weight in BCD versus weight in belt

[Lolly]

Please help. I am a very Pear shaped 50 yr old female. 5'9" 200lbs, I am in the middle of certification class and am not able to perform the skill where we put our weight belts on in the water.

I require 16 lbs - 18 lbs in my weight, so it is very heavy for me to remove the belt and put in back on in the water.

In fact I have not been able to do this...yet.

I was thinking that if I could put 12 lbs in my BCD and only put 4-6l bs in my belt, then my belt would be able to hold and latch my belt. Its a rental BCD. Can a rental BCD hold that much weight? Is it safe to put that much weight in your BCD?

Please help me, any other ideas?? I have to be able to put that belt back on in the water.

Thanks in advamce!

[Recon]

You can put all but 2 pounds in the bc if there is space, and ditchable pockets, thus making the belt only weight 2 pounds making it MUCH easier to don and doff. Also I do not know how they are teaching you to put your belt back on, but you can take the "open" end of the belt in your right hand, and place it in the center of your belt line, and roll to the oppisite way of your right hand. i.e. while in the water, I doff (take off) my belt, I place my right hand holding the open end of the belt in the center of my beltline and then roll to my left. the belt then drapes around you and more ofter then not you have the belt buckle close to your left hand and it can be fairly easy to put back on, that is if you do not have ALL of your weight on the belt. I hope that this helps. I will look on youtube to see if I can find a video of the demo for this in a minute.

~Recon

[DMWiz]

Hi Lolly!

Welcome to the forum...

The point of the exercise is to teach you how to remove and replace all of the ditch-able weight you're carrying. If the rental BC has weight pouches you could split the weight in them (8# on each) making it easier to doff and don.

Lifting the weight pouches out of your BC and putting them back in would meet the requirement.

I agree that carrying that much weight on your belt would make it very difficult to accomplish this task.

Alternatively you could split the weight between a belt and the weight pouches on your BC which would make more sense and would help when you doff and don the scuba unit at depth. However, you should/would still have to remove all of the weights on the surface, not just the belt.

I have seen people let students use less weight than what they actually dive with to perform this skill and IMO this only cheats the students.

[Lolly]

Thanks RECPON & DMWiz,
I dont think my rental BCD is wt integrated, but I think the pockets are big enought to put 4 to 8 lbs in each side pocket. Also my husband suggested that I keep the remaining weights in the front of my weight belt.

Being so "pear shaped" I have to keep the belt short, so when I try to wrap it around my thighs and hips and pull it up, it is too short. So lengthen the weight belt and wearing it around my lower hips (kinda like a gun slinger) may also help.
thanks again.

[ofl0926]

its also about preference... som people like the weight belt and some like the weight in their BCD