What's your preferred Depth Range ?

[Finless]

Originally Posted by ratcliffe

You'll just find yourself without any insurance though...

Yes, you certainly need to be very specific about insurance cover. I have refused several policies because they had a blanket 30mtrs max. It's a real PITA trying to find something that covers you for everything.

I have dived 'beyond my insured limits' lots of times before and, strangely, what really worries me is if there is an incident on a subsequent dive and could that be linked to the earlier dive in the holiday (for example)?

I have just changed my mortgage and have yet to address 'life assurance/diving' issues. As I'm not diving at the mo it isn't a problem.

Insurance is a self inflicted evil that, due to the numbers of peple involved, has little regard (in general) for a person's abilities and, rather, seeks to find the lowest common profit making denominator level?

The HSE causes further complications (IMO) by creating a 'blame someone' siruation. Of course, this opinion is a bit harsh but that's the way it seems to be sometimes?

[Mark Chase]

Remember that no divers were born doing monster 80m dives, they just ended up that way.

I am reasnobly confident I can say i didnt go below 40m during my first ten years as a diver. If i did it was a one off dive.

Location is important to as you find a lot of trimix divers in the SE doing a lot of 40-65m diving as thats prety much the depth out of Brighton. Sure there are a couple of deeper wrecks but 65 will cover most of it.

Then you look at Plymouth and you can easy get 100m so a fair few mix divers have done dives in the 60-90m range if they live in or near Plymouth.

I clearley remeber saying Id never go below 30m or buy a CCR

ATB

Mark

[shineyman]

I'm still fairly new to diving only diving for 3 years. So I'm still on a learning curve. In the last year I've started dipping my toe into deco diving but as a SD depth limit is 35m.

In the future I would like to move into more advanced stuff and diving on deeper wrecks.

But for now 35m is me.

[Clare Gledhill]

Deco is just the penalty for doing the dive - the shallower or shorter the dive the less deco so the more fun there is to be had.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - depth is just one thing to take into acocunt when planning a dive. I've done several thousand feet into a cave which is shallow - but the time to the surface may was well have made it a very deep dive indeed.

In the ocean, deep dives tend ot mean better wrecks as they are less broken up or less dived. However, bottom timnes tend to have to be shorter than a nice cave dive at the same depth as deco in the ocean is less pradictable and more risky.

Regardless of cave or wreck though, shallow does mean less deco and less gas consumption. Nice

[Paul Oliver]

Off Dover most of the wrecks fit into the 28-50m range so thats where i go and i am comfortable with these depths

Shallow is great though as i hate loads of Deco, 45 min of hang will do me

Most of the deeper ones i prefer to stay high on the wreck and will generally avoid visiting the bottom unless i want to see something or need to do something like tie in or release the shot.

[ShinyD]

I'm quite happy pottering down to 20m, but will go to 30m if there's something to see.

My only ambition is to train to and become competent down to 40m

I really don't want to go deeper.

[Ian@1904]

As I mostly want to see fish with minimal deco-10 mins deco then my comfy depth is 35m. Having said that I am OK at 40m on say the Salsette looking after DaveS.
This summer I will be doing a 44m weak nitrox dive, and then in August some 60m trimix stuff. Trimix can wait until the water is a lot warmer.
However a bimble under Swanage pier will do for me, or a 20m drift.