1ft on the ground, but it has reduced to about 2 inches over 2 inches of solid ice. When I got here, I was told "it rarely ...

Good news: Fantastic new job back in industry I was born to work in. Bad news: Job is in Iceland. Turns out, Iceland is not such a bad place to live. It used to be a nation of sheep herders & fishermen. Since WWII, they've been paying Euro-level taxes into their social safety net. Some years ago...

Maybe that's something the proposed calendar here could be good for? I built an entire web-based software solution for scheduling events (and reporting results) for OrganizedPlay, the startup I founded after I left Wizards of the Coast. That software could be easily repurposed to serve as a central...

So, here is the discussion and this may be dreaming a bit but, if you could change the "man-made" problems about your favorite dive site, what would it be? Where? 1) Sani-can facility at Octopus Hole, Three Tree & Day Island 2) Stairs or Ramp at Sunrise & Day Island (i.e. remove d...

Good luck communicating "absolutely must", I imagine lots of low on air divers swimming upslope rather than ascending. Kinda like what happened ~3 years ago in Mukilteo when the guy went OOA on his backgas, then OOA again while swimming upslope on his pony. If "surface before you die...

I have to admit, despite both cave and wreck training, I'm having a hard time understanding what a "soft overhead" is, where the limits of the "overhead" are, and how all of this would be communicated. Soft overhead: Don't ascend unless you absolutely must (i.e. life or death) H...

This evening we made our 2nd attempt to locate "the Monolith" by diving in Cove 1. We splashed a 3 person team, me Rich_C and Adron_M. We descended down the main buoy in the center of the cove, tied off a reel, and headed down slope on a bearing of 35 degrees. At about 75fsw we found what ...

Tom Nic wrote: Does anyone know how big they get?

Diver_C and I saw 3-4 stubbies last year at Cove 2 on the boundary line at about 85fsw that were baseball sized.

Ryan

I love my Vytec. Buying used equipment requires knowledge and a willingness to risk that what you buy may not work. Be prepared to take it for service, or to get a complete write-off. Things sold on craiglist don't have warranties.

Ryan

The ice liberty thing is in my mind a red herring. The only people who needed to be sober here were the divers and their surface support team. If the rest of the boat wanted to party hard, it had little bearing on the safety of the dive itself. When I dive, I don't expect everyone on shore to be foc...

I'm fortunate enough to own my shop, but for the average diver and dive shop it's much more lucrative to have a diver move on to tech than not. I guess my overall point is that there are a lot of divers in the PNW going DIR who aren't going tech. I think the absolute link between DIR and tech is br...