S’illeta South

Dive Shop: Sóller Divers

First dive of are trip to Mallorca! Out of a beautiful mountainous region on the north west of the island, Port de Sóller.

Having just recovered from Covid we were not 100%. Despite this compared to our Greece trip earlier in the year this time we were much healthier. Warm water helped.

Weighting

Diving with the proper amount of lead leads to an well trimmed comfortable dive. Before going in the water we select lead weighs to attach to weight belt or put in trim pockets. A lot goes into this selection:

• Salinity of the water.
• The weight of the gear you wear.
• The buoyancy of the gear you wear.
• How your body is laid out can help determine where the wights should be attached.
• Steel or aluminum tank, tank size.
• Our thick 7mm neoprene wetsuits

As of right now we are traveling making “fun” dives and renting BCDs so many of these factors are always changing. Trying to predict how much lead to take is hard.

This dive I took 5kgs which worked great until the last 5min of the dive where I was positivity buoyant even with after emptying all the air out of my BCD. Keeping my head down and kicking helped me make the safety stop but it was not comfortable and would not have worked on a longer deco stop.

Masha dove with 3kgs. She reported it being very comfortable once at depth and coming back up. The trouble was only in the beginning with descending. At the start of dives our wetsuits are very floaty, especially when first zipped up as it traps lots of air. She was having major trouble getting down even with an empty BCD. In this case our guide helped by giving her some extra lead.

Lessons learned:

For me with a steal 12l tank in salt water 5kg is not enough.

For Masha 4kg and an unzipped wetsuit are required to get a 12l steel to depth.

dSMB deploy

At the end of our dive Masha and I went to the side of the group and deployed our dSMB and made our safety stop. She held my shoulder to help me stay down as I was already floaty. I got the dSMB out of my pocket, unrolled it, then fumbled with my octopus trying to put air into it before giving up and using the regulator in my mouth. Always found that easier. Eventually I put a big breath into it and let go. Only it didn’t shoot up to the surface. Somehow the cord wrapped around my index finger cutting in. The sharp pain in my finger let me know of the problem and I untangled myself and got it released. Still a lot of practice needed here.

Over all very comfortable and great first dive of the trip.