Double Trouble is, simultaneously, perhaps one of the worst Elvis movies and also the title of another terrible movie from the 1990s, but that doesn't deter me from using it as a blog title to describe my first dive on my new twin set.
My buddies were Captain Al and Jester and we had chosen the Slates because I had agreed to show the site to a group of divers from Scuba Leeds on their annual pilgrimage to the west coast sea lochs (or "locks" as they call them 😃 ). My plan had been to dive my first dive with a 15l tank and then have a shallow splash with the twins before heading down the road.
In the end Captain Al advised me to get a bit of time with them to start to get used to them before doing any formal training. So, I jerry rigged up a regset that was a representation of a Hogarthian/DIR twinset regulator set and set about testing my system before doing any formal training in it. I've been using the Rectotec blog as background reading as well as discussing it with more experienced technical divers.
PLEASE NOTE: I am a relatively experienced diver with experienced buddies, I do not recommend this kind of ad hoc experimentation for inexperienced divers!
For those interested in the geekier side of it I dived:
- manifolded twin faber 12l
- Scubapro horseshoe wing
- Steel backplate
- jerry rigged regulators
Anyway, once kitted up I realised that I'd need to make some adjustments as I couldn't reach my knobs on the dive, so that meant that in reality I was really just getting used to diving the wing with what was in effect a single cylinder.
The result was that I wasn't really into taking many photographs, but the weather, light and visibility were all so good that I took a few snaps.
Dive one saw us spend the best part of an hour at around 15-20m spotting ling, cuckoo wrasse, dogfish, nudibranchs and sunstars.
The first thing I noticed is that the dump valves weren't effective given their position, and to get the best out of the hose dump I really had to be in a fairly upright position. It meant that on this dive there were a few minor buoyancy issues on this dive. Which, by the time we shallow dived the bay on dive two I had rectified, despite breathing the twinset down to just 40 bar ( a common tipping point or so I'm told).
Anyway, decent little learning experience with fine buddies.
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| Dogfish / Catshark |
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| Common Sunstar |
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| Flabellina Lineata |
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| Northern Sunstar |
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