kayak diving

[jan]

Does anyone use their kayak for diving? I have an ocean kayak malibue 2 and plan to try it this spring. any advice on putting your tank on in the water would be very helpful.Thanks

 

[scuba-sass]

Donning and Doffing equipment in the water is something you should have practiced in your OW certification. Just keep enough air in the BC to keep it floating, especially if you have integrated weights. If you have a weight belt - be sure YOU hang onto the inflated BC.

Balancing the kayak and getting in/out of that would be the tough part for me, but I've never been in one! I'm a canoe girl, myself....

This is certainly the Board for good SCUBA advice, I'm sure wiser heads than mine will speak up soon.

Good Luck!

Susan

 

[The Chairman]

diving with my Kayak once... never could get enough weight on me to submerge... BCs work better! :tease:

 

[Ontario Diver]

Originally posted by NetDoc
diving with my Kayak once... never could get enough weight on me to submerge... BCs work better! :tease:

Gee ND, you're doing something wrong. I ran White Water Canoes and I've sunk enough to know it can be done...

 

[JoelW]

I have a Cobra Kayak Fish'n'Dive. Amazingly enough the marketing info is correct, it is useful for both. Most of the time it is used just for the exercise. I have taken it out a couple of times for diving. With one person throw the gear in the kayak to get out to where you want to be. With two people we inflated the BCs (all setup) and clipped them to the back of the kayak on tethers and towed them to the site. Leave the gear on the tether while getting into it. That way you don't drift away from the kayak while both hands are busy.

On windy days don't use the kayak as the float. Park it and take a small flag. When it is not windy it works to drag it along.

When getting out of the gear hook the tether to a D-ring and then take stuff off. In case you did not inflate the BC enough this will prevent it from heading to the bottom and it keeps you close to the kayak.

Getting back in is easy. The Cobra is wide enough that actually tipping one would take a bit of work. I would imagine the Ocean Kayak is the same.

JoelW

 

[scuba-sass]

Now I have to add a Kayak to my Gear Wish List!

Scuba-sass

 

[Hawk]

I have done quite a bit of thinking about doing kayak diving. I've spent a lot of time reading about it and there are a lot of people using this form. I think that I will get into it eventually, but I need to improve on my normal diving first. There are parks in the puget sound area made for people using them and canoes only. My father-in-law is into sea-kayaking and has told me a lot about it. Sounds like a lot of fun, I am surprised nobody has brought this up here before. There are a lot of websites dedicated to this.




Later, Hawk.

 

[neil]

Diving from a kayak is easy: just have leashes to clip off your gear when you get in and out of the boat. Simple nylon straps with "dog" clips are great. The difficult part of kayak diving is getting in and out of surf. I highly recommend that you learn to kayak well before you try to dive off one in the ocean. A 60 lb. boat loaded with 60 lbs of gear that gets away from you in the surf is a very dangerous object! Run away!

Mark Theobald has written an excellent book on the subject: http://www.sit-on-topkayaking.com/KayakDiving.html

"Rig to flip; dress to swim"

Neil

 

[watergal]

But make sure you leave you wetsuit warmers at home.

Because you can't have your kayak and heat it too.:hehe:

 

[Iguana Don]

GROAN