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Like many veteran travelers, I’ve had to modify and downsize my gear choices due to the ever-tighter baggage allowances and weight restrictions set by the airline industry. A growing number of equipment makers have responded to the changing landscape of airline travel with a new crop of slimmed-down BCDs that are stow small and light. My wife Karen has been diving one of the original lightweights - the Zeagle Zena - since the day it was first introduced nearly a decade ago, and has always found it as close to perfect for travel as it is for comfort. Over the course of hundreds of dives, we have changed out her original only once, (and that was purely for cosmic reasons in pictures) proving there's no reason to sacrifice durability for weight savings and size reduction when designing a lightweight travel BCD. |
Designed specifically as a travel BCD, the Wicked Lite gets off to a great start, as it is certainly both compact and lightweight. The size medium I received, equipped with a standard power inflator weighed 3.9 lbs (1.8 kg) dry; nearly half a pound less than Aqualung’s equal-sized, travel-friendly Zuma BCD.
Although I am still partial to Zeagle’s component-style BCDs, which allow you to change out the shoulder sections or bladder from the vest, the unitized approach of having the shoulder sections, wing and vest sewn together as one integral system works fine in the Wicked Lite’s case.
The BCD’s harness is basic in design with a slightly sculpted pattern to the shoulders, a single strap across the chest, and a quick-release, adjustable 1-1/2 inch wide waist coming off the panels - which also severe as foundations for the BCD’s integrated weight system. The upper portions of the shoulder straps are 2 ¾ inches wide, providing good load-bearing ability in the regions most tasked when negotiating a boat ladder or performing a surf entry. My one minor disappointment was the shoulder strap’s adjustment point hardware, which should have been at least 1-1/2 inch wide webbing and buckle system to connect it to the waist portion of the harness. Instead, what you have is a section of 1-inch webbing that looks like something more appropriate on a kid’s backpack, with small quick-release buckles of the same size used on the adjustable chest strap. In test dives using a standard aluminum 80 with 4 lbs. of lead in the BCD’s weight pockets, the downsized buckles held fine, but when I switched over to heavier load – a single 100 cu ft. high-pressure steel tank and 8 lbs. of lead in the weight pockets - the 1-inch webbing buckles slipped significantly on several occasions. Thicker straps would be a fine addition, and wouldn’t add significant weight.
I would have also preferred seeing 2 inch webbing on the waist strap instead of the supplied 1-1/2 inch webbing, as it would have been easier to purely attach accessories like line cutters and D-rings that are typically designed for placement on 2-inch webbing. In addition, a wider belt would provide more surface area to dissipate the pressure of the harness around the waist. Again, such changes would result increase weight by grams, not pounds.
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