Question about swimming ability

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Thanks for boosting my confident Miss Joanne :), its about 7:06am in California Bay Area, and when the swimming is open, its now do or die! (well not really die but you know what I mean).
 
alan_lee:
This chap who wasn't a very confident swimmer, literally grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me under in desperation! I had to utilise what I learnt from lifesaving and kicked him away and tell him to calm down. Although he had his BC full of air and so he was in no danger of sinking, he was panicking cos of the water going over him.

Really bad sign.
Did he actually make it through the course?
 
David The Gnome:
Ah yes, I forgot you also have to be able to tread water for I think 5 or 8 minutes, somewhere around there. Keep in mind this is with PADI and I just finished the class last month.


Ya, my NAUI course made us tread water for 10 minutes. Its really no big deal. Floating is easy :)
 
You should be a decent swimmer, PadI needs to toughen their standards, it would go miles and miles to improving the divers they turn out. Your in and about the water, you need to be able to swim confidently, not olympic, but confident. N
 
Yay I tread water fine and lasted about 10 minutes and more. Haven't had fun in the water for three years since entering college. I timed and tread it about 3 times. First set I did with no boots and the second I did with boots. The only thing now is to swim down but I think I need weight belts for that. Now all I need to do is trim my body fat from 212lb to 170lb. :shakehead
 
Great to hear that you'd done well! Well, it's summer and what's more, you're in California, so get out there and get active if you wanna trim down. Getter fitter helps with scuba, esp when in strong currents. BTW, body fat is usually measured as a percentage of your body weight. As a general guide, you should bring it down to under 20% to be in a healthier range.
 
I thought I had posted to this, must've been another one.
Well, here's my 2 cents...
I had to swim the length of the pool 8 times and tread water 10-15mins.
During my OW certification, I ran really low on air so I had to do a surface swim back to the dock and it was tough after 3 very cold dives and I was worn out. So, I think it is important to be able to swim fairly well and to be in fairly good physical condition for overall performance. Being in the ocean with currents and tides would've made my swim even harder so I make it a point to be as fit as I can be.
Practice and you'll do just fine.
Angela
 
Well I tread fine which proves I could last long on the ocean, but yeah, still gonna do some lap. My current weight is 212lb, gonna try and lost 42lb to the nice 170lb :)
 
I did my OW with my son who is 13 and swims on a swim team. I am a strong, not fast, swimmer, so didn't even think about the swim test as an issue. We were doing our test off Pompano Beach, FL between dives of the nursery and Copenhagen.

Air temp was 80f, so after the 1st dive I unzipped and rolled down my wetsuit 1/2 way. Just before diving in for the swim test, I put my wetsuit back on, and pulled up the zipper but instead of closing my wetsuit it ripped out in my hand. So I swam the 300 yds with snorkel, mask and flippers with a billowing wetsuit. I felt like I was swimmming with pulling an open umbrella.....

My son who swims 4 days a week, and does multiple 1000yd sets each practice was swimming along side me. I expected him to pass me, but since he rarely swam in open water, and only once or twice swam any distance with a snorkel. The small chop we were swimming in filled his snorkel a few times with water. I had to calm him down because the one skill he was a natural at, he was having difficulty with.

We both finished the swim, me I learned to start buying my own equipment rather than renting, he learned that he should have like he is comfortable with a mask and fins, but his snorkel was not in his mouth when he did the swim back to the boat.

Later we also practiced using the snorkel and expelling water , just in case he needs to use it when geared up.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom