Dive equipment

[Scuba]

For those of you who are avid divers but only dive while traveling, do you own your own gear or rent? DH & I currently own our gear, but it's getting older and maintenance costs are fairly high - spent around $300 to service both sets of gear this year. It occurred to me that it might be better to just rent - newer more advanced gear each trip - but since we know how ours works and know we maintain it well, we keep using it.

What do you do? Thoughts on renting vs buying & maintaining your own?

 

[meierlde]

For those of you who are avid divers but only dive while traveling, do you own your own gear or rent? DH & I currently own our gear, but it's getting older and maintenance costs are fairly high - spent around $300 to service both sets of gear this year. It occurred to me that it might be better to just rent - newer more advanced gear each trip - but since we know how ours works and know we maintain it well, we keep using it.

What do you do? Thoughts on renting vs buying & maintaining your own?

When I was diving I owned my own gear because I could buy a higher up the food chain than typical rental equipment, you can buy a top of the line regulator for example, which will not be in the rental pool. Owning a dive computer means that you can understand how it works better than a rental one.

 

[Sunset]

I used to dive, then got away from it for many years.
I took my tank into the dive shop and found out it could no longer be used as it has a built in reserve (really just a valve trick). The cost to pressure test the tank, put on a new valve was close to just buying a new tank.

Lets not even talk about trying to use the regulator, I'm sure the rubber has deteriorated on it and while it might work at first, I really didn't want to find out it fails when I'm down 40 feet.

At that point, I literally threw the tank in the garbage (with the valve off) and decided If I wanted to dive I'd just rent.

 

[2017ish]

We own our own BCs, fins, regulators, masks, computers, DW's wetsuits, emergency alerts, SMBs, etc. Rent the tanks and the weight belts (I don't like integrated...)

We like having our own stuff that is familiar and can be used without having to overthink things--plus, many destinations/liveaboards don't have much in the way of rental gear when you get outside of the Caribbean/Hawaii. (Trip next year to Fiji, Tonga, Solomons, and Vanuatu; would not be comfortable renting gear and, in fact, are upgrading to lighter/better gear before trip.)

 

[6miths]

When traveling we always tended to take fins, masks, snorkels, computers sometimes shorties depending on destination and then rent the rest. Locally just usually snorkel in the summer so don't have serviceable tanks and regulator anymore.

 

[folivier]

We've owned our own gear for over 35 years, upgraded a few times. Always had top of the line Scubapro gear. A couple times we rented but I always like my own gear since I know it and am very comfortable with it. One example is the Air2 octopus system. Think about it, if you or someone else is out of air at depth and very probably panicking are you looking for an octopus or just looking for bubbles? If someone grabs my regulator the Air2 is easily accessible.

 

[Johanson]

I'm a tech diver so I have tons of gear. I typically dive with 6 tanks with 6 DIN regulators (doubles for back gas, 9 cf argon bottle for drysuit, travel gas bottle, 50% bottle, and O2 bottle. I also have multiple back plates and wings as well as single tank adapters, reels, lift bags, 10 gas computer, nitrox computer, bottom timer, etc. I also 3 sets of doubles as well as at least another 10 tanks. I do the O2 cleaning and and visuals myself and bring them directly to the hydro shop as needed every 5 years and get a nice discount because my company uses them for their extinguisher inspections.

 

[Richard4444]

I'm a DiveMaster and have been certified since 1985, taking multiple weeks of dive trips annually. Yes, I own and take all of my own gear which I am familiar with. But you make a very valid point: the dive operations rent out newer gear and they do the maintenance. I can see the convenience of not traveling with your equipment, as I just packed for my upcoming Cozumel trip and weighed my gear and suitcase at 40 pounds, which allows me 10 pounds for clothes, etc. plus my carry on. If I went that route, the least I would take is my own prescription mask.

Rich

 

[mystang52]

OP: DW and I were just like you. We only went diving on our 2X/year vacations, and had our own equipment (no tanks). I paid the maintenance costs each year. We wanted to use our own familiar equipment, knowing it's maintained, and for us knowing no other mouth was on the bite piece. For me, I just viewed these costs as part of our overall vacation budget.
DW stopped diving quite a few years ago due to back issues. I didn't enjoy diving with a buddied-up stranger, so I stopped a few years after her. We sold our equipment on Craigslist.

