Stiffest current you have ever been in?

[dannobee]

A knot is 1.69 ft per second. A "good" swimmer "might" be able to swim against a two knot current momentarily, but can't sustain it.

10 ft/second is roughly a 5 kt current, or faster than a brisk walking pace.

I've been on boats while drifting just outside the Golden Gate while watching the GPS on an outgoing tide with high flow from the Sacramento river delta. Highest reading we ever saw was 5.5 kts. The channel marker buoys (the 12-14 ft diameter shipping channel ones) were mostly under water with a wake coming off of them that looked like a wakeboard/ski boat.

I've been in some ripping currents (Coz, Molokini Crater, etc), but after finding some reference point to measure objectively, it seems to be half of what I ever guesstimated.

 

[drbill]

Hmmm, unless I've done my math wrong I was swimming in excess of 6 fps when I was a competitive swimmer without gear but also without fins. Sounds like a 3-4 knot current is possible to swim against, although one would make little progress.

 

[dannobee]

Hmmm, unless I've done my math wrong I was swimming in excess of 6 fps when I was a competitive swimmer without gear but also without fins. Sounds like a 3-4 knot current is possible to swim against, although one would make little progress.

Could be. The current 100m freestyle world record is 47.5 seconds, or 2.1m/s.

World records in swimming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of course, freestyle swimming isn't the same as scuba diving "swimming." Being completely submerged with a tank and BC add a LOT of drag to the equation.

 

[OceanObsessed]

I used to snorkel/freedive the old bridges down in the keys. We would always go at slack high tide but we would frequently stay much longer when the hunting was good. Those are the strongest currents that I have been in. At full force you could not swim against them but could usually hold ground just enought to make it to the next piling. You could rest in front or rear of the piling and when you were u/w and close to the bottom the current was not so bad. We did this with a support boat following the divers.

 

[Footslogger]

Don't recall the exact speed of the current but I distinctly remember that there was a full tank of air on a 15 foot drop line and the tank was literally bobbing at the surface behind the boat.

Current was stiff when we enterred the water and picked up dramatically during our 1 hour dive. Coming back to the surface I felt like I was on a scooter and had all to do to grab the ladder for my exit.

Not fun ...

 

[fppf]

We dive the Niagara River all the time.
Depending on the location, wind, and power company you can see anything from 2-10 knots
Its not hard if you just go with the flow, we enter up stream and drift to a pre planed exit point.

If your doing dives where the boat is mored, watch the marine life. Drop to the bottom and use it to sheild you from the current. We did a dive in Bahama's with really rippen current, most likely more than 3 knots. You could not swim against it. Used the line to get on the reef, then played hop scotch between coral heads. The people that did not get the idea of using natural items as lees had a short dive.

 

[lmorin]

2 dives in Cozumel during an August trip. Don't know the speed, but nobody could swim against the current on those dives. On one, the DM abruptly dropped under an overhang when I was right behind him. He disappeared into what turned out to be a swim-through. I managed to reverse direction quickly, but could make no headway, finally resorting to pulling myself along the bottom-not my idea of the proper thing to do, but everyone in the group had disappeared. (Found several, including my buddy, waiting just out of the current out of sight; DM long gone). We later referred to these two dives as thruway diving. Not my cup of tea, as I like to hover and look at things closely. The blur going by I do not find particularly interesting.