Ok, whats the best set of fins for a wet diver (3mm wetsuit) who wants something for technical maneuvers (frog and helicopter) and does not weigh more than my tank (slight sarcasm here)? I like Jet fins, but they are just too darned heavy. Most of their bretheren are also heavy. I can't seem to find a consensus on this and would like some opinions from the warm water divers. Thanks!
My big DiveR blades will frogkick incredibly well.....Helicopters are awesome.
Reverse kick is good for short duration...meaning if you only have to do it for a short while.....the long blades have so much leverage, that it is a lot of stress on the muscles on the front of your shins....When I went through GUE fundies, I insisted I could do everything with my DiveR's.....well , yes I could, for a while....but in Fundies, where you may be trying to be motionless for 5 hours, the constant reverse kicks take their toll quickly...even for me as a competitive cyclist.... With Jets I can reverse kick all day long if I want to...without any muscle fatigue.
So the deal is, if your use could include
exploration level penetrations, where you may very well need to be almost dead stopped alot, and perhaps do some serious backing up...not just pulling back once in a while from a photo subject( which the DiveR's do just fine)....the serious backward travel is not ideal for a full length DiveR blade.....We have a new cave we are planning to penetrate soon on a 115 deep reef ledge--actually a roll off, not the main ledge...... off of Boynton ( a diver we know went in to it, and is going to take us to it) ..this is supposedly MORE than 60 feet the diver went in, before aborting, due to no cave light.....and it was narrow to the point that he had to crawl out backwards....we would reverse kick in this instance, rather than silt as he did. I would want either jets or cut down DiveR's for this, certainly not the full length blades. As of now, I will be using Jet fins for this
I do have some DiveR's I am about to cut down.....just having a hard time bringing myself to cutting into these
The technology they represent, for transferring power is amazing, so we do need to see what they will do in a cave diving related length.
If you are talking reefs or wrecks with only large room penetration, the full length DiveR is awesome..Tight penetration will mean they may scrape the ceiling, as they are much longer than jets, and hard to prevent from disturbing the ceiling on a low overhead.
If real precision is what you need, the best all around fin to me is a Jet fin. For tech, for most people, this may be the way you need to go...though it kind of depends on what tech is to you...for some, it may be 240 deep on a reefline, or 280 on top of a big frieghter, with no penetration....this is the realm of the DiveR fin.
Here is a video of a wreck penetration I do with the long blade DiveR's, easily, and where they eclips all jets or alternatives, due to the currents we negotiate "prior to" getting to the wreck...
way-too-much-fun - YouTube
