Chest Mounted Rebreather Dive! Choptima (O2ptima CM) Action! (BQ)

Hey buddy, what's going on? Is it time? All right, man, let's do it. I'm looking forward to it. I'll be right down. All right. Okay. So that was my buddy, Jeff, down in Key Largo, and basically he's invited me down to dive a chest-mounted rebreather. So let's do it. In fact, why don't you guys come with? Now, the rebreather in question is the DiveRite Choptima, chest-mounted Optima. They've made the Optima rebreather for a number of years now. This is a new chest-mounted option of their old favorite. Now, chest-mounted rebreathers are not a new idea. In fact, the earliest military rebreathers were oxygen rebreathers, were all chest-mounted. You see this sort of vintage military photos of those things. But this is a new product for the recreational market. And the advantages, as I see them, are that you can just clip it onto your existing recreational dive setup. Whether that be single tank, back mount, side mount, you just clip it onto your D-rings, and away you go on the loop. So I'm super excited to see the unit. I'm very excited to get to dive it. Jeff, who is a Choptima instructor, has been a friend and colleague of mine, well, for as long as I've been in Miami. So, you know, a number of years now. And he's not somebody I would normally associate with the words early adopter when it comes to technology. He's normally the kind of guy who's kind of wait and see how things pan out. He's very strategic. But he was an early adopter of this, and you've got to be, you know, you've got to jump on these technologies when they come through. And at the same time, it's a big financial investment, and also time-wise, to become an instructor on a rebreather that takes a lot of time. So I'm interested to ask him about why he chose the Choptima, what it does for his diving, why specifically this unit, why chest-mounted, and also his thoughts for who this rebreather is targeted for within the rebreather market in general. So I'm excited for it. I can't wait. You know, it's been a while since my last six-yard dive. I hope I don't suck. I'm probably going to suck. Now, you may know that Dive Right are a sponsor on this channel. This is not a sponsored video. This is not part of our series that we have with Dive Right for the year. It's purely coincidental that I've got this opportunity. Normally, when we do the Meet My Dive buddies, we'd have a Guinness. I'll probably mention the abject lack of Guinness here, but we are diving. I know, I know. I'm as disappointed as you are. Yeah, sure. Well, you come to the dive locker, you get Guinness. That's where the Guinness is kept. Oh. You have a standing invitation. You know that. Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on? Welcome to Divers Ready. It is so great, as always, to see all of your smiling faces. I am here with a very dear friend of mine, Mr. Geoffrey Knapp. Thank you so much for having me. How's it going, sir? Mate, brilliant. And we're here in the Horizon Divers classroom to try out some new kit. Well, new to me, anyway. Chest-mounted rebreather from Dive Right, the Choptima. And you are an instructor on it. I am an instructor on the Choptima. Fantastic. So, we're going to go through a bit of a class. You're going to take me diving on it. That's basically the plan for the whole video. You'll show me how to build it, show me how to break it down, all that good stuff. But first off, let's talk a little bit about your background in diving in general. You're from Virginia? I'm from Virginia, yeah. Did you dive up that way? Learned to dive in Richmond, Virginia. How about that? That famous ocean-going city. Oh, man. Let me tell you. In the Chesapeake Bay, that water is so crystal black. Yeah. Yeah, it's like diving in chocolate milk, I would imagine, huh? Lovely. Does it taste like chocolate milk? No. All right. But at least you can get, you know, your own blue swimming crabs and that kind of stuff. So that's all good. So learn to dive up there. What brought you to Key Largo? Horizon Divers. There you go. I was managing a dive shop in Virginia. Dan Dawson and Horizon Divers needed an instructor. Their head instructor was retiring soon. The opportunity came about. Couldn't say no. And how many years ago was that? Well, it was only going to be like two or three, and that was probably, we're a little past eight now. Isn't that always the way? So, fantastic. So, which agencies do you teach for? I teach padding, TDI, SDI, INTD, SSI. SSI, I was going to say. Yeah. There's a few of them. Maybe a little RAID from here to there. Oh, okay. You know. All right, good stuff. Most of the alphabet. Excellent. All the acronyms. We haven't done very much with CCR on this channel at all. Like, I haven't, I basically haven't touched rebreathers on Divers Ready yet at all. I haven't done what is CCR diving or anything like that. So, I went first. Yeah, and we're jumping straight in with something that's, you know, revolutionizing the market. So, it's kind of interesting. So, can you, Jeff Knapp, rebreather instructor on multiple models, explain CCR technology in 30 seconds or less? It's recycling. Simply put, when you are an open circuit diver, you inhale, you exhale, gas goes away. All right? You're giving gas back to the world. All right? A CCR diver, you're stingy. You inhale, you exhale, you keep that gas inside the unit. All right? Your body isn't metabolizing all of the oxygen that you exhale, and it's just coming back around. So, instead of needing big tanks to recover the gas that you're giving back to the world, little tanks, because you're stingy with the gas that you have and you're holding onto it. There you go. It's a mobile nitrox blending station. It is. And that makes it perfect, you know, for all depths. If you're a gas hog, all right? You're not giving gas up. You're keeping that gas. All right? So, you're hogging it for yourself. It's not going away. It's just staying in the loop. All right? So, it saves you from having to lug, you know, big 117s or 120s. Yep. You know, big steel tanks. This solves a lot of that problem. And how long have you been diving on the Choptoner? Since you could buy it. So, I got