Okay...let me suggest a few things, but before that, in a recreational dive, it is
IMPORTANT for you to know your dive table. Yes, you have a dive computer..and what if the battery runs out (has happened to me before), or you lose it when it drops into the water while you are rinsing it on the LOB while the LOB is moving? Which is why you always see me with my RDP especially after my second dive, going to the third. You must remember the rules of the RDP. Groups W, X means your MINIMUM surface interval should be an hour before diving again. Y and Z means
three hours.
And as mentioned by Holemaster, what if you bust your NDL? If you bust your NDL by not more than 5 minutes, you MUST do a decompression stop of 8 minutes at 5m, and you shoud not dive again for hours. If you bust it by more than 5 minutes, you must do a 15-minute stop at 5m and not dive again for 24 hours.
Dive computers are based on algorithms, as RDPs are. They are useful as guidelines, but you will never know what is happening inside your blood vessel, beneath your skin, inside your joints..those microbubbles.
If I may add to what the dive agencies have recommended, whether you are on deco or not, always do a one minute "stop" at half your deepest depth on your way up. For easier calculations, take the nearest number that can be divided by 3, but it must not be shallower than your half deepest depth.
Example:
Your deepest depth for this dive is 33m. Your half deepest would be 16.5m. Nearest numbers that canbe divided by 3 are 18 and 15. Since 15m is shallower than 16.5m, you do your one-minute stop at 18m.
At this point, those who were on the LOB trip last weekend may have noticed how Jim, Holemaster, Hollowman and I have been doing long safety stops. We were actually doing decompression stops on no-decompression dives, and not the normal 5-3.
So how would I conduct my stops if I were the diver who went down to 33m? Providing I have not gone to depths shallower than 18m for the remaining duration of that dive, I'd conduct a one-minute stop at every three meters (18m, 15m, 12m, and 9m), then do the last 2 stops (6m and 3m) at three minutes each. So instead of having one big bubble to try and dissolve at 5m in 3 minutes, I dissolve bubbles when they are smaller so they don't become big and does not dissolve easily at 5m in 3 minutes. So at this age you can see the number of dives I do (I only skipped two on the last trip: one because I was still sleepy from the drive, and the last one I had washed my equipment).
But in order to do this mini deco stops, you must know your air consumption rate. You don't want to run out of air and do a CESA and risk getting AGE or make potential DCS worse.
