Diving without Weights

[Rick Inman]

Actually, that's only true if you don't have enough weight. As others have noted, it's possible to be correctly weighted even without carrying extra lead.By "light," I'm assuming you don't mean underweighted? Underweighted is not good either, that's one of the ways you end up in that uncontrolled ascent you talked about above.

Too much extra weight will actually exacerbate your buoyancy difficulties. Extra weight is NOT the solution to forgetting to dump air from your BC or drysuit!!

Yeah. In FW I don't require weight (BP/W, steel tank). If I'm neutral, one nice breath should start me heading up. If someone cuts my wing hose, I can orally inflate. If that same evil someone cuts my wing into shreds, I can inflate my dry suit. I just can't put together a realistic scenario where I would have to dump weight at depth - IF I am correctly weighted.
Now, on the surface, if I jump off the boat without inflating my wing/drysuit, without checking my SPG or taking a breath off my reg., and my air is off, I have no weights to dump, so I'd better be able to reach my valve. (And actually, with a full breath, I am close to neutral on the surface.)
Others disagree. So, if it makes you feel better, where 4#s of dump-able.

 

[Gary D.]

I don't know the date when the BC came into everyday use but a very large percentage of divers did survive without wearing them, ditchable weights or any flotation at all.

If you don't need weights don't wear them. PERIOD. It would be kind of stupid to overweight yourself so you have something to dump and get to where you should have been in the first place.

It would be like putting the spare tire on the car when you don't have a flat just in case the original tire goes flat.

Gary D.

 

[Don Burke]

What are the negative aspects and positive of diving without weight?

The positive of diving without a weightbelt is comfort.

The negative of diving without ditchable weight is that you may not be able to establish positive buoyancy in some cases.

The one that comes to mind is a complete BC failure.

When you first get to the bottom, you are heavy by the amount of gas in your tank above your end pressure (That is about five pounds for an AL80) and whatever you lose through compression of neoprene. (At forty feet you would lose a bit more than half of whatever the buoyancy of your wetgear is at the surface.)

That could easily come to fifteen or twenty pounds, which may be tough to swim up. The good news is that once you are on the surface, you get the buoyancy from the wetgear back and just have to carry the gas. More good news is that you probably used up a fair chunk of the gas swimming that load up and now you do not need to carry as much.

Just adding weight will not change this. Removing weight somewhere else, as with a tank change or BC change, and adding ditchable weight to get back to the same trim is a possibility.

I prefer to be able to stay at the surface without swimming with a flat wing and a full tank by dropping something, usually a weightbelt.

I would consider changing the tank or BC, but I would not go into an uproar over it.

 

[coreypenrose]

Actually, that's only true if you don't have enough weight. As others have noted, it's possible to be correctly weighted even without carrying extra lead.

Yes, it's certainly possible to be correctly weighted in some situations without carrying extra lead for tropical or fresh water divers. But, I ask you, how often have you seen someone dive in a seven mil suit without carrying some kind of extra weight - be it with four-five tanks for the tech guys or extra lead for the rest of us.

By "light," I'm assuming you don't mean underweighted? Underweighted is not good either, that's one of the ways you end up in that uncontrolled ascent you talked about above.

Yes, of course. Hence the need for a little extra weight when diving cold water to prevent uncontrolled ascents.

Too much extra weight will actually exacerbate your buoyancy difficulties. Extra weight is NOT the solution to forgetting to dump air from your BC or drysuit!!

I'm not talking about wearing an extra twenty pounds. What I'm advising against is, and I'm sure you've seen this as an Alaska diver, is working to prune away every extra pound and taking the absolute bare minimum of weight when wearing seven mil suits or drysuits - as the original poster is doing. If he was to change to a newer suit or upgrade to a drysuit, taking the absolute smallest amount of weight could make a slow ascent difficult.

Personally, I like to be able to add air to my drysuit without having to worry about bobbing like a wine cork.

 

[eponym]

I dive with very little or no weight. I don't have a problem going down. I'm 5'8 220 lbs and muscular. What are the negative and positive aspects of diving without weight?

I'm a lot smaller than you (5'6", 140 pounds) and I also don't need to add weight to my BC/AL80 rig if I'm only wearing a 3-mil shorty--that's when I travel to warm water.

Since I usually dive drysuited in cold water, I can say that it's wonderfully easy to do those warm-water, no-weight dives, from gearing up to getting out. So much less strain on these old(er) bones.

But the greatest benefit is that you can control your buoyancy over a wide range of depths, just by using your lungs. Breathe shallower to sink, deeper to rise. The responsiveness is awesome--so much quicker than moving air in or out of a BC.

Fin on,
Bryan

 

[teknitroxdiver]

There is no point in adding weight just so you can have some to ditch. Think about it. If you add 4 pounds that you don't need, once you ditch them you will be neutral. Not positive. You just won't have that extra 4 pounds of lead.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

There is no point in adding weight just so you can have some to ditch. Think about it. If you add 4 pounds that you don't need, once you ditch them you will be neutral. Not positive. You just won't have that extra 4 pounds of lead.

Exactly!

And for that time that you are carrying around an extra 4 pounds, you will need to keep and extra 2 liters of air in your BC just to support that extra weight. Of course as you ascend slightly, that extra air expands making you even more buoyant, possibly leading to the very runaway ascent you were trying to avoid by carrying an extra 4 pounds!


Proper weight is the minimum amount of weight needed to maintain neutral buoyancy at all points during the dive with no air left in the BC and only the minimum amount of air in a drysuit needed to avoid suit squeeze.

 

[flexlarson]

Ever sense I switched to steel tanks and a backplate and harness style BC I haven't needed any extra weight. I usually carry a lift bag and reel just incase I have a BC failure and need the lift to get to the surface. For shallow dives I don't really worry about this much as it's not difficult to make it to the surface after diching all the gear. Most of the guys I dive with don't wear any extra weight either as the tech gear we all wear is fairly heavy to start with.

Hello
Ok might be a dumb question,Kinda off topic but how do lift bags work?

Thanks guys
I feel a lil better now,. Guys locally just wonder how I go down without them.

Is it bad to blow all the air from your lungs,. Completely exhale

 

[Boogie711]

I'm not talking about wearing an extra twenty pounds. What I'm advising against is, and I'm sure you've seen this as an Alaska diver, is working to prune away every extra pound and taking the absolute bare minimum of weight when wearing seven mil suits or drysuits - as the original poster is doing. If he was to change to a newer suit or upgrade to a drysuit, taking the absolute smallest amount of weight could make a slow ascent difficult.

Personally, I like to be able to add air to my drysuit without having to worry about bobbing like a wine cork.

I prefer to never let my equipment attempt to compensate for a skills issue. If he is correctly weighted, he's correctly weighted. And correctly weighted is the least amount of weight necessary to be neutrally bouyant at the surface. No more, no less.

Simply adding weight or going "a few extra pounds heavy" is actually either going to just screw up your bouyancy and trim, or start you on the road to a world of hurt if a BC/Drysuit should ever fail.

 

[Alessio]

Exactly!
Proper weight is the minimum amount of weight needed to maintain neutral buoyancy at all points during the dive with no air left in the BC and only the minimum amount of air in a drysuit needed to avoid suit squeeze.

Yup. This was covered long ago, asi I recall correcly, in my PADI OWD course, you are suposed to have just enough weight so you have the water up to your mask (middle of the mask) with the BC with no air.