Tag Archives: Scuba gear

Destinations & Sites, Equipment, General

Air travel with scuba gear

Sometimes you would love to take your own scuba gear with you to a far away destination but you are afraid of the hassle and cost. Here are a few pointers that will help you along the way.

UPS Worldport Air Hub at Louisville Internatio...
UPS Worldport Air Hub at Louisville International Airport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A good starting point is to figure out why you want to take your own scuba gear with you. That should help you also in deciding what to take with you. Here are some common reasons and items to pack:

  • Comfort and convenience: Your own regulator’s  mouth piece has been molded to fit your teeth, your mask never leaks unlike most rental masks you’ve tried, you want to use your own dive computer because that way you can download the log to your PC, …. Whichever items give you the comfort or convenience you want, if what you should pack and, to keep cost and the hassle to minimum, nothing else.
  • You are not sure if the gear you need is available where you go: underwater camera, yoke or DIN adapter (which you may need if you are taking your own regulator set with you), gloves,…
  • Safety: You are concerned that rental gear might malfunction or that you would be at risk because you are not familiar with the gear. If this is your motivation, then your packing list should include at least your BCD, regulator set and weight belt.
  • Because you just want to: In this case, you probably would like to pack all you have and then the kitchen sink. In this case, you may want to consider the cost: On most airlines it is the weight that matters so you may want to leave the heavier items behind.

Now that you know what to pack, you have a few options on how to get your scuba gear to the destination:

  • Carry-on: Good for few small items and you can be relative certain that they do not get lost or delayed on the way.
  • Checked luggage: Check your airlines web pages for rules about extra weight and extra pieces of luggage. Some airlines have special pricing for scuba gear that will save you some money.
  • Air-cargo, couriers, shipping,…: There are a plenty of other options that come handy especially if you are traveling long distance with lots of gear.
A Singapore Airlines Cargo Boeing 747 loading ...
A Singapore Airlines Cargo Boeing 747 loading at Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you want to check in scuba gear as luggage you may want to keep a few things in mind when preparing for the trip:

  • Early on, figure out the total weight of your luggage, the number of pieces and the size of each piece.
  • This lets you to compare the total price or, in other words, the price of the ticket plus extra fees between airlines.
  • Also, keep an eye on the absolute maximum limits for checked luggage set by the airline. These are limits that you cannot exceeded; not even by paying extra. If you have more luggage, consider using air-cargo or a similar option.
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Equipment, People and Stories

A close call due to malfunction in rental gear

English: Schematic section of unbalanced diaph...
Schematic section of unbalanced diaphragm Scuba regulator first stage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sitting in a speed boat, my dive buddy and I were looking forward to the dive waiting for us at the end of the somewhat rough ride across the waters around Muscat, Oman. We were headed for Three Sisters,  a popular dive site in the Ad Dimaniyat Islands Nature Reserve.

There were five of us — a young couple, the dive guide and us — entered the water and started the dive. I was wearing dive gear that I had rented from the dive operator. It was agreed that we would follow a coral wall and then turn back based on air consumption. The young couple was consuming air much faster than us and the dive guide signaled us asking if we would like to continue on our own for the rest of the dive. The conditions being perfect and the route easy to follow, we gave an ok.

We continued a few more minutes before turning back to return to the boat. Some 10 minutes before reaching the boat I suddenly realized that I am not getting air even though I had just checked the pressure gauge, which had been reading over 80 bar. Training kicked in and I swam to my buddy to get the octopus before we ascended to the surface in a surprisingly orderly fashion.

On the surface, I had to inflate the BCD by blowing air in it. Neither the octopus nor the normal regulator worked. After a few attempts the air started to flow through the regulator; first intermittently and then in quite a normal fashion.

A few minutes later we had swam to the boat. I told the dive crew what had happened, recommended servicing the faulty regulator set and required a new set for the subsequent dive. I found it a bit unnerving that they did not acknowledge the seriousness of what had happened in any way. I can only hope that this indifference was not due to them feeling that this was business as usual.

In retrospect I have been trying to identify if I could have avoided the whole situation by doing something differently.  Selecting a reputable dive operator and checking the rented gear thoroughly before the dive were not enough this time. Any thoughts anyone?

I never found out what was the root cause of the malfunction but I suspect it was corrosion or dirt in the first stage. While researching the topic I came across of an article that describes a similar experience and a potential explanation: “Weird , Near death causing stuff in regulator!!!”.

 

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