Freediving fins might help

[ams511]

Being we are now in the fin forum, I have a question. How does someone that dives in colder water use freediving fins? My understanding is the footpocket is only designed to hold the bare foot with maybe a sock, no booties or boots.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Hi all, I will try to change the tone of the thread and ask a few questions.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I visited Lembongan for a week. This is one of our local dive spots. Before we decided on our trip, we often check on the swell height and direction, lunar cycle, and winds, nearby Lembongan. Our dive centre also considers this as well as timing of the tidal cycle and our dives. This is one key element for safe diving in the Indonesian through-flow. Many accidents in Komodo occur when the tides (rapidly falling tides) are ignored. We all seek strong currents for pelagics, but it seems to me that good planning really helps mitigate potential problems.

On our trips, we bring all of our own equipment, including SMB, reef hook, light, and sound source. I use tec fins (F2) and never had a problem with strong current in the Komodo Islands or Bali. Using the sea floor topography and finning oblique to the current works fine. For a site such as Batu Balong, Komodo Islands,,the timing of the dive is key for looking at fish and safety (tides and lunar cycle). Here, the down currents are just dangerous, but easy to avoid.

Last Saturday (second day for the missing divers), we dove out of Padangbai, at G. Tepekong and G. Mimpang. On this trip, my wife rented all her equipment. She did not have her SMB/reel, reef hook, light, etc. In hindsight, she will always bring her stuff, including BCD, regs., BCD, etc.

So one question is, as a diver, far from home, how much stuff do you bring, either to a remote land-based resort or LOB in Raja Ampat or Komodo? Or even in Bali. How much do you pay attention to the dive briefing and how much do you talk with your dive guide about conditions?

I've been to Indonesia several times, having dived in Bali, Komodo, Bunaken, Lembeh Straits, and Raja Ampat. As I said earlier in the thread, I've dived the area where these women were lost, although that was a long time ago (2001). On that particular trip ... which was my first diving trip to Indonesia ... I was separated from my boat due to currents. Fortunately the weather was good, and a passing fishing boat contacted our dive boat and told them where we were ... so we were only in the water about a half-hour before they came to fetch us.

On that first trip we only brought our masks (prescription), regulators, and dive computers. We rented everything else. After that trip, we invested in gear we could bring specifically on tropical trips ... 3 mm wetsuits, lightweight BP/W setups, lightweight fins (OMS Slipstreams for me, Dive Rite EXPs for her), and yoke first stages. This equipment isn't optimal for where we normally dive, so it only gets used when we do warm-water trips.

When we are diving places where we're anticipating currents ... such as our Maldives trip ... we bring SMBs and spools. If we don't anticipate those things ... such as trips to Bonaire ... we don't bring them. When we were in Komodo and Raja Ampat, the dive ops provided them. In Komodo, they insisted that you deploy them on certain dives before leaving the bottom ... for obvious reasons.

We ALWAYS pay attention to the dive briefings ... even when diving on the house reef ... if we have questions, we don't hesitate to ask them. I've found that the guides are delighted to accommodate people who engage in the dive plan ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added February 20th, 2014 at 06:07 AM ----------

Being we are now in the fin forum, I have a question. How does someone that dives in colder water use freediving fins? My understanding is the footpocket is only designed to hold the bare foot with maybe a sock, no booties or boots.

I asked that question in a different thread that devolved into a "every fin except freediving fins sucks" derailment. The answer I received was to purchase a specific model of Force Fins that will accommodate a drysuit boot.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[danvolker]

Hank asked me if I've tried a very specific type of freedive fin ... and I answered his question.

As usual, you drew erroneous conclusions from that response.


... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Wow...you can't see what is staring you in the face....
You are still claiming to KNOW how free diving fins work ( just not the carbons)....and yet, still you don't acknowledge that there are different stiffnesses in freedive blades, to MATCH the power and fitness of a diver, to the fins....
That freediving fins DO NOT require a diver to be an athlete.

And thanks for comparing me to a guy that did more for diving than you will in two lifetimes!

 

[Steve_C]

and you can make very good headway sideways with freedive fins or Extra Force fins, but almost nothing will happen if splits are on...the sideways vector destroys the forward thrust for the splits..

This statement confuses me. Say I am in a horizontal position and I am kicking straight ahead in the direction my body is pointing. I can see how fin type can affect my velocity. But I do understand this destroy business. So I am drifting at the speed of the current. As far as my fins and body are concerned there is no current. I am motionless in the water. There are two vectors relative to the ground. The velocity vector of the current and the velocity vector generated by my kicking. I would think that basic physics would say that I move in the direction of the sum of the two vectors. So say I am oriented perpendicular to the current and my kicking velocity is 5 ft/min. If I kick for x min I am going to move 5x ft perpendicular to the current. The effect of the current is to move me down current. So if the current is 50 ft/min after x min I am 50x downcurrent and 5x cross current. I do not see where the side movement is affected at all. My amount of side movement is independent of the current velocity (ignoring any turbulence).

 

[tomfcrist]

Quit getting bent out of shape guys. Dan will never stop his relentless campaign to rid the world of split fins and jets, all because of some dimented dream he had one day about how all divers are better off wearing 4 foot long fins. It doesnt occur to him that when divers up north run into currents they improvise by sheltering on the leeward side of the wreck or reef, nor that going inside the wreck is a valid option for quite a few divers. I may just buy some freedive fins and do a wreck penetration dive while filming with my go pro....ill make sure i turn around every now and then so that the videos viewers can see jack squat through the cloud of silt that will be following me.

