Two cylinders clipped to your sides instead of one on your back. Sounds simple. The reality is a completely different way of thinking about buoyancy, trim, gas management, and moving through the water. When it clicks, it's brilliant — and Malta's Inland Sea tunnel is a cracking place to find that out.
Let me be direct about the elephant in the room: sidemount has a reputation in some circles as either a cave diving thing or an Instagram thing, and neither is quite right. It's a genuinely useful configuration that has real advantages in specific environments — and a significant learning curve to get right. This course sorts the learning curve out so you can actually enjoy the advantages.
The primary advantage is profile. Lying flat underwater with two cylinders along your sides, you are significantly lower profile than with a twin-set on your back. For overhead environments — wreck penetrations, the Inland Sea tunnel at Dwejra, tight passages — that matters. The secondary advantage is redundancy: two independent cylinders with two independent first stages. If one fails, you switch to the other. Simple, reliable, elegant.
The Inland Sea at Dwejra is one of Malta's most iconic dive sites, and the tunnel that runs from it out to the open sea is a genuine overhead environment. Not particularly long, not particularly deep, but enclosed and current-affected and absolutely brilliant. Sidemount makes that dive more comfortable and provides better access to the tunnel walls. We use it during the course and it's a right crack.
What I want people to understand before they start: sidemount takes longer to feel natural than backmount. The buoyancy and trim picture is different because your centre of gravity and your buoyancy sources are in different places. Most people spend the first day feeling like they're fighting the kit. By day two or three it starts to make sense. By the end of the course it feels like it was always the right way to dive. I've done the journey myself and I can tell you it's worth sticking with through the awkward phase.
Whether you want sidemount for wreck penetration, for comfort on long dives, or just because you fancy trying it — this course will get you there properly.
If you're interested in sidemount as a pathway to technical diving rather than just recreational use, we can structure the course to bridge toward the technical curriculum. Say so when you enquire and I'll tailor the programme accordingly.
Sidemount certification opens overhead environments that are awkward or inaccessible with backmount gear. In Malta specifically, it transforms sites like the Inland Sea tunnel from "something you swim past" into a proper dive. For the technically-inclined, it's an excellent foundation for Decompression Procedures training — the independent cylinder management translates directly.