How far do you swim?

[JonG1]

Just wondering if anyone has rules of thumb about how far they are comfortable on fin power alone.

Obviously flow/no flow will influence this as would open or closed circuit and depth/deco.

Locally we are no flow and a mixture of OC and CCR but the environments are mainly less than 25m deep.

I'm relatively new to the darkness and interested in what limits people set themselves.

 

[tbone1004]

that's a quite involved answer.

You have a determination of how many feet/meters from the entrance, how many minutes from the entrance, and how much gas from the entrance. Weighing all of those together will set your limit, but those are actually in order of increasing importance. In order of priority, quantity of gas is first, then time, then distance IMO
I don't particularly want to be more than an hour from the surface on fins alone. In ~25m caves like Ginnie/Jackson Blue, that's somewhere between 3000-4000ft or about 1000m. The range is due to variable flow that spits you out, but an exit speed of 50-70fpm, and I always plan for 50fpm.
60 min exit duration at 3.5ata means carrying about 400cf/11,500L of gas just for the linear penetration, not including any poking around.

After that, I want to be on a DPV. Granted, I always would rather be on a dpv, but that's because I'm lazy and don't like kicking....

 

[Jack Hammer]

Hard to give a simple answer. In Mexico where I'm not moving a lot of weight and its shallow it is not much effort to swim long distances. In places where the water is cold and deep I prefer a scooter for shorter distances. The amount of effort going in and the amount of deco accrued are huge factors.

 

[PfcAJ]

Swim?

Ew.

 

[rjack321]

Is this open water or a cave? Lake or ocean? Boat traffic to worry about? Tidally/current influences?

Depending on those answers, between 50m and 2,000m

 

[JonG1]

Cave/mine rjack

 

[Superlyte27]

I swam about 5k feet in at Madison recently. That was way too much swimming, lol

 

[JonG1]

How far were u from entrance at max Superlyte, I swam about 1.3-1.4k last weekend, max distance was probably around 500m tho.

 

[Superlyte27]

How far were u from entrance at max Superlyte, I swam about 1.3-1.4k last weekend, max distance was probably around 500m tho.

5k

 

[tbone1004]

5k

@JonG1 of note, Pete is probably reporting in ft since we are in the US, so roughly 1.5km.
Also my answer and I assume everyone else will be talking about max penetration distance vs. total distance traveled.