Happy Wet Wednesday! Did you happen to see the video on Facebook, yesterday or was it this morning, of the swinging Pendulum that one side was sunshine and the other side was rainy weather? I’m pretty sure that is correct! Look, I even found it to place in this post. You’re welcome.
I also saw that Nordstrom is selling jeans that are faux mud for like $425. I wish that was a hoax but I’m scared it isn’t… I can tell you after last weekend and now today, I can make muddy jeans for them and I’ll sell them at half the cost. Get that steal right here!
I’m really trying to figure out how to have that aha moment and tie the above information in with today’s SCUBAPRO feature item, but either there is no way or the rain is affecting my brain because I have nothing. With that stated, let’s jump right in on today’s SCUBAPRO item….
Safety Sausage/Marker Buoy and the Locking Reel
First the Safety Sausage/Marker Buoy or you’ll also hear it referred to as the Wonder Weenie. I have no idea; I’m just trying to help you be part of the club by presenting all angles.
In the Boat diving class you’ll learn that you need to have a Safety Sausage and Reel because once you hit about 30 feet, you’ll inflate your sausage about half full and send it to the surface. This allows your boat to find you as well as letting other boats around you know where you are. You’ll continue to leave it up while you do your safety stop around 15 feet. Then once you make it to the surface it allows your boat as well as others to know your whereabouts in the water. So as you can see, this is a kind of important item to have.
What can I tell you about the SCUBAPRO Safety Sausage? The one we’re talking about today is called their SCUBAPRO Sealed Marker Buoy. This buoy is 5 feet tall (or for those of you who like that metric system, it is 1.5 meters tall). But that is the inflated height, when it is deflated it rolls up to about 5 inches x 8 inches x 2 inches. Sorry, I don’t have the metric measurements for that.
This safety signal buoy features a double inflation system and two-sided dual colors. So what is a double inflation system? Well, this particular marker buoy offers two ways to inflate. You can open up the bottom and use your 2nd stage or else you can use the little tube and blow in to it yourself.
Other features of this Safety Sausage:
- It is made of durable nylon
- It offers slots for inserting bottom weights to ensure it will stand up in the choppy ocean waters.
Now the Locking Reel
This particular reel is a heavy-duty reel that is mandatory for wreck or cave diving but also a useful accessory to have for search or navigation dives. Basically, you hook your safety sausage to it so that you have a way to hold the safety sausage on the surface. Handy how that works, right?
This reel is made of a high-resistance anodized alloy frame so that it is built tough enough to endure the rugged technical dives, but the nylon fiberglass reel makes the reel durable but still light weight.
It is designed with a folding knob and a balanced handle, positions just right for effortless handling to reduce drag and line entanglement. This reel includes a unique quick-adjustment feature on the handle that offers the choice of free rotation or two friction positions.
Included in this reel is 246 feet (or 75 meters) of .7in (or 2mm) diameter polyester line and one swivel snap.
Okay so why this reel, honestly? Easy! Let’s set the picture. You jump off (or should we say giant stride off) the dive boat in the ocean (pick your ocean, they’re all the same yet all different!!). You don’t have the locking reel. You don’t have your reel locked down just right and bam, you’re entangled in your reel. So the whole dive you are either trying to roll up your reel or realizing that you had to cut your reel because it was all entangled that it was just easier to cut it off.
This particular reel is self locking. Yes, you can let it free reel, but it also has that two friction position to keep it from tangling you and anything or anyone else up in the reel. Plus you’ll have it when you start your assent to the surface.
This has been a featured item once before so if you’d like to read that review, please click here. Otherwise, let’s all go roll in the mud and sell our jeans to Nordstrom to help them. Surely we can find a way to keep the mud stains on them. Then we’ll all be rich and able to quit our day jobs and dive all day every day. A person can dream right? Stay dry!