Category: Dive knife

Christmas gift guide 2013

Ok so this is a bit late, and if you haven’t done your Christmas, Hannukah and Festivus shopping yet, shame on you. Or just shame. Most of these ideas don’t entail going to a mall and having your personal space invaded by ten thousand hormonal adolescents. You can order online, or make a phone call or two. Get going!

Christmas at Sandy Cove
Christmas at Sandy Cove

Books

For the reader, you could check out our book reviews, arranged by topic:

I’m not going to suggest a magazine subscription – I’ve let most of ours lapse as we seem to have entered a long dark teatime of the soul when it comes to South African diving magazines. If the quality picks up, they’ll be back on the gift list at the end of 2014.

Dive gear

Check out What’s in My Dive Bag for some ideas… You can contact Andre for most of these:

Make sure you know the returns/exchanges policy of wherever you make your purchases. Some places can be difficult, and if the mask doesn’t fit it’s no good at all!

For lady divers

For the diving lady in your life (or your man friend with too much hair), what about some rich hair conditioner to apply before going in the water? Suggestions here. A pack of cheap, soft fabric elasticated hairbands is a good stocking filler.

Some high SPF, waterproof sunscreen, or a nice hooded towel for grown ups (available in one or two of the surf shops in Muizenberg) would also not go amiss.

Experiences

Don’t forget to add a memory card for the lucky recipient’s camera if you plan to gift any of these! Contact Tony for prices.

For the non diver, you could inspire a love for our oceans with one of these:

For those who need (or like) to relax

Memberships

Wall art

Clip Clop designs and prints beautiful tide charts for Cape Town and Durban and moon phase charts for the year. You can order online or usually find them at Exclusive Books.

My underwater alphabet is available for R200 in A1 size, fully laminated. Shout if you want a copy.

If you take your own photos, you could print and frame a couple, or experiment with stretched canvas prints if that’s your thing. A digital photo frame pre-loaded with underwater images is also a lovely gift for a diving friend.

Donations

For the person who has everything, or because you’re feeling grateful:

Eezycut emergency cutting tools

The thing about an emergency cutting tool is that one hopes not to have to use it. It’s a good thing to have, however, particularly if you are using reels and lines while diving. That applies to many Cape Town boat divers, all of whom should be in possession of an SMB and possibly a reel to deploy it while at depth. One might also encounter other, non-emergency situations, which would make one glad of a handy blade.

The Eezycut tool in its packaging
The Eezycut tool in its packaging

Monty of Scuba Culture supplied us with these fantastic Eezycut emergency blades around Christmas time. It’s nearly (but not completely) impossible to cut yourself by accident, and the blade comes in a pouch that mounts easily on webbing or on your wrist. I went for the webbing option, and mounted it on one of the vertical straps of my BCD where it’s out the way but easy to grasp if needed.

Christo had an incident with some line the other day while diving with Tony, and the Eezycut sorted the problem out “as easily as tearing wet paper”.

There are some videos on the Eezycut website showing the ways of using the blade, including how to hold it. It can also be used by climbers, paddlers, fishermen, and paragliders – in short, by anyone who encounters potential entanglement or rope problems. I think it’s an excellent investment in your safety.

Christmas gift guide 2012

In the interest of planning ahead, here’s our annual Christmas gift guide. This is specially for the people whose idea of a good gift is “whatever’s available in a shop close to the mall entrance on 23 December!”

Books

For the reader, you could check out our book reviews, arranged by topic:

There are also a couple of children’s books to consider.

Dive gear

Check out What’s in My Dive Bag for some ideas… You can contact Andre for most of these:

Make sure you know the returns/exchanges policy of wherever you make your purchases. Some places can be difficult, and if the mask doesn’t fit it’s no good at all!

For lady divers

For the diving lady in your life (or your man friend with too much hair), what about some rich hair conditioner to apply before going in the water – suggestions here, otherwise try what I’m currently using: Aussie Moist Three Minute Miracle, which is available at Clicks. A pack of cheap, soft fabric elasticated hairbands is a good stocking filler.

