When you first learn how to dive, whether it is a military school or civilian. They will talk about, extra items you should carry with you. One of the most important is an extra mask/ mask strap. When I was going through training, we were doing our final FTX dive. It was a ship attack in San Diego harbor on a ship that was used for paintball training for the fleet. I was not the driver, so my job was to hang out and make sure my dive buddy didn’t hit his head on the pier, ship, or anything else. About 10 minutes in my mask started to flood. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to stop. I checked my hood, the strap, the seal, took it off and put it back on. I had no hair at that point, so that wasn’t it. Nothing that I did fixed it. As we were in training, we were not allowed to have two masks. So, I spent 3 hours with my mask filling up and me draining it. As I was doing this, my swim buddy hit his head twice. After the dive, I blamed it on him saying he was swimming too fast, and that was why he kept hitting his head. He knew I was lying, and I ended up buying him a steak dinner. When I got to a team and went through STT diving, the first thing I did was get an extra mask. I have never dove without two masks ever since.
As you can probably tell, I didn’t go through training last year, it has been a while, and there have been a lot of advancements in gear that is used on the land and in the water. So here are just a few things to think about before you dive.
Let start at the beginning of the dive. You are about to jump in the water you put your mask on and the strap breaks. At some point, almost all straps will break. Rubber can dry rot over time. It will most likely happen when you are putting it on, as this is the time you stretch it the most. This is why all dive supervisor kits should have extra mask and fin straps. If they have one, use theirs before you use the one on you. There are new mask straps called Comfort straps from SCUBAPRO. They are made from a similar material to ski goggles, and they will not break. At some point, they will lose their elasticity, but again this should only happen at the start of a dive, and they are straightforward to change out.
Now you are in the water, and you are turtle-backing to the point you are going to start your dive; it is cold; the seas are crap, and you are getting pushed around. You and your swim-buddy get to your start point as you are putting you mask on a penguin pops up out of the water. Your swim-buddy screams and throws his mask and it sinks to the bottom. He goes by the theory of (travel light and mooch) so he doesn’t have an extra mask. But you were taught to have an extra mask, so you give him yours. An excellent place to keep an extra mask is in an old M16 pouch on the belt that holds your rebreather to your waist. It is right at hand and easy to find in the dark. These are one of the best pouches ever made if it unbuckled anything inside won’t dump out. It was designed to hold three fully loaded 30round magazine upside down and not lose anything, even when unbuckled. I usually put a extra mask and fin strap in it.
You can carry an extra mask or just the strap. If you are doing a longer dive and you have to cut back on the size of additional items, some people like to carry a smaller mask as their extra one. There are some excellent smaller masks out there. The Scubapro’s Steel Pro is a great mask if you need to carry something smaller. It uses the same comfort strap and can be tucked away in a small pocket without doing any harm to the skirts.
Now let’s say you are on a dive. You are sent in to cut the steel net that will keep your submarines from getting into shore, and you come upon some other combat swimmers. They were sent out to stop you. While you are fighting underwater, you know with knives. In the heat of the battle, you lose your mask. So, once you win the fight (let’s hope you have been to underwater knife fight school) (if there is one, I am not saying there is) (I signed paperwork saying I wouldn’t talk about it). Now since you have an extra mask, you can pull it out and slap it on and go back to cutting the net.
All kidding aside, having an extra mask and/or mask strap will make your life a lot better, something else you can put in there is some defog, that you can put on your mask if it keeps fogging or if you are putting your extra one on that hasn’t been treated. Again, this will make your life underwater a lot better.
Jaws Spit is nice and thick and can be applied underwater, so it is ideal for use on a mask underwater, and it is small and can be kept in the same mag pouch as the extra mask. It is also good for use before the dive.
If you never have to use any of this stuff when you are underwater, you are a lucky person, but I hope you won’t take that chance, and you keep this stuff on you or make your swim buddy carry it. (travel light and mooch)
