1 post tagged “thailand”
PHI PHI, THAILAND -- It has been about three weeks since my last post. It probably took me about two weeks to get set up. But I decided to take a couple breaks -- a day long sailing trip to a Panak Island, and a two day trip to the Phi Phi islands. The latter included some scuba diving at Koh Bida Nok and Maya Bay.
During the dive I tested out a newly purchased Suunto Vytec dive computer. Although capable of very advanced full mixed gas decompression diving, I chose it for its large screen and wireless connection to the air supply. The rented Aqua Lung equipment I used did not have any spare high pressure ports for the transmitter, so I had to remove the normal analogue gauges and rely entirely on the computer for information about remaining air and depth. Renting Scuba Pro equipment is a better choice. As far as I know, new (but not old) bottom-of-the-line Scuba Pro regulators have a spare high pressure port.
One thing I really liked about the computer was that it constantly measured my air consumption and reported how much air time I had left as well as how much no-decompression time I had left. In shallower dives, I invariably run out of air before I accumulate too much nitrogen in my body (even on my last 54 minute dive), but I have never had an estimate of how long my remaining air would last. This varies considerably based on how stressed out I am, how hard I swim, how fast I breath, and how deep I am, so it is not an easy linear calculation one can do in ones head on the fly. Also, I suspect that the bio-feedback of this estimate will help me to learn to use less air.
Normally I would be rather concerned about depending upon a computer and wireless connection for *all* of my life sustaining information during a dive, with no backup. Even realtime computers crash occasionally. I do not really recommend it, but there is a fairly straightforward procedure to follow should the device fail. One needs to immediately go to 15 feet (5 metres -- it is all metric diving in Thailand) and do a safety stop. If just the wireless connection has failed, you will still have no decompression time and depth information. If the computer failed, you do not even have a depth gauge, so you have to guess your depth. Then you use your watch to do a safety stop, or if you think you are in a decompression situation, stop a few times on the way, and breath all your air at 15 feet and go to the surface with your last breath. Most of the dive instructors I spoke with seem to use Suunto air integrated computers of one kind or another. One used only the wireless Suunto (D9), even on dives down more than 200 feet, and especially during cave and wreck dives where he wanted to avoid the extra hose from the manual gauges.