my first unit in March of 2020. Yeah. Which mine was one of the first units that you could get. I got certified on it on March 27th. Okay. The day before the state shut down for COVID. And has been diving it ever since. All through the summer and all that good stuff. Yeah. Now, I said in the intro, which you didn't see me record, I did it on the way down here, that knowing you, you're a very strategic thinker. You plan very carefully. Yes. And I wouldn't associate the words early adopter with Jeff Knapp. But you jumped on this rebreather. Why? I was in the market for a rebreather that wasn't back mount. Right. I already dive two or three different back mounted CCR units. I was into cave diving and I was looking at something specific for side mount or cave aspect. Had looked at a couple other models and didn't even know the Choptoner was out there. Was doing my cave CCR course and my instructor had a prototype. Nice. Showed it to me. And because it's a completely intact, electronic CCR. All right. It's not broken down into pieces spread throughout your kit. It's one solid unit. It was easy to put on, easy to take off. And I was sold. Yeah. Right. So that was going to be my next question actually. I'm a big guy. You're a big guy. And then we're mounting this unit on our chest here, right? So for overhead environments, for getting through smaller spaces, letter boxes, going through the corridors of the Spiegel Grove, how do you find it? The unit is narrow and tall. So I back mount double fifties. Okay. And that's my diluent and a bailout or a decompression gas or my donating gas for an open circuit buddy. Right. And they're small cause they're fifties. And then the unit goes on my chest. So I'm narrow and tall. Right. All right. Which instead of a wreck works amazing. Perfect. Cause you're going through doorways. Right. As long as the wrecks not laying on the side or something like that. All right. And it works out great. If I find that the unit won't fit, you can unclip it off of your hip and actually bring it up in front of you like a side mount bottle would. And super mount it through. And you go right on through. That's killer. In the cave, I switched to side mount. All right. And I have no higher profile than if I were in back mounted doubles. Yeah. All right. And then I carry two eighties on each hip or two fifties on each hip. All right. And it goes and I can Superman it. If I hit a restriction. All right. Once you get past the having it on your chest part, it's super comfortable. Yeah. So what would the advantages be? I mean, we mentioned some of them when we talk about overhead environments but why would someone get a chest mount as opposed to if they're looking to buy their first rebreather as opposed to a side mount or a back mount? So things about the Chopper that make it great for new CCR divers or seasoned CCR divers is travel friendly. Yeah. All right. That's it, right? That's it. Right there. Carry on. It's easy to pack up. All right. I have a little small plastic case that it goes on. That's carry on size. Right. As long as you can get oxygen at your destination and air. All right. The extend air cartridges that you use to dive or the Zorb that you use to dive that you can travel with. So getting it to a small, beautiful island somewhere is not difficult. Yeah. Super, super easy. As opposed to a traditional, you know, larger unit you're gonna break it apart. TSA are gonna mess with you. Made for three liter steel bottles, things like that. The other nice thing about this is unlike other rebreathers, this is really meant to adapt to you. So if you're a single tank diver. Yeah. All right. Whereas before you looked at rebreathers and you're like, well, I don't want something big and bulky on my back. Well, keep your single tank. Yeah. All right. The O2 mounts on the bottom right down here and then it plums in to your single tank. Yeah. All right. I dive in back mounted fifties. Okay. And with the addition of a couple other bottles, I can do 300 feet on back mounted fifties and some eighties and I'm small, compact, easy to move around with. Side mount, it works great for. So it's really versatile to your style of diving. Right. Really meant to kind of be adaptive for that. And it's beyond what I think DiveRite really thought the rebreather would do. It was originally designed as a backup rebreather. Awesome. All right. Well, I can't wait to get it wet. So I think we're going to head to the dock, put it on the boat. You're going to give me a thorough briefing and then we'll take them for a spin. It has been six years since I was on CCR. I was doing the maths on the way down here. So what could possibly go wrong? I mean, looking forward to it, buddy. Thanks so much. Let's go. What Jeff doesn't know is I had chili cheese fries for lunch so I can burp into his counselor. Shoot. What's his name? Ben. Carlos. So back from the dive, I thought that went pretty well. I must say, having not touched a CCR in six years, I felt kind of okay about it. A couple of little buoyancy bounces at the start, of course, getting used to it again. But it's really, really easy and intuitive. You've got your two addition valves on the side. The loop is super comfortable. It fit really nicely on me. And yeah, I can definitely see the appeal and I know why they're doing so well with the Choptima DiveRite. Let me know what you guys thought of the footage that I shot underwater. I think I looked all right. I thought my trim was okay. But that's what the comment section is for. Let me know. And yeah, hopefully we'll be doing more CCR content on this channel in the coming months. But we'll have to wait and see on that one. Anyway, like I said, not a sponsored video. So happy to Jeff and, you know, for giving me the opportunity to dive one of his Choptima rebreathers. And yeah, I'll put all of Jeff's contact details in the description of this video below. So if you're interested in this unit, really he's the person to reach out to and get in touch with. Until next time, don't forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so already. And yeah, this was your Divers Ready video for this week. I'm going to drive back to Miami now. Peace.