Dan- A DPV could have saved thier butts too, or just thumbing a dive in that much current, or maybe a manned sumbersable.....fact is that they didnt have any of that, and you nor I can with 100% certainty claim that any one peice of gear or training would have prevented this incident. Get over yourself, 99.9% of diver dont use freaking freedive fins, dpv's, or personal submarines....so quit trying to convert the rest of the world(which you neglect to consider in your arguements) to YOUR way of diving. Just as I will not try to convince every diver that OC scuba is a thing of the past, and we should all switch rebreathers to drive the cost down.

End of rant.

 

[Hank49]

Being we are now in the fin forum, I have a question. How does someone that dives in colder water use freediving fins? My understanding is the footpocket is only designed to hold the bare foot with maybe a sock, no booties or boots.

My son uses 2mm neoprene socks with Moana fins. Pathos footpockets. Just use your preferred foot gear when fitting fins. The guys selling them have a good idea what size foot pocket you need based on foot size and bootie thickness.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Wow...you can't see what is staring you in the face....
You are still claiming to KNOW how free diving fins work ( just not the carbons)....and yet, still you don't acknowledge that there are different stiffnesses in freedive blades, to MATCH the power and fitness of a diver, to the fins....
That freediving fins DO NOT require a diver to be an athlete.

Of course not ... and I have never made the claims you attribute to me. I'm quite honest and open about what I know, and readily admit to what I don't.

But freediving fins do ... unlike splits and most blades ... require a reasonable level of technique to get the most effective use from them. If someone's never used them before ... as almost all vacations divers will not have ... it's unreasonable to believe that they'll just be able to rent a pair at the local dive op, put them on, and dive them like you do.

Then again, no one has ever mistaken you for reasonable.

And thanks for comparing me to a guy that did more for diving than you will in two lifetimes!

Really? Tell me what he did for diving outside of the WKPP besides insult and alienate a bunch of people, thump his own chest repeatedly, and damage the reputation of the DIR community to the point where it's just beginning to recover nearly a decade after he quit diving.

George was a supreme egomaniac and internet troll who kept way more people away from DIR than he ever attracted to it. The Florida cave diving "family" is still largely disfunctional because of it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Fishpie]

I like freediving fins.
I do use them when drift diving........
......however
If there was a demographic that would have the most difficulty with freediving fins it would be the one that started this discussion.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

My son uses 2mm neoprene socks with Moana fins. Pathos footpockets. Just use your preferred foot gear when fitting fins. The guys selling them have a good idea what size foot pocket you need based on foot size and bootie thickness.

... for clarification, these are the fins Hank's been referring to ...

[video=youtube;tUuM2sdMTUI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUuM2sdMTUI[/video]

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[danvolker]

This statement confuses me. Say I am in a horizontal position and I am kicking straight ahead in the direction my body is pointing. I can see how fin type can affect my velocity. But I do understand this destroy business. So I am drifting at the speed of the current. As far as my fins and body are concerned there is no current. I am motionless in the water. There are two vectors relative to the ground. The velocity vector of the current and the velocity vector generated by my kicking. I would think that basic physics would say that I move in the direction of the sum of the two vectors. So say I am oriented perpendicular to the current and my kicking velocity is 5 ft/min. If I kick for x min I am going to move 5x ft perpendicular to the current. The effect of the current is to move me down current. So if the current is 50 ft/min after x min I am 50x downcurrent and 5x cross current. I do not see where the side movement is affected at all. My amount of side movement is independent of the current velocity (ignoring any turbulence).

Steve, Thanks for raising this question!!! I would have hoped Bob would have.....but in any event, there is an effect we see that occurs with many models of split fins, when a group of divers decides to cross over the crown on reefs like Breakers or the Boynton Reefs, from the East side fingers, to the West side inshore ledge....This is not a big problem on mild current days, but becomes a big issue on days when the current is really blowing.
You will get a dive leader, heading on a compass heading across the reef crown.....now maybe if they just went 45 degrees WITH the current, so that they would cross a mile further down the reef than really desired--maybe this would allow the splits to work ok....but instead, many divers like to avoid MISSING out on some of the big ledge area that is straight across ( or not too far down current) of where they make the decision to cross from the 90 foot deep fingers, over to the much shallower inshore ledge side. So what I think happens...and what should be studied/ measured/ discussed, is that the divers attempt to hold their position over the bottom so that they stop being blown further down current--or try to limit how much they are blown down current by using a small angle so they don't fight quite so much....and when this happens, the divers with standard paddle fins, including jets, hollis, quattros, all the normal fins without splits---these divers pretty much hold their visual line they are focusing on, and they move across the reef crown to the West, and get to the opposite side about where they were hoping to.....BUT...many of the split fin divers end up having the side push of the current destabilize the normal propulsive action of the splits--whatever thrashing around the splits normally do in still water, where this allows the splits to generate forward power, with a stiff sideways vector of current upsetting the flow dynamics of how the splits move in reaction to the diver's kicks....the efficiency or ability to propel in the desired direction ( following the group or buddy) drops off alarmingly. I have witnessed this many times, and I and other divers with paddle fins or Freedive fins, have then had to step in and grab the tank valve or hand of the split fin wearer, and drag them along the path the group is following...once they get to the far side, and resume the swimming with the vector path of water, the splits work again, and the swimming of the split fin divers keeps them easily in the group with the swimming of the paddle fin wearing divers....

This is probably something I should document on Breakers reef with a group, the next time the current is flying, and we have some advanced divers with split fins AND with jets or equivalent.


This entire issue is relevant to a group of divers in a current, that came up to see no boat...and then became nervous about how to hit land that was sideways to them....about what direction they should swim towards....