keylimepie(Offline)

Not so much a trip report, but some thoughts on my first real dives using twins. Got all the essential gear sorted late last week, and assembled the twins on Sat night. Used various guides, but putting them together is not that difficult - once you have found the metal snorkels for the valves, which were hiding at the bottom of the box . Got them filled and headed off to Capernwray yesterday to meet up with Neil. I was about an hour late, but Neil didn't seem to mind.

Twins (faber 12s) were attached to a stainless tell backplate and my new evolve wing. I put 4kg on the weight belt and after some fine tuning with the waist belt and crotch strap, we headed for the water. This was going to be a bimble along the shelf, then dropping down to the helicopter before doing an ascent up the wall and back along the shelf again. Luckily, for me, Neil knows where he is going.

Anyway, to the point, as soon as we started to descend I felt way uncomfortable - very head heavy to the point that it felt like the natural position would be to nose dive. It took a while to adjust for this but it got better as the dive went on. However, the twins didn't seem to be snug and were rolling around a bit. The ascent up the wall was ok, if not brilliant, but I managed to use the rear dump reasonably well and tended to dump from the top of the wing in shallower water - this seems to help when trying to dump air out of autodump on the suit (still in a neo btw).

Out of the water, Neil pointed out why the twins weren't that snug. My waist belt and crotch strap were too loose, and I looked comical as I was hanging under the wing when in the water, with a big space between my back and the plate Thankfully, only Neil saw that! He also spotted a very slight leak coming from one of the valves in my tanks. I only tightened these by hand when assembling the twins. Obviously, they need a wee nip with the spanner.

If you're still awake, the waist belt and crotch strap were adjusted before the second dive, where we had decided to practise some controlled, horizontal (yeah, I wish) ascents and descents in shallow water (6m), before another bimble then a weight check. Up and down we went 3 times. Whilst the twins felt much more comfortable this time (ie no rolling around) I still had that head heavy feeling when doing the descents. I did learn to cope with this by not being horizontal. Keeping my shoulders slightly above horizontal made the descents feel more manageable. Perhaps a tail weight is needed, but I think I need to wait until I change my suit before pursuing this.

It was cold and miserable at the Cape, but I enjoyed the dives with a good buddy. It was a useful learning experience for me, and I have no regrets about moving to twins. Looking forward to the next one - now where's that spanner.

Dave

neilh(Offline)

Nah, was a miserable day and in no rush

What Dave has forgotten to point out here is that he's gone for an easily identifiable yellow and white cylinder combo for his twins :D Actually makes it dead easy to identify him underwater and to spot his set on land as well. Nice one :p

It did look that way...

I have to say you looked nice and controlled and very comfortable in the twins, nice one! I was concentrating really hard trying to make sure I'd got air out of my suit and could dump from the evolve whilst controlling the ascent and used you as a visual reference more than a few times

It was a good trip and good diving with you, but boy was it cold and miserable! I'm sure I was less wet during the dives!