 

[braumeister]

I don't dive any more, but when I did we always used our own equipment whenever possible for the reasons meierlde mentioned.

But when we went somewhere we had to fly to, we brought our own regulators and computers. Other equipment (tanks, fins, weights, etc.) was rented.

 

[USGrant1962]

We own ours and travel with it, our core gear is now ~30 years old. Over the last few years our BCs finally failed and we got low profile BCs which are much better for travel. Our regulators are pretty much top of the line and operate like new. They were packed away for a number of years when the kids were small so we didn't do annual maintenance for a long time. Now we do it every other year since our usage is pretty light.

 

[Surewhitey]

Cozumel dive guys are usually on top of their gear. When I lived here, I still only brought my mask and fins. Dove every few weeks and just was easy. Never saw the reason for all the other stuff and did my own math without the computer. Call me simple.

 

[exnavynuke]

I have my own gear (though old, probably need to replace some of it currently as it hasn't been used in a while). I plan on renting unless I have a bad experience with rental gear as it'll cost me less to rent than to check another bag on the plane and I won't have to lug everything around. We'll see how it goes later this year.

 

[donheff]

Does this stuff count?

 

[Scuba]

Does this stuff count?

What is the rectangular item in the second photo?

 

[Scuba]

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'll always want to bring my mask, fins & snorkel as I really enjoy snorkeling too. I get cold easily so I dive in a custom 5 ml full wetsuit. Will want to bring that too. The computer would also be easy to bring if I take it out of my console and use a wrist strap instead. However I may try renting the BC & regulator next time. I'd probably still end up bringing my dive bag to hold the other items but at least I'd have more room and less weight in the bag, and I wouldn't need to upgrade or maintain my equipment.

 

[braumeister]

What is the rectangular item in the second photo?

Underwater selfie stick?

 

[donheff]

What is the rectangular item in the second photo?

That is a framing device for an original Nikonos underwater camera which I am holding. It was difficult to impossible to look thru the viewfinder but the frame could help orient the camera to the subject. Here is a wreck photo I took (on that dive I think).

 

[folivier]

Nikonos were rangefinder cameras and there was no good way to confirm focus other than using the framers. I had a Nik 5 and used the close-up kit.

 

[donheff]

Nikonos were rangefinder cameras and there was no good way to confirm focus other than using the framers. I had a Nik 5 and used the close-up kit.

Close up focus distance may have been what I used it for. I barely remember since I only borrowed the camera a few times. Got some wreck photos and some ice diving photos.

 

[2017ish]

Digital has been a true blessing. We had only passing use of film cameras, but definitely paled in comparison to DW's Nikon with Aquatica housing, or to her smaller Sealife set up. (On a trip where she takes both cameras, adding the other dive gear to the travel kit isn't that big a deal.... )

 

[Scuba]

Yeah I used to have a dedicated camera bag for my rig. Flooded camera on a trip 5 years ago and decided not to repair or replace it. I was accumulating some really nice images but really never looked at them or did anything with them, and I found I enjoyed diving more without taking photos.

 

[2017ish]

... I found I enjoyed diving more without taking photos.

Me as well, although I do keep a goPro in my pocket, just in case.... We'll see how DW's preferences change (if at all) when we double our lifetime dives over the next year or two. We've suffered from living well away from a coast and not being interested in quarry/lake diving.

 

[bearkeley]

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'll always want to bring my mask, fins & snorkel as I really enjoy snorkeling too. I get cold easily so I dive in a custom 5 ml full wetsuit. Will want to bring that too. The computer would also be easy to bring if I take it out of my console and use a wrist strap instead. However I may try renting the BC & regulator next time. I'd probably still end up bringing my dive bag to hold the other items but at least I'd have more room and less weight in the bag, and I wouldn't need to upgrade or maintain my equipment.

After traveling for the last 5 months, we decided it was a good idea to bring our own, even though it was a bit of a hassle given weight restrictions on smaller planes in Asia and Australia. We just love having gear that we know well and can rely on. However, I agree with servicing costs of regs....we dive with cressi compacts, great for travel and cheap enough to probably replace rather than service (bought online).

I think planning to rent next time might be a great way to see if you can be ok without your reg and bc....really depends on where you go and dive op you go with. Enjoy! Jealous to not have any Dive trips planned right now!

 

[KrissK]

We own and travel with our own gear...consider it a SAFETY issue.