Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:13 pm Post subject: belt or harness? harness or belt?
Hey all!
I was supposed to go diving today but the river spewed lots of brown muck into sea, so I'm on ebay frittering away the hours. My question is.....harness or belt? I know that when disciplining children a cane is the preferred bit of kit but how about diving?
Charlie, I look to you as an expert here. I'm looking to replace my holy (not like that) belt and am considering the complex looking harness. Pro's and Cons?
I'm gonna be doing more boat dives (probably ribs) so when getting belt onto boat first is this difficult? (or even possible!)
For those of you who doveded with me, you know i'm a well hydrated person, so are harnesses better for the bladder squeeze peeingness (hiya graeme!)
I'll be configuring kit with pony set up too, can the harness weights be shifted to compensate any imballances (is that a word?)
Any comments/suggestions gratefully received.
I'm going for a 40m dive with a BBC sound engineer this week as part of his HSE training! Will post a nice report if I manage to get back ok!
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:43 pm Post subject: Spare the birch rod and spoil the child
OK cheekster, I've eventually got round to answering this post.
To be honest, I've never handed my weight pouches up onto a boat, so I had to dig the kit out of the loft & don my wet gloves to see how easy the manoeuvre was. Needless to say it was no problem & I'm sure that I could manage to do it safely before boarding a RHIB. Of course, if the unthinkable happened and I dropped a weight pouch, I'm sure that if another diver found it that they would do their very best to return it to me. Wouldn't they, eh, cheeky? If worried, you could clip a jon line on to the weight pouch toggle (with the other end connected to a D ring) before removing it from the harness. Then hand up the pouch & when it's safely aboard, they could unclip the lanyard so you could repeat it with the next pouch.
Anyway, I don't know why you're bothering to ask this question as we both know that you're going to buy a Bowstone harness. Why else would you have hung on so dearly to the pouch that you found at Lochaline beach (rather than giving it to me as it is a perfect match for my harness)? Seriously though, I like my harness very much & wouldn't go back to a belt now. I actually have the weight pouches positioned a bit lower than a weight belt would sit & find that this means that they're well clear of my BCD. If I've got the pony on (which Sarah has now appropriated), I put less weight in the right pouch than the left. There's certainly no squeeze at all & no risk if the belt coming off, although it's important to make sure that the velcro tabs don't become furred up or you could end up accidentally losing a pouch mid-dive which could be nasty. Knowing how meticulously that you look after your kit, this shouldn't be a problem.
Enjoy your 40m dive: yum yum! Looking forward to hearing tales of your south coast diving.
For what its worth with my small nugget of experience I'd say get a harness for use with a stab jacket, I used one with an ABLJ for a while, much more comfy than a belt. If u get a wing, get one with integrated weights, the harness coupled with the wings harness is just strap chaos..........of course you won't be able to remove your rig underwater as you will be unweighted, but then Ive not seen many tech divers that can dekit and rekit underwater, too many hoses to know whats attatched to where
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If worried, you could clip a jon line on to the weight pouch toggle (with the other end connected to a D ring) before removing it from the harness. Then hand up the pouch & when it's safely aboard, they could unclip the lanyard so you could repeat it with the next pouch.