Some high SPF, waterproof sunscreen, or a nice hooded towel for grown ups (available in one or two of the surf shops in Muizenberg) would also not go amiss.

Experiences

Don’t forget to add a memory card for the lucky recipient’s camera if you plan to gift any of these! Contact Tony for prices.

For those who need (or like) to relax

Magazine subscriptions

Memberships

Wall art

Clip Clop designs and prints beautiful tide charts for Cape Town and Durban and moon phase charts for the year. You can order online or find them at Exclusive Books.

My underwater alphabet is available for R200 in A1 size, fully laminated. Shout if you want a copy.

If you take your own photos, you could print and frame a couple, or experiment with stretched canvas prints if that’s your thing. A digital photo frame pre-loaded with underwater images is also a lovely gift for a diving friend.

Donations

For the person who has everything, or because you’re feeling grateful:

Tips on shopping for dive gear

I’ve been diving for a while, owned a lot of dive gear. Here are some tips on shopping for gear, some learned through painful experience!

General rules for buying gear

  • Try it on before you buy it. Wetsuits, booties, hoodie, you name it.
  • Try on your BCD and weight belt OVER your wetsuit – two layers of 5 millimetre neoprene adds a LOT of waistline!
  • Make sure you understand the returns policy of the shop you’re using.
  • Get acquainted with the Consumer Protection Act (if you’re in South Africa).
  • Shop around! Don’t let sales people sweet talk you. They are more interested (generally) in making a sale than in making you a happy diver.
  • Don’t cut the strap of your dive computer shorter unless you’re VERY sure you’re never going to dive in cold water (wearing lots of wetsuit and gloves to make your wrist thicker).

Second hand gear

  • When purchasing second hand cylinders: get them viz’d first (at the expense of the seller) before agreeing to purchase.
  • Try and get the seller to allow you to “test dive” expensive items such as dive computers before agreeing to purchase them.
  • It’s a good idea to check BCDs for leaks before purchasing, unless you plan to use the BCD only for shallow dives, and even then it’s iffy.

Gear to avoid

  • Don’t purchase based purely on colour (ladies, I know it can be very tempting).
  • Be realistic about what you will use the gear for. (Do you really plan to dive to 100 metres, under ice with that regulator?)
  • Don’t fall for wrap around face masks with 3 glass panels (here’s an example) without trying one first – they give rise to very confusing visual phenomena and distort things hugely as they pass across the join in the panes of glass!
  • Avoid BCDs with inflate/deflate handle handles (example here) – I have never yet seen a beginner diver (and even some divers who have done over 100 dives) using one who was in proper control of their buoyancy.
  • Neoprene covers on mask straps (example here) usually only work without a hoodie. They have a tendency to slip off your head during a backward roll off the boat when worn over a hoodie (although some people swear by them!).
  • Smaller volume masks are usually better for beginner divers than huge five litre models! They are much easier to clear.
  • Do you really need a three foot dive cutlass, as opposed to a small knife?

Repairs

  • Get a second opinion on extensive repairs.

Christmas gift guide 2011

It’s that time of year again. I trust you are all feeling suitably festive. Here’s our annual (well, second so far) Christmas gift guide. Use it/don’t use it…

Books

For the reader, you could check out our book reviews, arranged by topic:

There are also a couple of children’s books to consider.

Dive gear

Check out What’s in My Dive Bag for some ideas… You can contact Andre for most of these:

Probably not a good idea to get a mask unless the place you buy it will let the person exchange it if it doesn’t fit!

Donations

For the person who has everything, or just because you’re feeling grateful:

Experiences

Don’t forget to add a memory card for the lucky recipient’s camera if you plan to gift any of these!

For those who need (or like) to relax

Magazine subscriptions

Wall art

Clip Clop designs and prints beautiful tide charts for Cape Town and Durban and moon phase charts for the year. You can order online or find them at Exclusive Books.

Dive gear maintenance: Knives

Dive knives come in a range of sizes, shapes and qualities. They often have the words “stainless steel” engraved on the shaft but this more often means “a bit of stainless steel and a lot of good old steel”, the type that rusts quickly.

