A bit of background for those who don’t know much about the Island: Corsica is the largest french owned island (3,351 sq mi, roughly the size of Porto Rico), south of the mainland (110 miles), just north of Sardaigna and west of Italy (56 miles). As such, it is in the Mediteranean sea and enjoys temperatures in the high 60s at depth in the summer (and mid 90s on land). Corsica is very mountainous above the water and many of the large boulders found on land can be seen underwater. It has a lot of costline (620miles). One can fly to Corsica through Paris (Orly) and Marseille (MRS) as well as take an overnight ferry (with a car, which is what I did). Those are very large ferries capable of transporting 2000+ people and 700 cars.

Raised in the south of France, I had never been to Corsica and didn’t quite know what to expect (you don’t usually vacation in the Dominican Republic when you live in P.R.). I chose Corsica for this dive vacation because it was a good place to take my parents (for my dad’s 90th birthday), an easy place to get to, far away from where I now live (Boston) and a beautiful island to boot. Furthermore, the presence of a rEvo instructor implied a rebreather friendly structure in Porticcio/Agosta on the west coast where we stayed (we rented a 4 bedroom villa for $2000 a week or so).

I dove with Corse Plongée, owned by Nicolas Caprili (FFSSM, PADI & IANTD instructor). Nicolas has put together a great team with Laurent, Tristan, Thomas & Guillaume. I emailed him in advance so as to make sure he had sorb, helium and O2 for me. Air France was kind enough to misplace my rEvo III for 5 days so he even rented me a rebreather until I finally got mine back.

I did four dives with Guillaume, a new instructor in the club who arrived the same day I did. Diving in a mixed team (OC, CCR) was a first for me and Guillaume was a very good buddy. We discovered a plethora of sites together. France and Corsica are on a more mellow diving schedule that I am used to and people generally only make 2 dives a day (one in the AM, one in the afternoon). I made four dives in 25-30m (80-100ft) with Guillaume, most of them with no deco (Guillaume did have some deco, diving on Air). The night before the last day, Nicolas and I prepared for a Normoxic Trimix dive, filling dil, O2 and bailouts (21/35 and EAN 40). The next day we made a really nice dive to 55m.

Some more details:

• I dove with my new Pinnacle 5mm Merino. It was ok for 60mn dives in 65F water (at 25-55m) but not warm. The suit seemed a bit stiff and maybe a tad small when I first got it but it fit perfectly and felt great.
• Corse Plongée lent me a few bailout bottles. They are steel 65 & 72 I think and as such very negatively buoyant. So buoyant in fact that with a pair, at 55m my rEvo wing couldn’t lift me off at all. I had to cut off Nicolas’ trim weight and he mine. They work well though
• I brought my own Travel Stage Bottle Rigging (one from DR and one from Deep Sea Supply which I really dislike – Tobin and I got into it once and he really doesn’t stand behind his products). It made it easy to grab any tank and rig it quickly to be a bailout bottle. They take little space and are good to have.
• While Corsica has a few wrecks around its coastline, the gulf around Ajaccio where I have is mostly tempered water reefs. They are beautiful, very tall boulders populated with much sealife. We’re talking 60m+ tall moutains of boulders, on top of each others in what sometimes seems to be precarious balance. We saw large fish (Dentie/Dentex/Brem – Merou/Grouper), lots of Chromis Chromis, lots of Scorpion Fish (ate one at dinner), tons of wrasses, nudibranch, quite a few spiny lobsters (juvenile and large specimen), octopus. Often, looking up from 20m, the water would be filled with hundreds of fish all the way to the surface. At 55m, I was delighted to see a lot of Anthias, one of my favorite specie. I even caught a glimpse of a Mola Mola/Sunfish/Mole/Poisson Lune) in the water and at the surface (√-check, it was on my list of things to see). In any case, lots of fish but I want to make sure I put an emphasis on the underwater scenery, those large boulders are fantastic, beautiful underwater structures.
• Corse Plongée has two ‘semi-rigide’ – zodiac like boats with a solid bottom. They’re easy to get into (christmas tree ladder) and out of (roll over). As a rebreather diver, they always let me splash first and come back on the boat last, very nice. Before diving you load up all the gear in a truck, walk 100 yards to the beach, bring the gear in the boat and go dive. Most dive sites are 10 minutes from the beach.
• The rEvo III mini hybrid worked really well. Doing 1-2 dives a day I flew it manually at 1.3 using the Shearwater as a parachute at 1.1. I mostly dove Air. I used stubby 3L tanks that Paul sells in Europe (3L at 200bars, I don’t know what the US equivalent is). I used a 4lbs weight for trim but 8lbs might have been better (5mm wet suit, Steel 72 bailout, steel mini rEvo III)
• I didn’t take any photos. Taking a rebreather overseas for the first time (with all technical equipment) was stressful enough, combined that those were my first relaxed dive on the rEvo that I didn’t want to bring my camera housing (though I did bring my 5D MkII and my LX3 I didn’t dive with them).

