December 1999 Origin won't lift? Who says?

Origin won't lift? - Mares Vector Origin BC How I became Aquaman -Force Accelerator fins Cold - if slightly wet comfort - Seaway Nexus reg. Atomic reaction - Atomic reg.

John Bantin has been a full-time professional diving writer and underwater photographer since 1990. He makes around 300 dives each year testing diving equipment.

It worried me to read in a review of the Mares Vector Origin in another British diving magazine that: "The testers felt there wouldn't be enough lift (21kg) to get a diver with a flooded drysuit to the surface." What was worse, a spokesman for the importer was quoted as agreeing!
I would not hesitate to use the Vector Origin. I did better than flood my drysuit to prove it - I wore a wetsuit, took a capacious dive bag along and flooded that with water to prove that the Vector Origin could lift it!
A litre of water weighs one kilogram in air. A litre of water has no weight when it is surrounded by water. A flooded suit does not become heavy until you try to get out of the water - up the ladder of the boat for example.
If you flood your drysuit, the assumption is that you will lose the buoyancy of the air retained inside it, although that depends on where the leak has occurred. Usually, the air gathers in the shoulders, and putting aside the creeping discomfort of a cold soaking, a leak in the leg will not cause air to be lost unless you are inverted.
You wear a BC like the Origin in case you lose the controlled buoyancy in the suit. In the past I have dived with my drysuit zip completely open - luckily the water was so warm that I was not forced to abandon the dive through reasons of discomfort. I resorted to my BC for buoyancy control, as I was effectively diving in a soggy wetsuit.
Many elements of a full set of diving equipment are negatively buoyant. However, most of us still need to add lead to a weightbelt to become neutral overall near the surface. I displace a lot of water and often carry more lead than my companions. However, I contend that, unless you are burdened with a number of heavy steel cylinders, you should never need more maximum lift in your BC than there is lead on your belt.
The Mares Vector Origin is a basic BC at the bottom end of the extensive Mares product range. Meant for use with a single tank, it has few features other than the single bag design of 840 dernier polyurethane-coated nylon.
There are no fashionable stainless-steel D-rings and only one of this BC's two efficiently drained pockets has a zip. I found these pockets difficult to use under water, because the mouth of one is too small and the other is pitched at an awkward angle.
The Vector Origin dumps at the shoulder by pulling on the corrugated hose and its direct-feed mechanism is an example of typical Mares efficiency.
Another dump at the right shoulder has a toggle threaded through to where it comes easily to hand, while a third dump can be found at the lower back.
The BC has a comfortable cummerbund topped with a wide belt and fastax buckle. There is no sternum strap. It has a hard back-pack with a cam-band long enough to go round twin tanks. The cam-band has two sets of slots to suit the position of either steel or aluminium tanks - the latter are normally slung lower.
The Vector Origin is basic but will appeal to those who reject the idea that every product should have "added-value" features.
Under water it does suffer from that typical riding-up effect common to many BCs, and it hugs you tightly when fully inflated at the surface. That said, I used it for four dives a day and got used to it.
Next time you're diving in comfortably warm water such as the training pool, try deliberately flooding your drysuit. Then use your BC for buoyancy control. It works! If you find you need more than the 21kg of lift the Mares Vector Origin (in size XL) can provide, I recommend you get rid of some of the lead. It seems to me that too many British divers go in overloaded.
The Mares Vector Origin costs £265 and comes in sizes S, M, L and XL.

Blandford Sub-Aqua 01923 801572

PLUS	MINUS
+ A basic BC for those who want the basics + Enough lift for a correctly weighted diver with a flooded drysuit	- Too basic for some - Tends to ride up a little - Hugs tightly when inflated

How I became Aquaman
Bob Evans is as ebullient as any man with a mission. His mission is to steer all divers away from what we know as conventional mainstream fins and into using his own designs, which are based on a radical rethink of what we should be using.
His creations, Force fins, are hewn from a solid chunk of neon-coloured polyurethane and have achieved a cult status among the cognoscenti, mainly technical divers who follow their own particular guru.
Bob's idea is that we should emulate the fishes and their tail-fins. I have to say I am built slightly differently to a fish. Have you ever seen one with 36in inside legs?
That said, Force fins seem to work, even if they take a lot of getting used to.
Bob was dismayed that his fins were not the out-and-out winners of Diver's recent fin comparison test (September). Being there on the podium alongside the other winners was not enough for him: he believes his fins are superior in performance to any other. To demonstrate, he insisted that I try a pair of Force Accelerators, probably his most radical design to date.
These are cast from the same almost indestructible plastic material as other Force fins but I am relieved to say they came to me in a much more subdued colour - black!
Accelerators are narrower than standard Force fins and fit easily into the dive bag. That is something of a relief after carting around some of the more massive products from Bob's competitors. They come with the same cast-in foot stirrup and a strap which is there merely to stop the fins falling off when you idle along. Otherwise the design screws them on to your feet by the action of finning, just as the propeller of a boat is screwed on to its shaft.
These fins promise such a high performance that, like a Formula One car, they allow the user to fine-tune them.
Wingflaps either side of the fin blade channel the water to cause a ram-jet effect.
They can be adjusted by means of a small hexagonal wrench so that the effect can be altered. Positions are indicated by click-stops.
The Accelerators felt very strange at first in the water. Without a full-length foot-pocket I was not able to use my calf muscles and it felt as if the fins were flapping about. I just wished they enclosed the toes. My buddies said it looked as if they were about to come off (the fins, not my toes).
I did the straps up as tightly as I could before diving - so tightly, in fact, that I had trouble getting them off before I climbed back into the boat after each dive. I think there is room for improvement in the design of the adjustment buckle.
Like all Force fins these felt ineffective yet I soon found myself easily able to overtake turtles that were reluctant to have their faces photographed. I had no trouble winning the race between the members of our group to get to the mating leopard sharks first. I was soon belting around everywhere under water - and that is very much out of character for me.
And I proved the likely indestructibility of these fins. After 13 hours of diving they looked like new, which you couldn't say about most other fins.
What's wrong with them? The price. Force Accelerator fins cost a whopping £194 a pair!