The more you pay for a knife the higher the quality of the stainless steel and the less likely it is to rust. I have never owned a particularly expensive dive knife so I am well versed in the speed at which the “el cheapo” knives rust. Bear in mind that the more expensive your knife, the more likely you are to take stupid chances – under the influence of nitrogen narcosis – to retrieve it if you drop it while diving… Cheap knives have their advantages!

Rusty dive knives
Rusty dive knives

With a new knife, I start off by washing the knife in very hot water, dry it well and then paint the metal with clear nail varnish. This lasts well and will only need a repaint if you use the knife to actually cut something (imagine that!).

Freshly nail-polished knives
Freshly nail-polished knives

It does help to remove the knife from its sheath and rinse it after every dive, but eventually it will develop some rust. You can gently sand this off, and then repeat the nail polish treatment.

Be my buddy…

Many experienced divers have very low tolerance levels for new divers, especially on a boat. It is sad that they have quickly forgotten that they were once a greenhorn, new to the world of diving and slow in getting ready once the boat had reached the dive site. These are usually the divers that will do stupid things thinking they are “exceptional divers” and in fact they are the ones that should know better. Experience comes with time, time underwater exposes you to many different situations and we all learn from these sometimes silly mistakes and sometimes dangerous errors of judgment.

An Open Water course, irrespective of the certifying agency, is essentially an introduction to the basics, and all the skills you acquire during your course will not be of a huge benefit in a dire situation unless you hone them from time to time. Many a diver will not have removed their mask underwater since they did their first dive course and I know of many such divers who have never performed any of the skills since the training days of their course.

You will seldom see an experienced diver doing a buddy check, but you will often be asked to turn their air on for them after they have kitted up and are ready to roll into the water. You will seldom see them checking their buddy’s training level, but will often see them alone at the bottom without a clue as to their buddy’s whereabouts. You will seldom hear anyone on the boat voicing any concerns about the dive site or the dive conditions, yet you will hear all of these thoughts after the dive. Imaging swimming around underwater blissfully unaware of the near-panic state half the group are in. What will you do if you are suddenly faced with a group of panicked divers?

Dirk, Tony and Cecil on the surface at North Paw
Dirk, Tony and Cecil on the surface at North Paw

A  few simple tips

Imagine this… You are qualified and ready to explore the world. You book a dive and are allocated a buddy on the boat on the way to the dive site. “Hi my name is Bob!” and a few minutes later you backward roll into the water. Descending slowly you look at your buddy Bob, who is descending like a rocket as he is wearing twice the required weight and wonder, “Can he dive? How long will he stay down? What will I do if he sucks his cylinder dry in 10 minutes and refuses to surface alone?”

Diving is a very safe sport. Follow the rules and things just don’t go wrong, but deviate, modify and ignore them and a good dive can turn bad very quickly.

  • Know your buddy. Prior knowledge that your buddy has problems equalising will prevent you sitting on the bottom waiting for 20 minutes for them to descend.
  • Know how his equipment works, know his dive style and know his level of experience
  • Have a plan that includes the depth you will go to, the route you will follow, who will lead and what your planned low on air pressure will be, will he ascend alone, do you both have an SMB, a knife, a snorkel and a whistle?
  • Know what feature of his attire you will use to recognise him as divers all kitted out in black look very similar in 3 metre visibility.
  • Know your own equipment well, know your limits and voice your apprehension if it is there before the dive Knowing your buddy is terrified of jellyfish makes it easier to understand their need to swim at high speed in the opposite direction when confronted by one.
  • Do a thorough buddy check: it takes but a minute, remember that there is a 100% chance that a problem experienced underwater by either you or your buddy is going to be your problem, so plan your dive and dive your plan.

Movie: Thunderball

Thunderball
Thunderball

There is much to love in a quality James Bond movie, particularly one which starts with Bond having an extravagant fight with a man in a black dress, totally trashing a large regency-style drawing room in the process. This is one of Sean Connery’s early Bond films – released in 1965.

Two nuclear warheads have been stolen, and must be recovered. Bond travels to Nassau in the Bahamas where he does a lot of diving – some to find the warheads, some to flirt with the ladies, and some to fight with criminals underwater. One free diving episode features a lady diver holding onto the back of a clearly distressed turtle. As soon as she releases the turtle, it ascends for air. Poor dude!

