We recently had a conversation with a fellow dive professional about equipment ownership. Our friend is a retired dive boat captain. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has captained charters and run dive operations in Florida, the Caribbean and Pacific.
In that time he has captained charters for more than 10,000 divers and certified over 1,500 students and instructors. This experience has given him exceptional insight into the benefits of equipment ownership. This can be summed up in what we like to call The Three Cs — Custody, Cleanliness and Care.
Custody
When you rent equipment, you have no way of knowing how many people have used it before you or who they were. As our friend told us, he once determined that a single regulator in his operation’s rental inventory was used by over 20 different divers in a single week. Who were these people?
- If they encountered a problem with a particular piece of rental gear, did they immediately inform the crew…or just let it be someone else’s problem?
- Were they healthy and disease-free or were they harboring a contagion that normal post-dive rinsing and sanitizing could not totally eliminate?
When you own your own equipment, you can be confident the only person who has used that equipment is you. This eliminates many potential concerns.
Cleanliness
This has always been a concern with rental equipment. It’s even more so in an era of potentially deadly viruses.
- According to entities such as DAN, the UHMS and many major diver training organizations, adequately cleaning and sanitizing rental equipment between users is a multi-step procedure taking up to five minutes or more. We do this; not all dive operations do.
- Even when resort dive operators have every intention of adequately cleaning and sanitizing for rental equipment, things can slip through the cracks — especially during busy times and when dealing with dozens of rental equipment users.
- Some dive operators don’t even bother. After all, by week’s end, you’ll be on a plane for home and no longer their concern. If you take a viral hitchhiker home with you, who is to say you got it from the operator’s rental gear?
You may be used to the increasingly common practice of having rental equipment users supply their own regulator mouthpieces. Not every dive operator does this. Many don’t want you disassembling their rental gear to install your own mouthpiece. Bear in mind also that a mouthpiece is not the only part of rental equipment your mouth will come in contact with.
Care
When you own your own equipment, you know its service history. You know when items such as regulators, BCs and dive computers were professionally serviced and by whom. Do you know the service history of any rental equipment you may use?
Many dive operations take equipment maintenance seriously. Like our friend’s operation in Hawaii, they have a full-time repair technician on staff who will give items such as regulators and BCs a complete overhaul at the first sign of trouble. But not every dive operation does.
You know your personal equipment needs professional inspection and/or service at least once a year. Rental equipment at a resort dive operation may see the equivalent of a year’s normal use in just a matter of weeks. How many resorts service their regulators and BCs this often, particularly in remote locations?
A worthwhile investment
By now you know that owning your own equipment helps guarantee both safety and reliability in numerous ways. A malfunctioning piece of equipment may not kill you or make you sick, but it could ruin an entire dive…or an entire dive vacation.
As our friend was telling us, even though renting equipment was a major profit center for his business, he still preferred that visiting divers brought and used their own equipment. The peace of mind was worth it.
Customers often tell us they can’t justify purchasing their own equipment because they only dive on vacation. Consider this, though:
- Renting items such as BCs, regulators and wetsuits at your destination can easily run you up to $200 a week or more.
- If you make just two dive trips a year, you can end up spending $4,000 or more in rental fees over the course of a decade.
- For that much, you can not only purchase a top-notch set of personal equipment, you can also pay to have it maintained.
In other words, the question is not whether you can afford to own your own dive gear, but whether you can afford not to?
And one more thing…
Diving author Karl Shreeve once wrote that, even if you cannot afford to own your own gear today, you should at least want to. And as soon as the opportunity arises to get your own gear, do so.
If your situation mandates using rental gear on your next dive trip, at least rent it from us and take it with you.
- You can be confident that equipment was properly cleaned and sanitized after its last use.
- You’ll know it was professionally maintained on a regular basis. We can even tell you what an item’s service history was.
- You will be able to stick your own personal mouthpieces on the regulator second stages and not have to come in contact with a mouthpiece that has been in who knows how many mouths.
Owning your own dive gear has always been a wise investment. Today it is even smarter than ever.