UWI Circle 01420 544422

PLUS	MINUS
+ Small size belies a big performance + Virtually indestructible materials	- Correct finning technique vital to get the best out of them - Strap-buckle adjustment less than perfect - The price

Cold - if slightly wet - comfort
My German friends like to beguile me with stories of the hardships they endure while training during the winter in their lakes. They tell me it's colder even than Stoney Cove! But then, Germans like to think they're hard. I point out that some Russians enjoy swimming naked in the Volga in midwinter. It's a sore point.
The German manufacturer Seaway is based on the shores of Lake Constance. If its designers ever try any of their products out in this convenient body of water, they must have come up against the problems of freezing regulators.
That's probably why the Nexus has a large metal front. This expanse of aluminium will act as a heat-sink, taking warmth from water that might be only a few degrees above zero and transferring it to the much colder air that is fed from the first stage.
German diving equipment does not have much of a profile among British divers but Seaway, because it chooses to sell its products by direct-mail through Seaway Direct in Salcombe, seems unworried that its products will not be seen side by side with other European and US competitors in the shops.
Of course, the buyer gets the price advantage but no face-to-face tussle with a helpful sales assistant.
I tried the Nexus combined with the Seaway R3 balanced-diaphragm first stage. This is a chunky number with two high-pressure and four medium-pressure ports on a swivelling turret. The turret is a squat affair so it proved possible to use it the right way up and get full advantage of the rotation.
Seaway first stages come in a DIN fitting with an A-clamp adapter. The primary second stage is supplied with air via an over-sized mp port. If a lot of air is demanded when the temperature is low, the high flow of very cold air through the second stage might cause water in it to freeze.
For example, if the water temperature is only 4¡C, the temperature within the regulator could drop to as low as -5¡C.
The free-flow effect will also cause the first stage to freeze. For this reason I recommend that all divers who want to use a high-performance valve like this take advantage of the optional anti-freeze kit which fits to the bottom of the first stage.
The Nexus second stage is a neat little affair with a venturi plus/minus control and a breathing-resistance adjustment knob which can turn up the inhalation pressure needed to crack open the valve. That's just in case you find it's too easy to breathe!
It was supplied to me with an octopus rig with an adequate length of hose so that I could rig it behind my back in such a way that it was unlikely to snag on anything. Environmentally conscious divers do not risk destruction of the dive site by dangling octopus rigs and gauges about.
In the water the Nexus breathed beautifully and with little obvious effort but I decided that it was a little more wet than I would have liked. I had great trouble discovering under which conditions it became damp and finally decided it happened when my demand for air was at its maximum.
There was no danger of it drowning me, but I was left with the taste of salty water in my mouth.
The Seaway Nexus with R3 first-stage costs £199 including postage and packing.

Seaway Direct 0800 0748016

CAPTION-
There is no mistaking the model: "Nexus" is emblazoned all over the aluminium front of the second stage, which acts as a heat sink in cold water. The chunky Seaway R3 balanced-diaphragm first stage has a turret squat enough to use right way up.

PLUS	MINUS
+ Good value + Big performance + Promises good coldwater reliability	- Inclined to be damp under certain conditions - Mail order only

ATOMIC REACTION
It's sometimes less than fun being me. While some readers tell me I am in the pocket of the advertisers and the advertisers often wish that I was, in fact all I do is go diving and tell the truth about what happens. However, they hung, drew and quartered the little boy who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes. The truth seems to be an expensive commodity.
It can also be a risky business sending me examples of equipment to test. If I was a distributor I would make quite sure it was suitably perfect first.
The manufacturer of the Atomic Ti2 regulator I reviewed in October, was less than impressed with my findings. It claimed that what I said happened was impossible. I had said that the rubber diaphragm of the second stage had been displaced, allowing the regulator to flood - with quite dramatic consequences.
After a lot of discussion the British distributor rang me back and told me that in fact I was quite right. The other magazine person who had had the regulator for test before me must have taken it apart and re-assembled the parts in the wrong order.
There should have been a flange between the diaphragm and the screw-down front ring. It was underneath, but how was I to know that?
I told him that he should look on the bright side. After the publicity, he can go into any dive shop and be greeted with open arms because he nearly managed to do away with me!
Then again, I don't suppose he expects to sell too many of these reg-ulators, because the Atomic Ti2 costs £1068.

Swanborough Diving 01964 532202

---

Appeared in DIVER - December 1999

---