Thunderball heavily inspired the Austin Powers movies, which adds an inadvertent element of humour when viewing them in retrospect. The villain, one Emile Largo, has an eye patch and a white fluffy pet cat, and throws failures and enemies into his pool of reef sharks, who obligingly eat them alive.

The aqualung had only been around for about 15 years when this movie was made, but it has some awesome underwater fight sequences (knives cutting air hoses, masks ripped off…), and features a huge orange sled/DPV capable of transporting up to six divers at once. The divers use harnesses rather than BCDs, the exhausts on their regulators are behind their heads, and they have no octos, but other than that look as good – or perhaps better, because their gear is a uniform basic black (including their cylinders) without bits hanging off – than divers today. Of course, they are a team of crooks, so they have to dress in matching togs.

When Bond eventually locates the sunken plane – incidentally containing his lady love’s completely undecomposed brother – he instructs his pilot to shoot one of the sharks milling around the site “to keep the others busy”. Nice.

The film concludes with an EPIC underwater fight scene – goodies in orange, baddies in black – involving perhaps 30 divers. There is hand to hand combat, lots of spear guns, knife fighting, and a lot of frantic finning. Nearly a quarter of this two hour movie was filmed underwater.

There is so much goodness here… The standard Bond misogyny – women swooning over him and being used and discarded in short order, very short shorts on unashamedly hairy men, a young Sean Connery… and a boat called the Disco Volante. The underwater scenes are very well done, and plentiful. What’s not to love?

The DVD is available here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise click here.

Solo diving

There has raged a heated debate for a long time on the merits and dangers of solo diving. Solo diving is the as the title suggests, diving alone, no buddy, no surface support (if boat diving) and most likely no one waiting on the beach.

Off on my own in Sodwana (don't worry - my Clare took this before she caught up with me!)
Off on my own in Sodwana (don't worry - my Clare took this before she caught up with me!)

Very little solo diving takes place in a resort environment, primarily because they want a full boat before they launch. It’s not a common practice, most resort environments have heavy boat traffic as there are often many operators diving the same dive sites, these skippers look for a buoy close to a boat (the boats follow a surface buoy towed by the dive master), and skippers don’t really want divers scattered all over the ocean as it is hard to keep track of them. If the resort you are diving with has an anchored boat it is easier to do a solo dive especially if you loose the group as there is seldom a dive master thats going to come looking for you. You may be lucky to find a skipper that will drop you off separately from the group, but it is rare.

Cape Town is a little different. It is often a case where someone on the boat is doing a mapping project, or some research or looking for a specific feature underwater so solo diving happens. The skipper and sometimes other members of the group know you are down there but not where.

If you want to maximise the number of photos you get on a dive or get some good video footage then solo diving makes this easier. Not having a buddy means you do not need to check up on them, you do not need to periodically look for them and you wont have them yanking on your fin to show you something cool just as you are about to get that ”shot”. By the same token there is then no one looking for you, checking up on you and no one for you to signal ”out of air” for example.

If you are going to go solo diving start small, somewhere where the beach is close, the weather is good and someone knows where you are, how long you plan to dive and what your route will be. It is for some an intimidating experience and your comfort level takes a while to increase.

Once you decide to try solo diving be brutally honest with yourself: do you trust yourself, your equipment and your ability to think rationally in a stressful situation? If not, don’t try it.

If you are okay with all of these aspects make sure you have the right gear. Split your weights over a weight belt and integrated weights. You’ll need a knife, a compass, a dive computer, decent gloves, a hoodie and all the rest to ensure you don’t get cold, tired, uncomfortable or lost. Be sure you know when to turn the dive if you are swimming out somewhere and returning to the same spot. Ensure you plan and monitor your air consumption, checking more often because just knowing you are ”good on air” won’t help you if you have a leak on your first stage that no one tells you about… There is no one there remember. (If you think you have a leak, you can roll onto your back and look up and between breaths you will be able to see if you do.)

