Scuba Diving from a Sailboat

[metaldector]

I dove a week with Blackbeards 65' sailboat out of Miami. This worked very well. All of the food you could want, and all of the diving you could do. Three to four dives a day. I'd rather go on a liveaboard than own the boat.

 

[WVMike]

Ah! these would be two of my dream things to do as well.

I am thinking about a small wet bottom sailboat, like a snark, laser or sunfish. to combine daysailing with diving.

Has anyone dove from a small sailboat?

Or maybe a sit on top kayak with a sail?

Great Fun

 

[Groundhog246]

WVMike once bubbled...
Ah! these would be two of my dream things to do as well.

I am thinking about a small wet bottom sailboat, like a snark, laser or sunfish. to combine daysailing with diving.

Has anyone dove from a small sailboat?

Depends on your definition of "small". We've done a couple off our Tanzer 26. The re-boarding is a problem, I am working on installing an new ladder that extends deeper when deployed. The other major issue is gear. Storage is limited and by the time you get gear for 2 aboard, it's getting crowded, not to mention the affect on the waterline and sailing performance.
That said, I'm trying to sort out how and where to stow gear for 3, including 6 tanks to enable an overnight trip. Will certainly take pictures. Current thinking is 3 or 4 tanks in the Port quarterberth, the rest in the Starboard lazarette along with the lead and at least some of the gear bagged (Akona gear bags) and lashed on deck. We sometimes carry a small inflatable dinghy, deflated and lashed on deck and that has worked out well, so should be much the same.

We used to have a couple of university age guys with a 22 foot sailboat beside us in the marina that dove from it. As many as 3 divers aboard, they'd load the assembled gear into the cabin. I never saw them try to sail when loaded up though, they'd just motor out and back.

I can't see diving off a snark or a sunfish. I suppose if you didn't go too far, wore your exposure suit and carried your BC, tank, reg assembled. Certainly you'd never manage 2 divers, 2 sets of gear and remain able to sail, not sure you'd still be afloat. On a Laser, you can't lower the sail, so stopping to anchor would be difficult and you'd be likely to come up and find the Laser had sailed away or turtled.

 

[JCKCSYCMD]

I would not attempt to dive from a centerboard day sailor. You risk dumping your gear.
For smaller sailboats, I suggest like in my note a few above to offload your gear to an inflatable. It is difficlut to get around, especially if you suit up ahead of time. Even some of the newer designs like a Catalina 320 with open transom one has to negotiate around the helm.
If you are diving from a traditional transom sailboat, put your rig on in the water and likewise foll out of it before boarding. Use your boom to pull up and swing gear aboard.
Cruising cats are good and the newer Dufour Atoll model line of monohulls with open transom are also good for diving. Sort of the Avalanche of the SUV market.

 

[JCKCSYCMD]

If you are looking for a day sailor with overnight capability, and has a fairly open cockpit, get an old Tartan Ten. Basically an overgrown day sail keelboat. Only about 4.5' headroom, but flat deck and long cockpit. For a 34 foot boat it possibly has the largest cockpit, and with conventional fold up tiller. Therefore somewhat scuba gear friendly. However most were made with small single cylinder diesels, so getting to a dive site is slow.

Routinely on used markets with decent racing sail inventories for only $10-15K. Great Lakes and west coast have some fairly decent T10 one design fleets still going strong. Detroit can have up to 20 on the starting line on a weeknight, Chicago I believe can have in the vicinity of 40 for regattas.

However, from my experience you are better off getting a nice easy to trailer powerboat to supplement your sailboat. 65 mph by road, and 45 by sea. I see a lot of aluminum dive boats like the 26' Starcrafts that are light, easy to trailer, and have room for a lot of dive gear for say four divers and a lookout.

 

[Groundhog246]

An inflateable (and diving from it) would be great if we had one. Weight and storage are the big issues. A 3 to 4 person inflatable is 60 pounds and too big for our lazarette, so we'd have to carry on deck and they don't tow worth a damn. Add the weight of an outboard (they don't row well either) and you've got the equivalent of 1 persons dive gear, including a pair of tanks.

I like the idea of a small powerboat to dive from, but don't have a tow vehicle (our boat gets craned in and out and stores for the winter on a cradle, no trailer). And for where we wish to go, you'd want more than a small open boat. The expense of a bigger boat, gas maintenance, where to store it make it that much more prohibitive, especially for occasional use. It's a 20 mile trip across Georgian Bay to our first "target" and weather can change quickly out there.

