I go barefoot as much as possible
. I was barefoot waterskiing in the Ouachita river and I hit a small, barely afloat, log. Ouch, that hurt!
No wing on a backplate harness and tank for Caribbean shallow diving -how does this work?
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. I was barefoot waterskiing in the Ouachita river and I hit a small, barely afloat, log. Ouch, that hurt!
Ouch!
But any foot injury I've had barefoot has been less intense/painful/injury than when I wore shoes..
But any foot injury I've had barefoot has been less intense/painful/injury than when I wore shoes..
Running without shoes like diving without a BC is very liberating in my opinion.
YES!!! I run w/o shoes, but my BP has a wing...
Alaskan Scuba Dude
Banned
Ask the ancient Greeks about water displacement.
I did found no BC used and and ancient Greek runners ran barefoot and naked. Talk about freedom.
Bob DBF
Contributor
Or use one of these:
Or a snorkel vest would work for a little extra buoyancy on the surface.
As @scubadada mentioned, one could add air to this Mae West at depth and use it as a BC. This concept changed the Mae West above into the horse collar BC below over time.
That is how people were diving in the seventies, 50 years ago, when I started diving.
These plastic backplates are light and very comfortable, my actual BCD (an hybrid Coltri made in 1989) employs one of them. There are not significant buoyancy problem if used with a small-size single tank (at the time it was a 10 liters, 200 bar, steel, mostly), as the weight excursion full-empty is just 2 kg, which any decent diver can compensate easily with his lungs.
At the time there were just wet suits of limited thickness (my one was a 3mm Cressi), made of little air and a lot of neoprene rubber, so it was crushing much less than today's very soft neoprene suits. In substance, diving to 30m, at the beginning of the dive, with the tank full, one was negative by no more than 3 kg. Which did reduce progressively during the dive, while air was consumed and depth reduced, so at the end the deco stop was feasible in perfectly neutral buoyancy.
BCDs, at the times, were used only when diving deep, with ticker suits, and using twin tanks. For shallow recreational diving the BCD was entirely superfluous.
Now in many places (for example at Maldives) the BCD is mandatory for safety reasons (divers lost by the boat and floating for hours before being recovered), but during dive the BCD is still entirely useless, as usually no diving suit is required in those warm waters. So people simply use a very minimal-size BCD, just for compliance, keeping it empty for the whole dive, and using as a floating helper after surfacing, while waiting for the boat.
Here one of these plastic backplates:
Watch old Cousteau and Sea Hunt episodes. Divers were not as obsessives about never touching the bottom in the pre-BC era. Very little finning would take care of the slight negative buoyancy at the start of the dive and divers would often be touching the bottom when stopped. It was not unusual for divers in wetsuits to pick up rocks at the end of the dive is shallow water to compensate.
Most people could handle the buoyancy change in cylinder weight by breathing at the top or bottom of their lung capacity. A small percentage of people don't float even with fully inflated lungs and no gear. They are typically males with large limbs and small torsos. They can usually make it work with an aluminum tank but they didn't come on the market until the early 1970s. You don't see this often in diving because it is relatively hard for these individuals to learn to swim and be confident in the water.
In the 60s when I began diving instruction the class equipment was an eclectic assortment of double hose regulators, a few single hose jobs, 33, 50 and 72 cf steel tanks with I valves or J valves and most rigged on a military harness which used no plate at all, the tank was the structural member.
It was suggested that a diver could experience no-BC diving simply by not using their BC. LOL, no, just no. If a diver really wants to learn no-BC diving methods then again, they must forgo all of the modern encumbrances, no dual regulators, no pony bottles, no steel doubles plate, no STAs, no padding, no octopus. A tank (aluminum 63/80/steel LP72), a military harness or Oxy fabric type Ultralite plate or a simple plastic blow molded plate, a single regulator and an SPG. Use buoyant or neutral fins like the modern Scubapro Go-Sports and a low or mid-volume mask and a maximum 3/2 suit and preferably none if can be tolerated. The USA made and NLA Rubatex nitrogen blown neoprene suits we used did not compress as much as the modern day imported hyper-stretch stuff and it was warmer too. My 3/16 suit (5mm) did undergo an initial compression thus the need to swim down but would remain quite buoyant even at 60 feet thus allowing me to swim around and when with the air depleted from my LP72 remained sufficiently buoyant at the end of the dive to assist me to swim back up.
