Crossover to the Gemini

My first CCR was an SF2, later on I crossed over to an sidewinder as I was looking for a pure sidemount rebreather.

I really love the sidewinder, for its size and the fact that it is an manual rebreather. Also it is added to your existing sidemount setup in opencircuit, so no changes needed there. In my opnion for the caves of Mexico the perfect tool.

That said, there are a couple things that could be improved. A while an ago, a friend of mine made me aware that there was a new rebreather on the market. The Gemini, inspired by the Kiss Sidewinder, but that improved all those areas that could use improvement.

Now a while later I had the chance to do a crossover with Giovanni from Third Dimension Diving and see it up close.

Beside some smaller things, there are 2 things that bother me a bit on the sidewinder.

First the fact that there isn't an redundant PPO2 display. I once managed to flood a Shearwater controller 45 minutes into a 50 meter dive. Without a redundant display the otherwise perfecly functioning rebreather now can not be used, as you have no way of nowing what mix you are breathing.

The Gemini next to the Shearwater handset has also a hud. And on top of that, the head is podded (unlike the SW) so no corrosion issues on the cables.

The second one is the scrubber duration. Maybe for the warm waters from Mexico not so much an issue, but for the colder waters of Europe, the scrubber duration is rather short. The Gemini on the other hand, uses a different scrubber canister material, that is a lot better insulated. Making the scrubber duration simular or better then most common rebreathers on the market

An other big difference is the oxygen addition. while both being manual rebreathers, the SW uses an constant mass flow orrifice, while the Gemini uses an needle valve.

The big difference being that with a needle valve you can adjust the oxygen flow on the fly depending on your consumption. Also it is less prone to failure as the orrifice can and will clog with salt crystals at some point.

Next to this it has better loop connections and a IQsub DSV or BOV, wich are super easy to dissamble for cleaning.

I was a bit worried about the loop routing, as I have seen some immages of floppy loop hoses on the internet. But Gio had a nice trick for that, so since that was out of the way, and the unit dived like a dream, I now need an Gemini 😅

As a side note, I know that there is a Sidewinder version 2 on the way. But from what I have heard and read, I would still prefer the features of the Gemini.