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Guess i wish i didnt spend the money (not alot of money i know) for a snorkel, such a waste ive never used since my inital cert. I guess I would of went right for a drysuit, instead of a wetsuit. I dive a apollo and it really was only another 500 dollars more and i wouldnt of had to buty a wetsuit then a drysuit. I did get lucky and my dive shop gave me what i paid for it to upgrade to a drysuit.
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Back in th early 90’s I purchased a Spare Air. They were fairly new on the market then and seemed like a great idea. I was living in Hawaii at the time and thought it would offer a sufficient back up air source. Without a doubt the worst scuba item I’ve ever spent money on. It would never fill completely from my main tank. I ended trading it for a new mask and snorkel. I still have and dive with both. I’ve recently purchased a 19 cf pony and that I am very pleased with.
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WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT NEED/USE TODAY,YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD TOMORROW. there is no such thing as a regrettable purchase as far as scuba gear is concerned, in my opinion.
I have sold/traded ANTIQUE scuba gear for more then it originally sold for new. KEEP IT,USE IT,COLLECT IT !!!
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Two items for me. First I regret buying a $180 dive bag. The zippers are impossible to keep waxed and moving easily. Wet gear inside soaks through to my car, and dripping gear on the boat soak through to the inside. I bought a $42 Stanley tool chest from Lowes that is MUCH more practical. When I travel I use an old suitcase anyhow that doesn’t scream "expensive scuba gear" to the thieves.
Second item is my giant DSLR camera housing with Dual strobes. My camera setup just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Ultimately, I ended up with a rig that took me an hour to assemble, and hour to clean and put away, takes up way too much space on a boat, requires a lot of education to get good photos, difficult to manage on shore dives, and took an extra piece of luggage to transport on vacations. I sold it at a loss, bought the smallest camera and single strobe I could find with the money, and am MUCH happier for it. Point & Shoot for me!!
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Back in the 70’s I bought an early attempt at a non-electronic dive computer made by Farrallon. There were 3 on the boat one day, we went down together, dove together, surfaced together and had 3 very different results I wouldn’t trust my life to anymore!
Keep the snorkel in the dive bag, you never know when something interesting will show up during the SI! I do keep a folding one in the pocket after an incedent in the gulf of Mexico and the folding ones are useless for the heavy breathing required for keeping up with whales and whalesharks!
Yup, been down the monster camera and strobe path, unless you are under contract with National Geographic a point and shoot will do fine.
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From myscubastory: A lot of people myself included keep giving beginners the advice NOT to buy gear for a while but to rent and figure out what they really need or want. I was actually given this advice from a good friend before I bought MY gear . . . but I wanted to dive, and to dive I needed gear, so I made the best decisions I could at the time. Most of them were okay, but a couple were, in retrospect, bad decisions.
If I had it to do over, I would NOT: Buy a console computer. My wife and I, for reasons I can’t clearly remember, decided that wrist-mounted gauges would be too much hassle. We were wrong. Consoles are too much hassle. Either they hang, or you clip them up to something and then have to pull them out to look at them. I have since bought a wrist computer and intend to give up the console. I would also NOT: Equip my BC with an Air2. It seemed like a good idea at the time, eliminating a hose and improving streamlining (my wife and I wanted simple gear, streamlined, and standardized for the two of us . . . small wonder I’m going DIR, huh?) It is a very awkward device to use for air-sharing, and even more complicated if you have to do an ascent. If I had bought a second second stage, converting my gear to a DIR setup would be much simpler as well.
So what gear-buying decisions did other people make that they regretted later?
I also wear a wrist computer (with air integration), but I will NEVER EVER give up my analog guages in my console. Batteries fail. I like the security of my analog spg.
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so many purchase regrets!
One just came to me when looking at all my course (padi) materials! Im now an instructor - and if i wanted to go abroad with all my dive certification level books i would need a private jet! No joke I wish I had found a way to make this material be available in a PDF format instead of a 10kg lots of dive book format! Who agrees?!
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Anything that is supposed to be multi functional like octo/inflator or a wing that can be used for doubles and singles.
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I have a 2.7 cu.ft one the size of a coke can but since I bought it before I learned that I really need a 13-20 cu.ft tank to get back up from a 100ft depth safely I’m still OK with the unit. I still find it useful to have as a safety air source while on the surface - I can get a 30-40 puffs from it when using it on the surface. I do recreational diving so the pony tanks would not fit my needs yet.
Charlie
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