split fins for freediving?

[Randy Quimpo]

A friend of mine (a scuba diver, of course) was trying to tell me that his Scubapro Force fins were the way to go for freediving.

Is this true? I have never seen or heard of a freediver using split fins.

 

[icarus pacific]

OK for tanks

The split fins from Scubapro are fine once you get used to them, it took me a while to have to go back to bicycle kicking. For freediving, they take too much motion to get them to generate any oomph.
A friend of mine split his Omer Winters as an experiment and laced the blades to the rubber rails and said that he hasn't noticed any real benefits.

sven

 

[Jon]

Don't waste your money

The split fins are junk.
We had a guy try and play undewater hockey with them last week. He couldn't keep up with the people wearing small full foot snorkeling fins. I think that they are way too floppy for freediving- just like Force Fins.

I have even tried them on some deeper scuba dives were I had to drag a couple of stage bottles around- junk. I use Turtle fins instead for scuba and they push me along much better at half the cost!

Check out the Diverite web site. They just did some side-by-side test runs with split fins versus regular paddle fins. It makes for interesting reading.

You can get real freediving fins for a LOT less money than split fins. That would be a much better way to go. Don't waste your cash on the splits.

Jon

 

[Randy Quimpo]

Don't waste your money? Now thats saying it like it is!

Thanks a lot for the replies - sure clears up a lot of things!

 

[andrsn]

custom split garas

check this out guys...

i've shortened a pair of my gara ld's down last year and split the the ends about 10inches and drilled the fracture relief hole at the end.

they.... kick butt

swimming with shortened ld's calls for some powerful lower legs, but splitting the ends helps channel the water and lessens the overall resistance. summary... a pretty durable/powerful/ and efficient rock fin.