Our sailboat diving method to date, has been:

Remove the wheel (steering) and store. Most sailboats with a wheel, you can remove one nut, slide the wheel off (watching for the "key") and stash out of the way. We do it quite routinely at anchor.
Assemble gear in the cockpit, one diver on each side.
Lower the lifelines on each side.
Put on wetsuits, then BCD, mask, fins etc.
Ease your butt up onto the Coaming and roll back into the water (about a 3 foot drop).
We're still working on reboarding. To date it's been climb up the ladder. Experimenting with using the boom to lift BC aboard and/or suspending a "milk crate" so you can remove weights and place them in the crate before re-boarding (especially for those with belts, instead of integrated). I have a new ladder to install which should ease it a bit.

 

[gracet]

We chartered a 40’ sailboat (as a bareboat) in the BVIs in the 96’ for 10days. We rented 6 tanks for 3 divers from a nearby dive shop. I guess the BVI is the only place were you can move your self around to the best dive spots because of the government buoys and there is very detailed book about each site. No compressor on the boat, ive never seen that as an option on a bareboat rental. So in the 10 days we did 10 dives. Some days we sailed and some days we did two dives. I got out the book got the boat the site, and led the dive. We dove from the dingy (that are supplied with all bareboats) (these days i would giant stride) but that was hard because the dingy was tippy. The BVIs have several fill shops throughout the islands, it was just often enough for this to work. It was work to haul the tanks in and find the shop and wait for someone to show up and return to the sailboat anchored in harbor , It was challenging to use the book to see if your at the right bouy and to start the dive in the right direction from the bouy to hit the site. We rarely saw diving from other sailboats, there are many sailboats but they are all snorkeling. The boat rental company was very worried about tank marks on the deck, but the dive store had pvc tubes lashed with rope into 4 pipepacks which acted as upright tank stands, (a large tube for one tank) which we lashed to the sailboat railing for storage.

 

[OceanObsessed]

I am thinking about a small wet bottom sailboat, like a snark, laser or sunfish. to combine daysailing with diving.

Has anyone dove from a small sailboat?

Myself, along with 3 of my buddies have used a Sunfish sailboat for diving (Scuba and freediving) for over 25 years. I mostly use a kayak nowadays but still use the sailboat too. I share ownership of a Phantom sailboat (with ONESPEED) which looks almost exactly like a Sunfish sailboat. It's the one currently in my avatar. Two tanks will fit in the cockpit perfectly. We have two other friends who also own Sunfish sailboats. We all grew up at the same oceanfront townhome complex in Lauderdale by the Sea and we kept these boats on the beach for easy acccess. Over the years we have used all 3 of these boats to make countless dives. We have even dove deep wrecks like the Mercedes off Ft. Lauderdale from the Sunfish. One trick we learned was to anchor off the stern (weather permitting of course) while gearing up so the boom is not over the cockpit.

By the way, the Laser has a rounded hull and it is not as stable as a Sunfish or a Phantom when at anchor. For diving you are much better off with a Sunfish or a Phantom. Unfortunately, the Phantom is no longer in production and used ones are hard to find.

For anyone who lives on the water I would highly recommend them as a great little low cost sailboat that can also be used for both freediving and Scuba. I have dozens of pictures of diving off of a Sunfish style boat but they are not digital. If I ever get around to scaning them I will post some photos.

Any other Sunfish divers out there? Let's resurrect this dead thread

 

[rockjock3]

I picked diving from shore, but I also utilize my kayak a lot so that is included in my diving from shore.

 

[DiverLS]

The only "sailboat" I dived from was Blackbeard's while they were still out of Miami. Great diving, good food but "sailboat" didn't sail. We motored everywhere with the sail up.

Most of my diving is the liveaboards in S. California. I prefer the Peace Boat and the Horizon. I also use Truth Aquatics.

For diving off the Northern California coast I use a 15" Achiles, 40H engine. It trailers nice and easy to dive off and get back on.

I sailed Tahoe in a 26' swing keel for about 5 years but that was before diving. From that experience, it would take a lot of modification to get back on the boat with gear. It was difficult enough in a bathing suit.