But, the closest we can come to no-BC diving is a Hog rigged (meaning a simple one piece no padding harness) VDH/Freedom/Oxy textile plate with a minimal wing of 18-23 pounds of lift. And I would hate to have to float for hours in such a rig. I carry a DSMB and when I float for "hours" (only sort of happened once) I inflated my DSMB and used it as counter flotation like a big pool noodle under my arms and across my chest. Otherwise trying to lift my head up out of the water sufficient to breath sans regulator was difficult and results in face planting and leg cramps from trying to resist the forward roll. In the day, when needed to float for hours, most of us, when exploring further offshore, had a Mae West vest similar to a modern snorkel vest to inflate if needed on the surface. And unlike modern divers who tow a small dive flag float when shore diving, the pre-BC shore diver would often have a more substantial surface float, often a truck inner tube even with a floor or a surf/dive board or other means of significant flotation. And again, most were good swimmers.
This is a horrible picture from about 6 years ago but here I am returning from the deeper ledge (a very long swim) at Fort Lauderdale Commercial Pier. I have no BC, I have no vest, just a rash guard and swimsuit. I have my Voit 50 Fathom DH, a banjo bolt with an SPG, Mares full foot fins and a surface float with flag and GPS. Nowadays I would also have my cell phone and a PLB I suppose and I might use my inflatible SUP for surface support and egress. (I have done this area numerous times using my SOT kayak).
.
That distance is 1.36 miles out and then back the same, swimming the whole way with no BC or even a vest of any sort. It took me over four hours. I was then 62 years old. And it cannot be done?
You might note that I am on my snorkel but it is stuck under the mask strap and the keeper is free. That is because I dislike snorkels and just had it tucked into my swimsuit out of the way during the dive but used it to assist my surface swim out and back. This was one of my last swimming only dives this far out here as I was accompanied by a bull shark on the way in and it just seems to me that such sharks have become more common in this area, not sure. Plus I am older and do not feel like swimming that far when I can use my kayak and go much further, faster and safer.
N
It was suggested that a diver could experience no-BC diving simply by not using their BC. LOL, no, just no. If a diver really wants to learn no-BC diving methods then again, they must forgo all of the modern encumbrances, no dual regulators, no pony bottles, no steel doubles plate, no STAs, no padding, no octopus. A tank (aluminum 63/80/steel LP72), a military harness or Oxy fabric type Ultralite plate or a simple plastic blow molded plate, a single regulator and an SPG. Use buoyant or neutral fins like the modern Scubapro Go-Sports and a low or mid-volume mask and a maximum 3/2 suit and preferably none if can be tolerated. The USA made and NLA Rubatex nitrogen blown neoprene suits we used did not compress as much as the modern day imported hyper-stretch stuff and it was warmer too. My 3/16 suit (5mm) did undergo an initial compression thus the need to swim down but would remain quite buoyant even at 60 feet thus allowing me to swim around and when with the air depleted from my LP72 remained sufficiently buoyant at the end of the dive to assist me to swim back up.
But, the closest we can come to no-BC diving is a Hog rigged (meaning a simple one piece no padding harness) VDH/Freedom/Oxy textile plate with a minimal wing of 18-23 pounds of lift. And I would hate to have to float for hours in such a rig. I carry a DSMB and when I float for "hours" (only sort of happened once) I inflated my DSMB and used it as counter flotation like a big pool noodle under my arms and across my chest. Otherwise trying to lift my head up out of the water sufficient to breath sans regulator was difficult and results in face planting and leg cramps from trying to resist the forward roll. In the day, when needed to float for hours, most of us, when exploring further offshore, had a Mae West vest similar to a modern snorkel vest to inflate if needed on the surface. And unlike modern divers who tow a small dive flag float when shore diving, the pre-BC shore diver would often have a more substantial surface float, often a truck inner tube even with a floor or a surf/dive board or other means of significant flotation. And again, most were good swimmers.
This is a horrible picture from about 6 years ago but here I am returning from the deeper ledge (a very long swim) at Fort Lauderdale Commercial Pier. I have no BC, I have no vest, just a rash guard and swimsuit. I have my Voit 50 Fathom DH, a banjo bolt with an SPG, Mares full foot fins and a surface float with flag and GPS. Nowadays I would also have my cell phone and a PLB I suppose and I might use my inflatible SUP for surface support and egress. (I have done this area numerous times using my SOT kayak).
.That distance is 1.36 miles out and then back the same, swimming the whole way with no BC or even a vest of any sort. It took me over four hours. I was then 62 years old. And it cannot be done?
You might note that I am on my snorkel but it is stuck under the mask strap and the keeper is free. That is because I dislike snorkels and just had it tucked into my swimsuit out of the way during the dive but used it to assist my surface swim out and back. This was one of my last swimming only dives this far out here as I was accompanied by a bull shark on the way in and it just seems to me that such sharks have become more common in this area, not sure. Plus I am older and do not feel like swimming that far when I can use my kayak and go much further, faster and safer.
N
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