Continuous Webbed Harness

[ethanb]

If unclipping the harness allows you to \"roll out\" of the doubles, why do you think they would stay in place with a damaged/ broken buckle during the dive?    I would think this would be cause for a serious pucker factor.

Even after undoing the clip, it still isn't as simple as Paul makes it out to be - there's still the right strap, waist strap, and chest strap holding it together.  While the harness wouldn't be particularly stable, I don't think I'd have too much trouble keeping it on my back to complete a dive.  If I wanted to roll and squeeze through restrictions it might be more of a problem, but I really don't do serious cave-diving (or underwater acrobatics) in backmount. 

Next time I have a chance, I'll give it a try - undo the clip and see how stable the harness is.  Perhaps I'll move the other d-ring above the clip like I've been considering and see how well the "double-ender" trick works as well.

The following was taken from the GUE web page \"Individuals are occasionally confused into believing that convenience at the surface is a more important concern than safety during the dive. It is never a reasonable trade-off to accept a potentially fatal risk in favor of a minor convenience.\"

I'm really not talking about convenience at the surface, I'm talking about safety at the surface.  I believe safety at the surface should be a major factor in gear design, since a significant fraction of dive accidents occur at the surface.  Being able to quickly get out of your harness is essential if you're diving from a ladderless boat in rough seas.  Of course there is always the option to be safe and not dive from such a boat, but you have to pick where to draw the line - if I wanted to stay safe I could just never leave the house.

You guys can dive however you want, as can anyone else.  The clip isn't DIR for reasons that have been argued on many diffferent boards.

That's fine - I personally don't really care what is considered DIR and what is not.  Most of my technical diving has been sidemount in caves and I'm really just getting my feet wet when it comes to wreck diving.

I just think that, in the context of me diving from a small boat with no ladder in Lake Michigan, it is safer to dive a harness with a clip than to dive a continous harness.  Both choices present risks - with the clip, there is the risk that the clip will fail and you won't be able to safely complete the dive.  With the continuous harness, there is the risk that you will be injured on the surface while attempting to remove your gear.  I'm more concerned about the latter than the former.

Indeed it has been discussed in many places before, but I've generally ignored the discussions because they were discussing diving in different situations than I dive.  In a cave, I think the balance of risk would turn the other way - with a significantly reduced chance of injury on the surface, the risk of clip failure (however remote) would dominate and I might end up using a continuous harness.  In this case, however, we're discussing harness configuration while diving in the Great Lakes (cold water - drysuits and perhaps glove rings) from small boats with no ladder.  What is the best configuration then?

Perhaps we can move this to the equipment section and keep the DIR section on target?

I think it's a reasonable topic for the DIR section - the description says "Talk about DIR practices, gear  configuration,..."  I think that's what we're doing here.  What would there be to talk about if there weren't any disagreements?

Perhaps your shoulder straps are too tight?  You should be able to get a few fingers height under a shoulder...

I'll check that again next time I'm in the water - it is possible that I have it too tight, since I do prefer the feeling of a snug harness.  I'm guessing not though - when I first tried my harness, I had to tighten it down a bit because it was flopping around. 

I should say that I've never had a quick clip of any form come apart while diving, but I also don't feel the need to invite the possibility in either.

I have had clips fail (3-4 fin buckles, before I switched to Jets), but it has always involved smaller clips, extreme cold (well below 38 degF) and usually also impact or improper clipping (misalignment).  There is also always the option of using a stainless weight belt buckle instead, though I think I'd be more likely to accidently unbuckle it.

Ethan