question about weights

[FreedivingCuban]

Hi Guys,

I currently train at a local pool. I train dynamic no fins, but i'm very comfortable with freediving fins in the water.

This weekend i'm going to go on my first open ocean trip with 3 buddies and i have a question about the weights required to stay buoyant at 10 meters...we plan to do some freediving and spearfishing... I have dived in the open ocean before but that was before i even knew what freediving was. i had no idea what i was doing i just did what came naturally. which is of course, quite dangerous without proper training and knowledge.
I currently weight around 205LBS and i'm 5."9. i will be wearing a 3mm wet suit.

My question: is there anyone out there who's weight/height is similar to mine that can offer some ideas as to how much weight i'll need on my belt in order to remain buoyant at 10 meters?

Any and all comments/suggestions are welcome!

THANKS!

 

[CEngelbrecht]

You and I are actually quite similar in those two numbers, so I might help. But a lot of individual factors render into how much weight is needed. There is a difference between diving in salt water and fresh water; salt water is more buoyant than fresh and requires a little more weight. Depending on your body composition, you may require more or less weight. A lot of body fat is extra buoyancy and thus requires more weight. A lot of muscle tissue acts to reduce buoyancy and thus requires less weight. Factors like that.

Anyway, a number you could start out with on 3mm would be perhaps 3 kilograms of lead (6 lbs). Long story short. But experiment, each person is a, you know, snowflake.

 

[growingupninja]

It will vary with your physiology, among other things... You might need to experiment a little but I can't imagine you would need more than 12 lbs. See what the guys you are going with recommend and start light. If you are used to diving in the ocean without a suit and weights when you first use a suit and weights you may notice a sharper change in buoyancy as you descend; you fight the suit for the first couple meters, then swim easy, and then are suddenly heavy enough to sink. Besides protection, if you are weighted properly, with a suit you will be buoyant at the surface so it is easier to rest.

I remember my first time freediving with a wetsuit... 5mm in cold California water, lousy viz. I swam out to what I now know was about 40 feet depth, dropped to the bottom, stood there thinking 'wow this is pretty cool'. When I was ready to come up, I started kicking and my craptastic beater skin diving fins were flexing in half and doing absolutely nothing... Not a good feeling. I got up fine with some arm strokes but I got some decent fins that same day.
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[FreedivingCuban]

thanks for the tip CEngelbrecht! judging from what everyone else uses around here i think 6-8LBS will do the trick.

 

[FreedivingCuban]

thanks for the comment growingupninja. wow that must have been a pretty scary moment.
something similar happened to me in grand turk before i even knew what freediving is. I was on a carnival shore excursion. i wasn't wearing any weights, just a swim suit and some really crappy scuba fins...kind of on the short side actually. i managed to go down to around 38 maybe 40 feet and on the way up one of the fins came off...talk about a tense rise. when i broke the surface i was surprise i hadn't passed out. now that i think about it, it was really stupid to go that deep without proper equipment, or training, or a spotter...i know better now.

 

[guybly]

I am a big (fat) guy, my rule of the thumb is 5% of my body weight(for scuba its 12-14%). I am around 115kg so I would wear around 6 kg with a 3mm suit and do the 10m test.

I know its not the best method out there, but its the method that I use.

Also, Hialeah represent! I use to go there every sunday to play paintball when I was a kid living in Miami. los cubanos en Hialeah son los mas simpaticos!

Saludos,
Guy

 

[FreedivingCuban]

thanks for the tip guy. LOL yea us cubans are crazy, ESPECIALLY the ones from Hialeah.

 

[malt1977]

I use a 5mm suit (2 piece), weigh about 95 kilos of which a fair amount is fat... I dive with 8 kilo and feel like I could do with more, but then there is a rather high salt content in the sea around the channel islands.


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