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We know the idea of changes can be a bit nerve-wracking for people, especially when it involves equipment which your life depends on when diving underwater. We just wanted to give a quick run through of the long hose set up for a regulator and why we've changed to it for all of our diving.
Image showing 2.1m long hose and bungeed set up.
Anyone that has dived with us on the boat before (or our friends over at Scapa Scuba whilst they did the dive school), will have seen the long hose set up already. Initially used in technical diving with twin cylinders, this set up is slowly moving over to the recreational scene due to a number of safety benefits it offers. You still have two regulators as always, your primary reg (the one you breath from) is on a 2.1m long hose, whilst your back up reg is on a short hose bungeed around your neck.
Instructor Rob (Left) in a twin set with longhose set up, and Kevin on a standard recreational set up
You can see above the differences in these two set ups and you might be asking yourself what the point in this is which we'll hopefully answer for you now:
If you were to lose your regulator for any reason (to take a photo or you just decided you didn't want it for a while or it was knocked out of your mouth), with the long hose set up, your back up regulator is attached around your neck, so you just need to pop a hand under your chin and place it in and 'voila' you can breath again. No stress trying to find it hanging behind you, over your shoulder.
We wish we could all claim to be super calm when it all kicks off and someone runs out of air underwater. But the reality is, most people that run out of air underwater will freak out and take the regulator out of your mouth as they know that's working. With a longhose, this is the one you would donate anyway, no drama at all, you just switch to that bungeed back up around your neck.
We do most of our diving around or through shipwrecks up here, whilst the standard alternate regulator on a 90cm hose is a bit cosy, it works fine in open water, but it doesn't really work around wrecks, being too short. The extra length of a 2.1m hose means that you can dive through gaps in single file and, unless you're unlucky enough to follow someone the same height as Rob (2m), you'll be absolutely grand.
Finally, anyone wanting to head into the world of technical diving, this is most likely the set up that would be used. By getting experience and comfortable with it whilst diving, it's one less thing to worry about on your tec courses!
Divers making use of the extra length by passing under some wreckage in single file.
We hope this helps remove any anxiety about this switch for those of you that had any. We will do full briefings on them for anyone diving with us to explain and demonstrate how they work.