I want to thank Nicolas, Guillaume and the rest of the team for being so accommodating, helpful and making my dives great. I recommend Corsica & his organization for diving. You might not find great wrecks there but the dives are wonderful, the club is well organized and Corsica is beautiful.

Feel free to ask any questions

• A decompression computer is not a substitute for planning your dive and carrying decompression tables. Plan your dive, dive your plan and carry backups tables.
• I paid full price for my Liquivision X1 (bought it used off a bloke in Canada) but I will be getting a Liquivision X-link for 50% of the list price because I am working on a 2 pager about using the X-link with a Dive Rite O2ptima for Liquivision.
• My experience is with the X1 is only with the V-Planner Live software installed. This post relates to this particular configuration unless otherwise noted.

Experience

When I bought my rebreather, I already had a Delta-P VR3. In addition to that deco computer (which I bought the Trimix and Rebreather/PPO2 software pins for) my O2ptima comes with a Hammerhead primary handset that’s deco-enabled (Buhlman GF). Having just spent so much money on diving equipment I wasn’t looking to buy a new deco computer.

Six months later, my dive buddy Sam bought a Megalodon Copis rebreather. Since the basic Copis doesn’t come with a deco capable computer (really just a PPO2 display) he chose to buy the new Liquivision X1. At the time, not much was known about the X1 but he had seen me struggle with the VR3 and thought the user interface was awful. The idea of being able to chose which software to put on the X1 was attractive as was its user interface both in terms of tapping and screen display.

I actually didn’t think the X1 was a great choice for him at the time as the X-link wasn’t available (it still isn’t at the time of this writing but should ship mid-december 2008) so the X1 could only give him deco information based on a pre-set PPO2 as opposed to reading it real time the way my connected VR3 did. I thought this was especially true of a manual CCR like the Copis he bought. In any case, he loved his X1 and after diving a few times with him as my VR3 failed again and again I went ahead and bought a used (but never wet) X1.

As you may know by now, I dive an eCCR, a life support system which purported goal is to attempt to kill me when I won’t be watching. I was taught to watch though and that means monitor my PPO2 (Oxygen Partial Pressure) frequently. Like any O2ptima rebreather diver, I have a primary on my left wrist that I can check for PO2 as well as a heads up display (the HUD is driven by the secondary handset, which is tucked away in a belt pouch) both of which read from three same oxygen sensor. When I was told about the possibility to add a third computer to the lot which would monitor a fourth cell as well as give me a redundant source of deco information, I jumped on it.

I already owned a Delta-P VR3 which was compatible with this setup. As I was taking my Advanced Nitrox and Deco class years before, I had been co-erced into buying a deco-capable dive computer. The VR3 seemed wonderful with its expandability. And in truth it was.

