Old School Diving (p)
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Yup, that’s it, that’s me… no BCD, just a backpack to carry the bottle on my back, a regulator and a pressure gauge.
Old school, takes you back to Jaques Custeau, James Bond – Thunderball etc.
You wouldn’t believe how good this felt after slaving against the drag from a borrowed 
ScubaPro S-Tek wing style BCD. I was born again. It was like freediving yet still being able to breathe underwater.
A couple of german divers (adhering to the strict DIR/Hogarthian rules) didn’t know what hit them when we zoomed past.
They never saw us in our gear while we were on the boat as we only started gearing up when they were already underwarter. 5min later we caught up and didn’t see them untill about an hour later when we already ate our lunch back on the boat.
The things is – we covered the exact same route, saw more big fish then they did, made more decent photos and videos and enjoyed every minute of it.
When they got back on the boat, with their heavy triple bottle setup, they started asking the DM who those two divers who came out of nowhere were. They simply had no idea…
Now way am I ever turning into one of those. Keeping it simple is the key.
I made two more dives with a similar setup. All I had to do was to drop some weights so it would be easier to keep neutraly buoyant below 20m. Taking photos was almost as easy as with a BCD, the only important difference is that you have to be careful with your breathing (and weights obviously).
I didn’t notice a huge difference in air consumption. I’d estimate about 10-20bar per dive more than with a BCD. You do have to breathe more and it shows but it’s not a big deal.
Here’s some more these 9 days of diving around Solta and Brac Islands