Plan your dive and dive your plan.

Communicating underwater

One of the things I love about diving is the silence – the only sounds are your breathing, and the sounds of the underwater world. These could include crackling coral, the sound of parrotfish munching the coral or triggerfish being aggressive, and perhaps boat traffic above. Unless you’re wearing a full face mask (ask Andre about those fabulous devices) you won’t be able to rely on normal speech to make your thoughts and needs known. So what are the options?

Inaudible communication

Hand signals

There are the standard scuba signals that you’ll learn on your Open Water course (OK, I have a problem, up, down, etc), there are fairly standard signals for various kinds of fish (the one for shark being the most obvious!) and then there are the hand signals you’ll invent as you go along. If you have a regular dive buddy, you’ll be surprised how much you can communicate with each other as you figure out a little language between yourselves.

Justin and Fritz in Sodwana
Justin and Fritz chatting at the safety stop in Sodwana

I was highly amused to see in Sodwana that Fritz and Justin the Silver Fox, who are regular dive buddies in Cape Town, chat more underwater than on land. Thanks to his hand signals, the famously taciturn Fritz almost had his own current system swirling around him at the safety stop after our deep dive, as he and Justin discussed the turtles we’d seen and the shark who’d swum by in the distance. The photo above is dodgy because I think I was laughing so much when I took it!

Lights

If you’re in an environment where it’s dark enough for a light to be discerned, such as a cave, wreck or on a night dive, you can use your light to get your buddy’s attention. DO NOT shine it in his eyes… I can’t tell you how annoying that is!

Slates

Slates are usually white pieces of plastic that you can write on underwater with a pencil, and show to your buddy. This method of communication isn’t ideal for emergencies or for getting someone’s attention at a distance, but they can come in handy… Such as when Tami wrote “SMB?” at me on her slate after a wreck dive on the SAS Pietermaritzburg, while we completed our safety stop.

Audible communication

One of the central tenets of safe recreational scuba diving is to dive in a buddy pair, and buddy awareness is essential. You should be close enough to see your buddy’s face, if not to actually reach out and touch him. Audible signalling devices should thus not be necessary.

In an ideal world of perfect buddies and perfect diving conditions, none of these devices would be necessary. Fact is, they do come in handy, more often than not.

Shakers

A shaker looks like a sealed test tube made of plastic, with a metal ball inside it. They are marketed under such catchy names as “Aqua Maraca”, which make me want to crawl under a table and hide.

You attach it to your kit somewhere, and shake it to make a loud rattling noise underwater that will hopefully get your buddy’s attention. Just make sure your buddy knows what it sounds like underwater so that he’s not left looking around wondering what that odd noise is, while you get into trouble!

These can be SUPER annoying if you misuse them… I’m just saying!

Signalling devices
Signalling devices, from left to right: shaker, air horn, whistle

Tank bangers

This is nothing more than a large ball or bead on an elastic band that you put over your cylinder. When you want to signal to someone, you reach back and snap the elastic, hopefully causing the bead to bang against the tank. (This is the ideal device for Tony, who LOVES to snap elastics of all kinds.)

This is a very simple device and very easy to make at home, but relies on you positioning it such that you can reach around to it when you need it. If you’re stuck somewhere, or have limited arm dexterity when in a wetsuit, perhaps this isn’t the right choice for you.

You could equally well rap on your cylinder with anything else hard that you have at hand – dive knife, torch, or a well-placed stone if you’re desperate!

Air horns

An air horn attaches to your inflator hose, and works above and below the surface. It’s essentially a pneumatic signalling device that takes a bit of air from your cylinder and uses it to generate a sound. This is probably the quickest of the noise-making signalling devices to use, because you should be very familiar with the location of your inflator button and able to find it by touch.

(Just as an aside, an air horn can be more useful than a whistle above the surface because you don’t need to remove your regulator to use it.)

Shouting

If you’re quite nearby to someone, you can potentially get their attention by yelling into your regulator. Tony’s Zero to Hero student Kate would often sing classic rock songs to herself while we swam, and when I was buddied with her I could hear her singing. As far as forming actual understandable words… Well, good luck!