Of course, the obvious solution is to get someone else to carry the 2 extra 7's for you, or another diver to take 1 whilst you take the other and he kindly waits whilst you go have all the fun. Failing that, there are maybe a few useful things I picked up over the years. The krabs you feature are ordinary ones and whilst Joels point of filing of the hook helps, I've always found them still to be a pain. There is a krab made by, I think, Troll which has a qenius yet simple design of a bulge in the gate to replace the hook, going into a bulged shaped slot in the body. Whilst rather expensive, I recall about £9, they have to be used to be believed. Frayed gloves, line, no matter how thin or anything will snag again. You'll never go back to ordinary krabs again. Something Pete Mulholland came up with, though it never caught on, was to use the thick black rubber rings used for mounting car exhausts. I still use this method which is; the rubber ring is fixed to the tank with the now standard jubilee. I put several laps of tape on the jubilee, otherwise over time it starts to cut through the ring. The ring now sits proud on the tank and is easily clipped, and unclipped, to the above mentioned krab which is in the usual poisition on the harness. Likewise the top being held by bungy in the normal way. In the last 10 yrs or so of using this method, I've never had a line clip into the krabs and if it did, it would be easy to remove. The rings have to be the thicker rubber to survive and will easily take the wieght of 15's for a few years.
As for extra tanks, the bottle bra mentioned by Joel works a treat but Pete Bolt and I modified the lower part to suit us. Whilst pushing the terminal sump in Wookey in the 90's, we found it bloody hard getting a tank into the lower part when in zero vis using just 1 hand. I like to keep 1 hand on the line when in crap vis, even if in theory, it should be just beside me. What we did was put another 2 of the aforementioned krabs on the front of the harness, in line with each thigh. Then, when returning to the stage, the krab is easily clipped into the rubber loop of the stage. The hand then pulls the 1st stage up to the chest to pull over the bottle bra. In your case, I've also found that this system keeps them in place whilst walking, though bugger me, I wouldn't go more than a few m's like this cause you can't see yr feet, not to mention the weight. I'd put them in a sack when through the sump. When I look at my kit again, I'll see if the krabs have a name or whatever, and I'll let you know. Trust me, they are worth every penny.
Cheers, Mike Barnes