The Delta-P VR3 is a beast of a dive computer, looking more adept at breaking a lobster shell around a beach fire than being attached on a human wrist. It feels and looks solid if somewhat antiquated. Its main selling point at the time is that you could upgrade it as needed going from Nitrox diving to Trimix, Open Circuit to CCR, Bullman to VPM. And that’s exactly what I did with it, ending up paying around $2000 for the whole getup.

I want to say that the VR3 served me well over the year but that wouldn’t really be true. On my first Open Circuit deco dive, on the deck of the German U-Boat U853, the brand new VR3 suddenly shut off, its screen displaying no information, therefore engraining into my brain that backup tables compulsory. The culprit was supposedly the AA battery I was using instead of a leaner but supposedly compatible european LR6. During the 10-15 hours of my CCR training, it performed beautifully but for the next 5 dives, it would shut off occasionally, complain about low battery or think it was underwater, missing stops, while I was driving to the dive site. It was a backup computer I had learnt to not count on which defeats the purpose. But then again, for 20 hours of CCR diving in the Bahamas, it worked without any issue.

You probably will ask why I never sent it back ? Well, it mostly worked … and the factory is back in the UK and charges quite a bit of money for an overhaul.

I think another reason though is that I knew it wouldn’t be my computer for long. You see, the main issue I have with the VR3 is that it probably has the worse user interface I have ever seen. I might not remember much from my MS-DOS days but it must have been conceived then. Most VR3 users will tell me they find it intuitive but I think they just got used to it. No one can pick up a VR3 and use it immediately. After a few weeks out of the water, I would often forget how to calibrate it, how to set the bailout gases, change the screen orientation. Simple operations such as turning gases on and off or setting them up take a long time and shouldn’t.

Blinded by the fact that I wanted my buddy Sam to use the same gear configuration I had, I even tried to convince him to buy a VR3. He wouldn’t have none of it and he was right. So he went and bought a Liquivision X1. More on that later.

Pros and Cons

Let’s look at the VR3, objectively:

• Solid piece of equipment
• Bulky, oddly shaped
• Deco Algorithms: Bulman or optionally VPM ($)
• _very_ conservative, ‘won’t get you bent’
• User interface is far from user friendly
• Can be purchased bare (Nitrox Open Circuit, Monochrome) then upgraded (Trimix, CCR, Color) as you need it
• External PPO2 (CCR), Wired High Pressure Sensor, O2 Analyser options
• Downloadable dive log option is expensive and software is antiquated at best
• Readability is decent but not outstanding. New HD screen doesn’t seem to be much of an improvment
• Batteries are end-user swappable but picky in real life
• Firmware is not user upgradable and requires sending back to the factory (and is not free)
• Can probably pick up a used one for cheap on ebay or one of the tech divers forums

Conclusion

Should you buy a VR3 today ? Probably not. While Delta-P recently released an updated model (the VR3 HD) the software isn’t much better and the screen readability hasn’t improved much. The VR3 was one of the best dive computers in the early 2000 but newer better computers have recently been introduced (Shearwater Pursuit and Liquivision X1 are fine examples). Delta P themselves have a new computer, the VRX with a new form factor and deco algorithm. So if you’re in the market for something great, pass on the VR3. But if you’re on a tight budget, don’t mind buying a used computer, the VR3 is a solid decompression computer.

Why did I bother reviewing the VR3 you may ask ? Even though it’s becoming the grandfather of modern day deco computers, the VR3 is relevant. It’s a yardstick if you will, something new computers will be judged against because there are tens of thousands of old VR3s out there. And with the Liquivision X1, Shearwater Pursuit and upcoming Dive Rite Nitek X, I for one am looking forward to trying them all out.

Next…

The Liquivision X1 deco computer and its PPO2 interface, the X-link

Disclaimer: A decompression computer is not a substitute for planning your dive and carrying decompression tables. Plan your dive, dive your plan and carry backups tables.