I made it to Key Largo, Florida in mostly one piece with one small exception, one of the containers of Sofnolime (sorb) that I packed had somehow cracked and split open spilling sorb all over most of my clothes and towel that I used to pack them. Not a huge issue but I had to mostly dump a couple pounds of sorb out of my suitcase and clean off all the dust from my clothing.
Since I was flying Southwest I had two checked bags for free. I packed a separate suitcase with a couple tupperwares of Sofnolime wrapped in my clothes and towel for protection. It looks like when TSA had inspected the bag they may have not wrapped them back up again (there was a TSA pamphlet in the bag) and the baggage handler might have been a little too rough with bag causing the container to crack open. The containers I am using from the Container Store are very brittle and seem to crack and break easy. This is the 2nd time I’ve had them break so I’m going to have look for some more durable containers.
My other checked bag contained my other dive gear like my 7mm wetsuit, fins/masks, two deco/bailout regulators, and other miscellaneous things. I wanted to split up the actual dive gear from the Sofnolime in case they confiscated the bag or something rather than putting everything into one large suitcase.
Like others times, I simply carried the rebreather on the plane as my large carry-on bag with a smaller backpack. I was originally booked with Rainbow Reef divers but I saw that Horizon Divers had a Sunday AM charter on the wreck of the Northern Light and a double dip on the Duane in the afternoon so I contacted them and jumped on those charters. I had dove the Duane a couple times before but never the Northern Light since it is a pretty deep wreck.
Horizon Divers was happy to provide 3L CCR cylinders and bailout bottles. I simply brought down my cylinder brackets, bailout regulators and my own sorb.
rEvo is all packed and ready for tomorrow’s charters. This is also the first time that I will be using Cooper Hoses on my rEvo. I installed them last week and made some minor adjustments. I ordered the 20″ Cooper Hoses from DiveAddicts since I was told that the 22″ hoses from Ocean Edge/AddHelium have a tendency to eventually stretch and become too long. Unfortunately the weights that I ordered from Golem Gear/DiveAddicts were backordered so I’ll be diving them without weights on the loop. We’ll see how it goes..
